White Water Rafting

Having driven along side a pretty flat looking stretch of river for about 10 miles, I wasn't overwhelmed by the prospect of kayaking along it, let alone rafting. It was, as the canoe club would call it, a rocky scrape. Fortunately, we didn't paddle that section, but instead we stopped at the get-off, got changed and then drove another 30 minutes up river, where I couldn't see the river at all so I had no idea what to expect.

Once I managed to get my helmet to fit (I have a particularly small head and I couldn't get it to stay done up on its tightest setting) and we had a briefing and we got on the river, I started to feel like maybe all of those years in the canoe club weren't going to help all that much. Rafting is a different skill to kayaking, and understanding a river only gets you so far.

The first 20 minutes or so were grade I - the water was moving but barely - but it was deep enough and was not the rocky-scrape I had seen earlier. The scenery was breathtaking - we were paddling through huge green mountains down a tributary of the mighty Amazon. As we moved forward the speed picked up and we bumbled along, building in confidence as we went. Then, after practising 'go left!' (which means get into the raft and lean as far left as you can i.e. on top of the person who was already on the left trying to avoid hitting them with your paddle) and 'go right!' (which meant, because I was on the right, that I got jumped on) the rapids began to pick up. For the next hour or so it was pretty continuous grade III which was a lot of fun. For anyone to whom that means nothing, there were rapids on the river - big rocks that had to be avoided and other rocks which created rapids and waves which had to be negotiated - i.e. we had to be facing the right way and paddling hard (ish), but if we weren't doing either of those things it would not have been the end of the world.

About half way along our guide, Tomas, said, anyone fancy jumping off this big rock? To which Rhys said, yes please! So, after gaining assurance that the water was actually deeper than the three feet it had been for the rest of the trip, he climbed onto a big rock and jumped as far forwards as possible into the water. He came up assuring me that he hadn't broken both of his legs, to which I was eternally grateful :)

We continued down the rapids, digging our paddles into big stoppers and going down sideways or backwards, depending on what took Tomas' fancy. There were a couple when he shouted 'get down' and because Rhys and I were at the front we got a full face of water. We were lucky that it was sunny and warm so despite the freezing water running down my back I soon warmed up. (Any one who has ever been on a river with me will know that being cold is one of the things I like least!)

After having spent about two hours on the river we arrived, rather too soon for our liking, at the get-off. We both could have happily carried on for another hour at least, it was a lot of fun.

Tomorrow we will be going into the Amazon rainforest for 4 days where we won't have any internet access so we'll be signing off for a few days now but hopefully we'll have some cool stories to tell when we get back. Then we have a day or so of recovering and we'll be trekking up the Inka trail to Machu Picchu - our days of getting used to the altitude are over - it's time to get busy!

gx