Chapter 4

Sue :

The early morning sun woke me early next morning and, while I was a bit stiff and sore, I felt great and glad to be alive. All this exercise and fresh air was definitely not doing me any harm and I found that I was actually enjoying our adventure, even considering the seriousness of it. I could hear Dad moving round outside and I soon smelt the smoke from the fire and knew that coffee and breakfast would be underway and it ws time I was up I crawled from my sleeping bag and fumbled a clean set of underwear from my pack, my activities prior to sleep the previous night making a change of panties imperative. We had allowed ourselves one pair of shorts, one pair of longs, two tee-shirts and two changes of underwear each, room and weight being of paramount importance, and the only other items of clothing we had were boots and jackets. I had sneaked a couple of extra pairs of nickers and a third tee-shirt in but even so I would have to do some washing at our next stop.

After I had had my morning piddle in the bushes and a wash in the lake, I joined Dad for breakfast and the fresh trout and coffee went down a real treat. We decided that the best way to get our equipment to the bottom of the falls and the river, about eighty feet below, was in two stages. Our rope was only sixty foot long and would not reach the bottom in one drop so we would secure everything on a ledge about halfway down and then start again We had our two packs, a bundle of paddles, tents and bits and pieces and finally the raft to get down after we had packed everything up and moved it to our chosen start place and, with the rope tied around me and Dad belaying me, I half climbed and half got lowered to the ledge. I freed myself and Dad pulled the rope back up and lowered, one at a time, the three bundles down and I made them secure. When the raft finally reached me I had a bit more trouble with it but I was finally able to release the rope and watch Dad climb down the doubled rope to about fifteen feet above our ledge.

Unfortunately the rope was too short in its doubled state to allow him to get right down so when he had a secure footing he released one end and pulled the free end up, over and free, and, as there was nowhere for him to secure it, he dropped it to me and sort of climbed, slid and fell the rest of the way to our foothold and luckily all he did was take a bit of skin off one knee. There was no-where on the ledge to tie off the rope so this stage was going to be a lot riskier as Dad would have to take the full weight of everything himself. The only good thing was that the cliff was not as high as we had first thought and we were only about thirty feet from the ground. I was worried about how Dad would get down as he would not have the rope to help himself with this time, but he reaasured me that he would be OK and anyway we did not have any choice.

I was lowered without a hitch and we had no problem with our gear so finally the only thing left to get down was Dad. He called out,

"How deep is the pool at the bottom of the waterfall?" I went and checked.

"Its about 10 or 12 feet deep about 6 feet out from the edge. Why?"

Without answering Dad began to slide down the steep cliff beside the waterfall and after he had slid about halfway he pushed himself off and droped into the pool with a mighty splash. I stood there with my mouth open, too terrified to move and when he finally re-surfaced I nearly cried with relief. He told me later that the reason he didn't tell me what he planned was that he was frightened I would be able to talk him out of it, which I would surely have tried to do.

While Dad dried of and changed from hs wet clothing I made ready to restart our travel and by the time he re-appeared in his jeans and a fresh tee-shirt I had everything secured in the raft and set to push off. The travelling was a lot quicker and easier as we were now being pushed by the current and the only real difficulties we encountered were the occassional shallow area where we couldn't paddle the raft and we had to drag it. The scenery was great and was changing all the time, sometimes we were moving through dense forrestry and sometimes between high, rocky cliffs and the bird and animal life was both colourful and varied. It was more like a adventure experience than a journey forced on us by necessity and when we finally stopped to set up camp in the late afternoon I did not feel nearly so weary amd nervous as the previous two days.

When we had the tents erected and a fire going I suggested that Dad should take a bath and leave his dirty clothes at the rivers edge and I would then also bathe and wash out our dirty clothing to dry overnight. He headed off to the river, behind some bushes, with our one cake of soap and I proceeded to put the hares on to cook for our evening meal. I prepared them much the same way as I had the ducks and when I had them simmering nicely I sat back and relaxed. I could hear Dad splashing in the distance and the urge finally became too much for me, and I crept quietly over to the bushes and, keeping down and hopefully out of sight, I carefuly made an opening in the undergrowth and peered through. I had timed it just right as Dad had finished and was wading ashore to dry off. He was quite a magnificent sight, tall, handsome and very well built and his muscle tone for someone his age was impressive, he obviously worked out regularly. At about six foot tall and dark haired, with a little grey starting to show through, (there was no grey in the abundant crop of pubic hair at his groin, though) and, with no appearant spare flesh on him anywhere, he had the appearance of a man much younger. He was definitely a sight to rouse the hormones in any normal female and, even though I was his daughter, he had the same effect on me and I could feel myself growing moist. At first I was disappointed in the size of his genitals which seemed small and out of proportion with the rest of his body but when he rubbed them dry the warmth generated by the towel soon affected them and they grew to what I assumed to be their normal and more impressive size, looking to be about seven or eight inches in lenghth and circumcised, this was at least a couple of inches more than my ex-husband and my mouth watered. Dad looked to be almost finished so I quickly returned to the fire and tried to look innocent when he returned, dressed in just his jeans.