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“Just. Don’t. Let. Go.” The rational part of my brain is fighting to be heard over the primal scream of blistered hands begging for relief from the brutal beige rope; the erratic whooshing of a restless stomach that can’t decide between settling in my mouth or my feet; the raw rasp of sweaty breath struggling to meet its demand; and the unmistakable crashing of the Atlantic Ocean, seemingly an eternity below me. My knees shake in the hot sun. Fight or flight - or freeze. My reptilian brain prefers the latter two options. It perceives danger and wills me to flee, to throw myself into oblivion; or to freeze until the threat disappears - which it won’t. Rigor mortis, inevitably. “Just. Keep. Climbing. Down.” When your mind is in chaos, your body must find rhythm. Rhythm resists change; it is self-perpetuating. No fight, flight or freeze; just, continue. Ladders generate rhythm. Foot-hand-foot-hand. My companion and I have no harnesses, no guide, no instructions, no knowledge of how far we have come or have to go. And at this point, I am not sure we can even remember the aim of this whole exercise. But we do have a ladder. I look up, back to the clifftop where we started this descent. I cannot see the top; only wooden step after wooden step, suspended from a pair of thick, twisted, coarse ropes. I look down - an ill-advised move as vertigo swirls my head in circles. I cannot see the bottom. Again, only step after step, rope after rope, hung against a backdrop of crumbly, pale cliff-face, framed by baby green trees whose fledgling roots seek a foothold. They aren’t a patch on the thicket of gargantuan vegetation that used to live here - before Hurricane Maria (2017) stripped the whole island bare. Back then, climbers were cocooned in the reassuring embrace of greenery that didn’t let them know that they were hanging off the edge of the earth; and their feet would always land in a complex lattice of roots. But not now. Now we only have The Ladder, and it keeps no secrets. I had heard that one had been set up here to compensate for the loss of trees, but since little information exists about this place, I had naively expected a few metres of climb amongst an otherwise normal hike. I try to imagine the ropes are Rapunzel’s plaited hair and I am her suitor, drunk on love and merrily heading back to town after a visit to her tower. But there is nothing romantic about this. Foot-hand-foot-hand. One step at a time, I create a rhythm. I let my eyes glaze over, and my hearing muffle. I have only a vague awareness of my travel companion around 15 rungs below me. It is just me and The Ladder now. Peppered with the occasional clunk of a shin hitting a rung, the sting of an elbow catching a wayward branch, or the need to grip tighter as the wind sways the whole structure to one side, the foot-hand-foot-hand method takes on a life of its own. At some point, I reach the ground. Foot-hand-rock. No more rungs. Consciously re-engaging my senses, my body and mind begrudgingly lose their rhythm. I coax my eyes to see and my limbs to feel. I turn to the right, and remember the point of this. I forget The Ladder - my lifeline, my dance partner, my means to an end. I was not fully convinced that this place existed - given that even most Dominicans I asked had not heard of it - but it does. With pupils dilated into deep, dark, adrenaline-fed pools, my eyes drink in the perfect vista. A quasi-unique sight, one of apparently only 15 on earth: a towering waterfall emptying not into a river basin, but onto a beach. At this moment, this exact expanse of jet-black sand; warm, saline blue ocean; and continuous cascade of fresh, clear water are for our eyes only. I take a deep breath, saturated with endorphins, and we start to run, almost maniacally. It’s time for a cold shower.