A View From Above

"OK, it’s your turn," Boo said.

Boo was an affable man who wore his hair in a ponytail, an easy smile across his face, and the sun-kissed complexion of someone that spent his life on the beach. Without even glancing down, he deftly untied the rope from his harness and handed it to me.

In front of me, a sheer limestone cliff extended impossibly vertically into the cloudless sky above Rai Leh West. A few steps behind me, the tide lazily ebbed in and out. This was nothing like that singular rock climbing class I took a couple of years ago; there were no clearly marked routes, no bells to ring at the top, and certainly no smooth, brightly-colored hand holds.

I grasped the rope and began clumsily securing it to my harness, fumbling enough with the knot to surely betray my attempt to appear calm. With the knot finally secured (and everything double-checked by Boo), I walked to the base of the rock, and placed an uncertain right hand on a jagged notch a few inches above my head. My left foot stepped on a narrow ledge about two feet above the ground, my right foot followed, and I was officially rock climbing. Well, technically, I was rock holding.

The effortless route Boo took to the top of the cliff while securing the rope instantly vanished. I tried to keep track of where he put his hands and feet while he was climbing, but now that I was on the rock, the hand and foot holds that seemed so obvious were simply invisible. I began grasping for anything I could either get a grip of or step onto, and began my slow ascent.

After about 20 feet, I felt like I was getting the hang of it. That feeling was immediately confronted with an equally strong feeling of fatigue in all of my limbs. I glanced down at Boo to find him comfortably seated on a mat, belaying me with one section of the rope in his left hand, and the other held by the toes of his right foot. I chuckled at his misplaced confidence in my ability, and he smiled back up at me. I began to relax, and continued climbing.

A few minutes and a few scrapes and scratches later, I made it to the top. I was clinging to a rough limestone rock about 40 feet above the ocean, covered in sweat, aching all over, and I was ecstatic. I looked down to Boo who appeared to be giving me the thumbs up sign. Then, I looked up and out over Rai Leh West. I had been on that beach earlier in the morning, but it looked different now. Better. Huge limestone cliffs that were covered by lush, green vegetation towered over the landscape. Long-tail boats bobbed rhythmically at the edge of a white sand beach, and the ocean sparkled a turquoise color that usually exists only in my imagination.