Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Hey!
Wow, another amazing day!! Today (well yday now!!) I went white water rafting!!! Wwe went on the Tully River which is a grade 4 river (graded up to 6 with 6 being death lol)! Had a nice early start of 6.40am pick up!! Headed to Tully which is about 2 hours away! On the way we went through Innisfail and Tully which had been severly hit by Cyclone Yasi. The devestation was pretty bad with plenty of roofs off and sheds collapsed. Most houses had a pile of debris outside from where they had cleaned up! They seem to have been cleaning up quite well though but there were plenty of workers sorting out electric lines! The worst devestation was to the crops and trees! The mountains which should be green were just brown where all the leaves had been blown off! Our guide said that it will probably take a good 5 years for it to get back to how it was!
We finally arrived at Tully and got life jackets, helmets and paddles! We were in boats of 6 each with a guide and there were 3 boats that went out yday all doing the extreme version! We were lucky because they only reopened the top part of the river the day before due to the cyclone, however in places the river was moving differently so it was a bit new even to our guide! The rapids were absolutely brilliant! Our guide instructed us when to paddle and when to hold on!! Or if it was pretty bad 'get down'!! We went through loads of different rapis sections and they all had smooth part inbetween where we could jump out the boat and swim!! I say swim, we basically lay on our backs with feet out infront and let the river do the work!! If you had to swim it was pretty hard work though as it was always against the current!!
We did one part of the river which is called 'Full Stop Drop'! Our guide, Ash, told us after that 4 people have died in the last 28 years at that one small part, a couple of which he was unfortunately there for!! We were all pretty grateful that he didn't tell us before we went down it!! After about 4.5km, we stopped off at the side of the river fo a BBQ lunch which was nice!! Saw a couple of turkeys wandering around!! Thought they might be dessert but it wasn't too be!! Headed off pretty soon after lunch as we still had 9.5km to do!!
The afternoon brought plenty more rapids, including one part that was graded as a 5!! We didn't go down it though as there was a bit at the side that was similar but less dangerous! The chances of 3 boats with people who didn't know what they were doing any getting to the other side through the grade 5 part wasn't promising!! We also went past a couple of fresh water creeks!! The water was so clear and tasted pretty good :) There was a distinct line where the fresh water hit the rest of the rapids!! There were also plenty of waterfalls along the way, one of which we went directly under in the boat ( pictures on fb!!). It free fell from about 15/20m up and we didn't think it would be that bad, even though Ash told us to tuck our heads into our shoulders! The force of the water was so strong on the helmets!! Luckily we were only under it for about 5 seconds!! Talk about a headache!!
Near the end, we pulled up at a rock, which was about 4m high and we all climbed up and jumped off!! It was pretty cool and not too scary!! No worries of rocks as the guides knew the best (and safest) places!! Even so I didn't attmept a silly jump as knowing my luck it would end with a trip to A&E!! Luckily all survivedalthough a couple of lads fell smack on their bums and backs, sitting back in the boats looked a bit painful for them!!
Suppose I should say that yes I did fall out, twice!! Once another girl fell out as well but the first one was just after lunch!! We went over a rapid and the boat just threw me over! Luckily both times I managed to hold on to the rope on the side so didn't have to swim!! And i even kept hold of my paddle!! Very funny though! Ash turned the boat over a couple of times as well just to make sure we kept wet!! So overall a pretty cool experience!! Would definitely do it again, loved the feeling of paddling through the rapids, so not holding on, and just praying not to go over!!
In the evening, I went out to the bar in the hostel with my room mates! Can't remember if I said, but we have 3 from Solihull and then Dale and Hannah, so we all headed out to abuse the 2-4-1 drinks and then at 10pm the girls got free champagne for an hour!! Boys were a bit miffed but to be fair the champagne was disgusting!! So narturally we kept going up for more!! Was a really good night and even ended with a trip for Maccy Ds at 1am!! Well, we thought it would be rude not to as its open 24hrs and the staff might be bored!!
Anyways, I'm off to go and chill by the lagoon and sort out some accommodation for tomorrow night as I'm not moving on to Townsville until Monday now and need to be out of my hostel tomorrow morning!!
Lots of adverturous love
xxxx
- comments