All that sparkles!: Cliff Diving

Sunday, August 16th

On Sunday our wonderful friend Susana drove down to Javea to join us for the day. We went to a cove that was about 30 minutes away because it has great cliffs to jump off of. When we arrived we also discovered that is also a popular nudist beach :) Interesting. Especially considering that the majority of the people who decide to go nude are over the age of 70. And overweight. Nonetheless, the cove was gorgeous and it was so fun to be there with our friends. It is so strange to be with them in Spain instead of Norman. I have to keep reminding myself of where we are.

Koke, Jordan, and I decided to jump off the cliffs, while Gloria and Sus hung out on the beach. The climb alone was exciting and quite challenging. We reached the highest cliff which we all intended to jump off of and oh wow, was it high!!! It was about 40 feet which may not sound like that much but it is incredibly high, especially looking straight down off of the cliff into the deep blue ocean. We tried to work up the courage to jump for awhile but the longer we stood up there discussing it, the more difficult it became. My heart was racing and my hands were shaking. We all want to jump but we decided we needed at least one person who was fearless to say "this is easy" and then jump so that we could quickly follow. But it just got scarier the longer we waited so we decided to climb down a few rocks and jump from about half the height which was no problem. So we jumped and then we realized that the scary part was no the jump but was the fact that we were in the middle of the ocean. Near a shore where I had just seen an octopus wash up on and that we knew was frequently full of jellyfish. So we swam quickly. And after getting our courage up we were ready to take on the big cliff. Rather than going all the way back to shore we decided to climb up out of the sea onto some rocks. It didn't seem difficult at the time but Jordan and I both realized later that we cut our shins climbing out of the ocean because the rocks were really rough. So we were bleeding. Shark bait for sure. We got back to the top of the 40 foot cliff and sure enough it was just as high as we remember. Finally Koke got up enough nerve to jump after Jordan and I assured him that we would come right after him. So then Jordan jumped and the intensity of their screams did not help my courage. So I stood at the edge and wanted to go so badly and I just couldn't. My body was shaking so much that I thought my legs were going to give out (like my dad says, its just not natural for our body to be okay with jumping off a perfectly good cliff). Koke threatened to leave me and started swimming away thinking that would help me go but that just made me more scared because even if I did jump I would be all alone in the ocean. So I couldn't go. And couldn't go. And finally Jordan said the magic words..."Kayla...Shakira would jump!! Come on, be a loba!!!!" And that was it. I knew with those words there was no turning back. Because Shakira would go. So I began to sing the lyrics of the chorus of loba to myself and there is a part where you hear a wolf howling and that is when I jumped. And it was the perfect duration of the time I spent in the air (which seemed to be about 10 seconds but in reality I think was about 2.5). It was an amazing rush. One of the scariest things I have ever done (that and mountain climbing and repelling in Mexico). The landing though was quite painful (even though I was wearing tennis shoes) and I am still suffering some repercussions from it. But it was awesome. Such a fun day! After we rewarded ourselves with some ice cream and then drove to some scenic points to check out the views.

This is the cove we went to (I don't think you can see any nudity in this picture. That was mostly contained in the back area near the mountain). You can't make out the specific cliff we jumped from but its on the mountain that is in the back of the picture.