"Oh awesome! I was hoping wouldn't have to climb down there on my own. Knowing my luck I'd break my leg and get stuck down there forever or something." Amber laughed and motioned the other girl to follow her. "We gotta cross the river up here, but it's really calm water and only a little more than knee high at it's deepest."<br/><br/>When they approached the river, she stopped and picked up her hiking boots and socks, which she'd accidentally left behind in her excitement, and carried them across the water. She sat down on the far side right beside the plant and pulled them back on.<br/><br/>"This is that vine I mentioned. Look at all the colors on it! I've never seen anything like it." she nodded her head in it's direction as she re-laced her boots, then stood up, not caring how muddy she'd gotten on the bank. "It goes up over this band and down a rock face into a canyon of some sort, but it shouldn't be to hard to rappel down it. Then we can just follow the vine from there, see where it takes us."<br/><br/>She lead the way, using the soft vine to steady herself as she climbed up the muddy bank. A large, ancient looking tree made for a perfect anchor for the line she'd brought along, and it wasn't long before she had slipped into the straps of the climbing harness and snapped the hook onto the rappelling anchor. The rock face was only around 3 stories high, so it took her less than 10 minutes to make it to the bottom, as she'd been climbing and spelunking since high school.<br/><br/>"Ok! Lines free. I'll wait down here for you." She called up to Cassandra as she slipped out of the harness. As she tucked it back into her pack, she began digging for her waterproof digital camera. If she found the source of these vines, she'd definitely need pictures. "Hey I'm gonna get some pics of some of the stuff down here. There are some orchid's growing in the corner that I've only even seen in books! This place is like a dream! Yell for me if you run into any trouble with the line on your way down."<br/><br/>Amber proceeded to wander about the bottom of the small ravine, snapping pictures of flowers and leaves, exposed root systems and the way some of the rocks seemed to have been eroded by the plants in a very peculiar way. She began to notice something strange though. Down here in the bottom, she didn't see a single insect or bird. Nothing stirred the plant life down here accept herself and her climbing partner. She was contemplating the reason for this when she noticed a few more vines running up the rock face in other places. All of them seemed to continue further down the canyon in the same direction. In the distance she thought she saw massive blotches of bright colors midst the trees, and, what could possibly either a tree wrapped completely int he vines, or a tree made of the same stalk as the vine. The girl nearly shivered in excitement at the possibilities of what could lie ahead in that grove.<br/><br/>"Hey hurry up would ya?" she said playfully as she studied the plants. "I think I see something up ahead."