Swimming in waterfalls can be dangerous! Or "Irresponsible Parenting 101"

Hikes have no value if they don't have a waterfall to swim in, according to Alden. It's how we determine which hikes to bring the kids on with us. Longer hikes with no swimming possibilities: opportunities for me and Alison to do on our own. Shorter hikes with waterfalls and swimming possibilities: bring kids.

Sometimes we even bring friends of theirs from the village here, as we did recently when we headed overland to the other side of the island for a quick but very steep drop into a gorge with a beautiful carved-out cavern. You swim through the narrow gorge and can climb onto the rocks right next to the falls. For those interested in the element of danger, you can jump from the rocks into the frothing deluge, getting pushed down with the water that has dropped 10 feet from above.

All works great as long as you don't fight it. Swimming against it means remaining in a state of suspension whereas just "going with the flow" means getting pushed with the rest of the water and getting churned back to the surface within a few seconds. I watched Willow (who, like most children, prefers to think that danger is something that happens to other people) swim up to the froth and then get pushed down. As she tried to get back to the surface, she was moving against the force of the current. For what felt like an eternity for her but was probably closer to four of five seconds, the top of her head was all that was visible. I was able to quickly jump to her and pull her out of her suspended state.

Willow now refers to this experience as "the time I almost died".

Alison happened to be filming at the time and while she ironically began panning to the top of the falls while Willow was submerged, she pans back down just in time to capture my heroic rescue from Willow's near-death experience.

I think I was actually even more traumatized by the experience than Willow was.