Here we were, staring at the beautiful stretch of river commonly known as the Nile. Personally, if you told me a few years ago that I would see the Nile river, I would’ve questioned you.
We arrived hungry at the site where we would start the course. To our pleasant surprise, there was an array of snacks for our eating pleasure. With full tummies, we met our guides and took off. Half of the group was in one raft and the other half floated not much further back in their own raft. Prepping us for this journey down the river included a practice flip of the raft in calm waters and figuring out how to get yourself back on. That was the challenging part. I didn’t quite have the arm strength to pull myself back in unfortunately. I gave it quite a few tries though. C’est la vie. Our group was very good about pulling each other back in when we fell out later on down the river where the real challenge was. Speaking of which, the first rapid we saw coming up was the dead Dutchman. As appealing as that sounded, we didn’t go down that 20 foot drop of a waterfall. We went down a crazy rapid next to it though. That was enough to flip our raft right off the bat. Hey, it had to happen some time right? Secretly all of us wanted it to flip. After mouthfulls (and nosefulls) of water were spurted from us, we were all back on the raft and set to continue on. The next 20 minutes would be spent cruising down one of the calmer parts of the river. We even had enough time to have a potty break. Don’t worry, it’s the Amazon where you don’t want to go to the bathroom. Our raft guide said to us “Let me know if you see any snakes in the water because they are probably poisonous.” Settling thought. To answer your next question, there are no gators in the rapids either(to Sara’s disappointment). Maybe that is common knowledge, but I was convinced they were everywhere in the river. We went down a few more wild rides in the hungry, churning river and then stopped for lunch. Can someone say delicious chapatti tacos and soda? Refreshed and rested a bit, we got back in the rafts and lo and behold..the sky started pouring buckets on us. and I mean we got SOAKED. Good thing we were about to get wet anyways. Looking around the river as it rained, it looked like tiny pearls danced on the surface everywhere. It was magnificent and I can only hope my words are describing what I saw accurately. We flipped a few more times in the last few runs and then came to the end site where a vehicle would take us back to the Nile campsite. But first we shared each others company drinking delicious beverages and laughing at the wipe out photos of each others rafts. One bumpy ride later, we looked out at the Nile after settling down into the quaint cabins we would sleep in that night. The morning proved to be exciting as we got to see a few people bungee jump. Brooke, a girl who has been on our raft, nervously stood for a few minutes before finally taking a leap and shouting “yeahhhh!!” once she bounced back up. It certainly looked like a lot of fun. Our transportation was late(TIA), and then we were soon off to our new adventure! Stay tuned 🙂
With enthusiasm from Africa,
Jenn <3