Sapa / Love Waterfall: Canyoning Tour with Pickup

5.00

(19 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

We bounced along the road out of Sapa, windows cracked just enough to catch that cool mountain air — it smelled like wet leaves and something sweet I couldn’t place. Our guide, Minh, was already cracking jokes about how we’d “meet the waterfall up close,” which I thought was just a funny way to say we’d get wet. But yeah, he meant it literally. The drive to Love Waterfall took maybe half an hour? Time felt weird — I kept staring at the green folds of Hoang Lien National Park rolling by. It’s only about 15km from town but feels like another world.

After we got out, Minh handed us harnesses and helmets (mine was a bit crooked, but he fixed it for me) and started running through the safety stuff. I’m not gonna lie, my heart sped up when he showed us how to abseil — ropes, carabiners, all that. We practiced on a little slope first; I definitely slipped once and everyone laughed (including me). The sound of the water got louder as we walked closer — not roaring exactly, more like steady applause echoing through the trees. There were other locals around too, some selling snacks near the trailhead; one lady tried to teach me how to say “waterfall” in Vietnamese but I totally butchered it and she just smiled.

Then came the real canyoning part: scrambling over slick rocks, lowering ourselves down beside these smaller falls before reaching the big one. The spray hit my face cold and sharp — woke me right up. At one point Minh pointed out some moss that only grows here because of the constant mist; it felt soft under my fingers, almost unreal. There’s this moment when you’re hanging halfway down Love Waterfall (it’s 100 meters high — wild), and everything goes quiet except for water pounding your helmet and your own breath echoing inside it. That stuck with me.

I didn’t expect to enjoy jumping into those pools as much as I did — even though my landing was less “graceful leap” and more “splashy flop.” Minh gave us thumbs up anyway. By the end, my arms were jelly but I couldn’t stop grinning. We hiked back through the forest still dripping wet, boots squelching with every step. Honestly, I keep thinking about that view looking back at the falls through all that mist — kind of makes you want to do it again just for that split second of feeling so small and alive.