Surprise Waterfalls

Directly after our Mt. Bromo adventure, we took off our jackets, put on our bathing suits and headed straight over to Madakaripura Falls, on our 2 hours of sleep and post-hiking Bromo bodies. This was one of our favorite moments in Indonesia so I decided to jot down most of the details!

So I want to tell a little prequel to how we got here...because it wasn't easy.

Madakaripura Falls, also known as Surprise Waterfalls, is not a regular tourist stop which means it's hard to find a way to get there.  Everyone that we were with at Mt. Bromo had bought a package trip that took them from Jogja, to Bromo and then on to the next volcano I'll be posting about, Ijen Kawah.  We were the only ones out of maybe 50+ people who were not going on this tour which made us second guess everything about Madakaripura.  First off, no one had heard of them, it wasn't wet season so most people were assuming there would be no waterfall, and lastly we had no clue how we were going to get there.  Before we left for our trip I searched out tons of waterfalls and put a big star next to Madakaripura in my travel notes, but when you're actually there in Indonesia, you don't remember which site was which and you wonder if that star was really significant or not.  Well, let me tell you.. it was. :)

Landon made good friends with one of the drivers in Bromo, and he agreed to drive us to the waterfalls, wait for us with all of our belongings and then take us to the bus station directly after.  After a good 40 minute drive, we reached a small village.  Everyone was so excited/shocked to see tourists there.  We prayed that our belongings and driver would still be there when we returned and off we went. After crossing the main river about 4 times we reached our first waterfall. We got so excited and took a few photos... and then when we reached our 2nd waterfall we were even more excited and took a lot more photos and this continued to happen with the next 5 waterfalls.  Our guide started laughing and finally told us, we aren't to the main one yet, and Landon and I looked at each other in surprise.  We had gone through 7 waterfalls and were happy as can be and then we looked past the rocks in a separate nook, and there fall a 650+ foot waterfall.  We were speechless.

After we climbed a slippery wall of rocks we reached the final waterfall.  The water fell at such a strong force I felt like we were getting pushed back.  Before I knew it Landon was already swimming to the waterfall!  He climbed up behind it and jumped through. By the time we got there we were soaked and with the wind coming at me so strong I was shaking from being so cold... regardless to what I thought I would do...I did NOT want to go swimming in that cold water with the strongest current I had ever seen.  After some convincing, I decided to do it because we would never get this opportunity to do this again. As I was prepping myself to go in, Landon tells me quickly, "uhh it might feel like you can't breath because the water is so strong and cold, but just keep moving" haha That definitely didn't help, but we swam it together and jumped through the 600 foot powerful waterfall together.  It was such a once in a lifetime experience and ranked as the best one out of Indonesia.

-Also if you were wondering, I had waterproof protection for my DSLR, it made it difficult to always get the shots I wanted because that thing was huge and not pliable, but I was glad to have it safe while walking under the waterfalls.-