I remember back in 2018 I inherited a property from a lost uncle that I got along very well with,he sadly passed away, I didn’t went back to my hometown in almost a decade, I remember leaving because as much as I love my hometown living in a tiny town made me feel a little claustrophobic and I love travelling very much, so going there to do some documents and grieve my uncle was the perfect excuse to reconnect ,the only way to get there is by a twelve hours bus, so as soon I hop on on the bus I decided to make some Facebook stories and low-key give a signal to my old friends that I was on my way back ,one of my best friends from high school reach out and reply and I was very excited about it, we start making plans about what we should do while I was there ,we used to hang in his motorcycle all day back in high school, so basically we decide to check the hot spots,do tourism and also I was bringing my gopro with me, even him as a local stop going to some places for years so it would be fun revisited the touristic areas together ,Tingo Maria is kind of underrated in Peru but is filled with hidden gems, I arrived on Friday morning I was exhausted so I decided to take a long nap basically the whole day and later that day i went to visit my uncle at the cemetery, doing the paper work for my property wasn’t my main motivation so I didn’t plan the exact day when I suppose to go to the lawyers and do that, the next day (Saturday)my buddy call me he was like I’m going to pick you up ,let’s check the town ,I heard about Derrepente river maybe we can check the waterfall that everybody always talked about ,he never being there either, is like a twenty minute’s walk from the main road ,I was like sure sounds fun,I wasn’t even plan to swim. just deep the selfie stick with the gopro on it ,my friend came that morning ,we left to Derrepente river which is like an snake shape figure eight river so you basically cross the same river a couple of times to get to your destination(we didn’t knew that) ,as soon as we arrive there was so other locals, very few, we hop off the motorcycle and ask for some directions ,they told as: you just have to walk for twenty minutes cross the river two times and u going to see the waterfall, we were like ,cool; I start walking ,we cross the river twice of course then we didn’t see nothing but amazing nature but no waterfall signals, there was more river to cross so we decide to keep going straight by the forth and forty minutes later ,we were like, where the f we are? Luckily we saw a fisherman,he was like :you guys are almost there just cross the river two more times and that’s it, we were ,yolo, let’s do it, as we try to cross these rivers paths the water start to increase and we were fully wet ,all our devices were water proof luckily, expect for our wallets and headphones,I almost drown because my clothes was wet and heavy, I was pretty scare I wanted to go back ,but my friend was like: im sure we are pretty close, I was so mixed up, scared and excited at the same time, we got deeper into this jungle with such stunning view of green symmetric rocks like walls shaped by the water, transparent water ,fish ,different types of butterfly’s ,and the smooth sound of birds and just rapid water hitting the stones ,was just like the perfect scenario for things to go really good or really really bad, at some point i literally just listen the echo our voices, I didn’t knew what to think I didn’t want to go back either no without finding the waterfall, the whole ground was covered with rocks ,so my feet were destroy, there’s nobody to keep telling us that we were going to the right direction,finally ,we saw the four p.m sun hitting the waterfall from a close distance, blinding us ,so hard to describe ,like nothing I saw before, we felt so close, but we weren’t ,we have to cross the river one more time and this time got even harder, we got three options ,a really strong water rapids that was going against our direction and didn’t help the fact that were very weak, we supposed to go for a quick check out and grab food on our way), the other option was this black water pond that looked pretty sketchy and third one was going to the right where you can see a door type three that was surrounding this black water pond and its going into the deep jungle ,of course we choose the third one ,why not? There was mud everywhere and at some point the ground was teared apart connected only my leafs so if u fall ,it would take bringing a whole team to rescue you,we finally cross this mini forest and get to see this amazing waterfall and just let the water hitting on our heads and also see all kind of rainbows, that feeling, that view, worth all the struggle and me almost drowning, we assumed that can get more dangerous to return by night so we didn’t want the night to catch us in the middle of almost virgin jungle, we swim and film a little bit and just head out ,we also were super hungry ,the way back was amazing ,the whole direction of the river water was against us at the beginning but to go back ,you just have to let the flow of water take you to the shore ,and i found out that was one of the best feeling I ever experience ,just letting the water flow take you back home, we just got back to our starting point and the night just came as soon as we hop on the motorcycle ,on our way back to the town I lost one of my snickers ,I didn’t care, I felt healed and privileged somehow ,I feel that accident was for the best and for sure I want to repeat it again ,this time more prepared of course.