Day two of rafting was quite a bit different from our first day of rafting. While we haven’t posted on day one I thought I would get two up. Caitlin will be posting on day one. Day two started with a 45min. van ride to a path which we walked on for about 40min. All the while headed down a sloppy mess of mud and rocks. There was a fair amount of slipping and falling but once we got to the river we realized that, our rafting trip was going to be fairly intense. The rafting began with instructions by the lead guide that went something like this “We are going to give it a go today as we have experienced (AKA we went rafting the day before) but we have to be really focused and paddle hard” this was followed by the inevitable question of

“What if we flip?”

“We can’t flip, that would be really bad”

The happy go lucky guides of the previous day were gone. It was all business on this river. There would be very few breaks as we had to get down the river before it got too high. As we got going we paddled when told to and seemed to be going at a good clip, without too many problems. It was about half an hour in when we were hitting a set of rapids that our guide yelled paddle hard. We apparently did not paddle hard enough as we careened into a rock. At which point our guide yelled high side which meant we were supposed to lean into the high side to avoid flipping. I apparently do not have the cat like reflexes that my paddle partner Erin does, because as she came to my side of the boat, I merely sat there slowly tilting towards her, until I was unable to withstand gravity any more and fell out. I was not the only one as Andy who was sitting ahead of mean barreled into his paddle partner and took him out of the boat. It must have been a sight to see as we all were launched out of the boat into the rapids. I quickly bobbed out of the water only to hit another rapid and be submerge for a couple more seconds. I was trying to get my bearings when I heard yell from behind me that the raft was coming toward my head. I grabbed a hold of the raft to use as a flotation device. I held on for about 30 sec. before our guide jumped ontop of the raft and began flipping it. I let go and swam toward the raft ahead of us. They quickly extended their paddles for us and I thought we were doing fine until I heard the guide yell to get us in and Lisa yelling for me to grab the paddle quicker. I did not realize that we were quickly approaching more rapids. After I got in the boat I saw the lawn sale of people and paddles that were the rapids. All the boats were picking up rafters, paddles and anything else that was floating down the river. As I was taking all of this in I was told to jump back into our raft as it was now alongside the raft I was in. I have no idea how our guide managed to flip it and get it next to the boat we were in. The head guide was yelling for us to jump back in our boat quickly as we were able to hit another set of rapids and needed to transfer quickly. I jumped into our boat and as I was getting to my feet I heard jump and than a body on my legs. Apparently Andy had hesitated to avoid jumping on me but the guide deemed the hesitation unnecessary so he tossed him on top of me. After untangling our limbs we got into position and shot the next set of rapids. Once we cleared this second set we were able to stop for a minute get everyone back in the right raft and get situated to paddle the rest of the river. The one big change that was noticeable both to us and our guide was that when he said paddle hard, we paddle with all we had. The rest of the day went along well, it was full of adrenaline and lots of paddling. To the point that we did not notice the rain and cold all day until we finally stopped for lunch. While some of my fellow rafters did not enjoy the fall I think it might have been the highlight of the day as we managed to get a thrill without injury and it provided a good story. It also made me realize that Caitlin had made a good choice in not rafting the second day.

As we waited for the river guides to figure out how to get through some upcoming rapids.

Still waiting for the guides to make a decision.

The guides standing by the upcoming rapids, discussing what to do. They ended up deciding that we would walk the boat through the first rapid then get back in and paddle like hell. Andy would end up falling out again as he did not hear the get down order.

We passed a ton of waterfalls which were beautiful but unfortunately this was the only picture we were able to get.