Hey all! I get to be the first one to post about our white water rafting day. I loved it. Honest and truly. Zik kept on laughing on me…because I just had this grin plastered to my face for the first three hours. I dunno how they’re gonna top this adventure…but it was just gloriously awesome to swim and raft and (foreshadowing here!) get washed away in rapids in the infamous Nile. Yeah yeah yeah. I think I MAY have the adventure of the day freaking out our stoic guide Graham. The others in the boat later reported that he said over and over again…”Oh this is not good, not is not good. Paddle fast! Paddle hard!” Or something like that. But again. It was a crazy good day all around. What with Camille’s ankle and Lihi totally overcoming her anticipation about the whole thing and Kevin being pants by the waves…good stories all around. My story is that after we came down this class V rapid…we decided to try and paddle against the churning water to make this fun run called Chop Suey. So there I was in the front left of the boat. And the water is still pretty turbulent from the waterfall we just came down (that’s right, waterfall!…told you it was class V) and the water just dipped out and down so my bit of the boat just lunged suddenly and I went back into the water…feet over head. I instinctively mangaged to grap the rope. But the current was pretty strong and I guess I didn’t know how much badness I was in or whatever. But I only held on for ten seconds or so before I was carried off. And I was carried off FAR. Quickly streaming far and beyond to the shallow parts and I was actually hitting stones and rocks. So I was kinda nervous then. I refuse to say scared…because I was breathing and keeping my eyes on Graham who shouted “Swim to me girl! Kick hard!” After hearing that I ditched my paddle and just focused on swimming hard. Which, although I was on swimteam at some point in my life, was pretty pathetic with my life vest and current working against me. A rescue kayaker came up to me then and gave me the back of the kayak to grab ahold of. He shouted over the sound of the water “Good girl, you strong. Kick harder! Good girl. Stronger. Kick harder, harder!” He dragged me back to the raft but I was on the front of it and Graham was grabbing my vest and hauling me in shouting “Get the fuck in here!” I got in after a bit and tried to get my seat but he pushed me down and said “stay down! stay down!” it was at that moment that we went over this other rapid. So close call there. I found out later thzt he had told the rest of the raft to back paddle..so they were fighting against going down the rapid until they got me. It wasn’t good because a) I was getting in shallow parts b) because I would have gone down a rapid without a raft and c) Graham himself had to be resussitated (spelling?) near that spot. Not quite where I was…but not far either) I was shaky after that. But honestly I don’t think anything terrible would have happened. The rescue kayak go to me pretty quickly and Graham’s a pro for a reason. We had good runs after that. Lots of paddling but we managed to stay upright during the last rapid called, “The Bad Place”…twice actually. Which was pretty exhilarating. All in all…one of my best memories. 🙂
