October 19, 2010: White Water Rafting Grand Adventure!!

          Five of us girls decided that we wanted to be adventurous and do white water rafting on the bottom river of the falls.  The tale begins with a hike through the jungle.  When we arrived to what we believed was our destination, we realized that we were still on the top of the falls instead of down on the bottom level of the river.  Thus our journey continued.  We had to climb down over 15 flights of outdoor stairs, most of which were spiral stair cases! That in itself was an adrenalin rush! We kept telling each other, "This is a test, if you can make it down, then you are ready for the rafting." Once we made it to the bottom level, we had to climb about 100 yards over of large rocks to reach the rafting hut.  Another "test." At the little hut type shed structure, they made us sign a contract stating the risks, which could be FATAL!!! We had to wait for more people to come, and the first group that arrived was three older Asian women. It was quite a quiet laugh because not only were we not fully sure of what we were doing, but now we were sure that the rest of the group was completely unaware as well!  After everyone had arrived, they made us take off our shoes and climb down more enormous rocks to the raft while barefoot! 
          A whole saga later, the rafting was finally about to begin!  While waiting for a boat to come pick up our valuables, which could not get wet, our guide (a 20 year old, personable, and slightly obnoxious male) psyched us out on how difficult it was.  He said it was near the professional level of rafting, so he drilled us over and over again with the commands.  He also warned us that the first part was easy, then it got much harder.  We departed from the shore!  We crosses a little spurt of rapids, then anticipated the harder second part around the bend.
          We came to a still in the water, and our guide had the one male in the boat try to do the main oars.  After, he asked if anyone else would like to try, so of course, I volunteered! It was sooo hard! You have to be very strong to be able to do that; I definitely do not have that kind of upper body strength to say the least.  While I was on the main ores, the guide told everyone to jump out. We all kind of nervously chuckled, but then knew he was being serious when started pushing people over the side! Instead of getting pushed off, I offered to let myself off by doing a flip off the edge; it was awesome!!! We floated along side the boat for a while, got back on, got back off, I did back flips off with him and with another girl in our group. A hilarious part of it all, was getting people back on the raft. The person being pulled up was like a dead fish; it was probably one of the funniest things ever!
          There really were no enormous rapids after all.  All of the psyche up was just for our guide's enjoyment and amusement.  The whole experience was probably the most fun thing yet. It was nothing of what I expected, it was way past!!! It was a grand white water rafting adventure!!! Praise Jesus for fun!!!