I devoted this entire post to something that happened in a matter of minutes. It all started right before my mom, dad, sister, and I hopped into the giant rubber raft to go white water rafting. My mom said to me "You're not going to fall out of the raft, right?" I promised her I wouldn't. Well, I figured that there's a little bit of foreshadow right there. The deal was that you did the exact same stretch of river twice in the raft. The first time we had done it, it was fun. I was a little bummed that there wasn't a little more splashing. I didn't get as wet as I would have hoped. The second time was fun as well. Until the point where the guy in the raft in front of us got the funny idea to cut us off.
We made an abrupt left to avoid collision. Well, with him at any rate. Suddenly our guide started yelling at us to back paddle. I couldn't quite see, but when I looked around a little, there was an elephant sized rock right in front of us! The river was just too powerful for us, and we slammed full speed into the rock despite our frantic pedaling. We went sideways into it and were suddenly at a 60 degree angle and tipping fast. 2 people on my side who were riding with us fell out and I was hanging to the edge by my knees! Fortunately I didn't fall out. We frantically tried to pull them in, but in our haste we didn't quite realize that we had made a huge mistake.
Our guide noticed it first. All of a sudden, he was shouting his head off! We managed to get the two people in (they came here for their anniversary by the way) and only then did we notice that we were sailing right past our exit point. It was there for a reason. Beyond that were the REAL rapids with sharp rocks and just after that, a dam. Every one of us was paddling at full speed, desperate to make it to shore. After a few minutes though, we did, safe and sound. Looks like my foreshadow was wrong.
Everybody got out of the boat and started to lift it up and back to the bus. I put one leg out of the boat. I couldn't quite reach the bottom. Put the other leg out. WOAH!! The current picked me up and I couldn't hang on. I was sailing along the dangerous rapids with the boat stationary behind me directly into the direction of the dam. In that thought, I felt one of my sandals fall off my foot. Great. They started yelling at me, and I tried desperately to grab onto the land. Finally, I did. I hopped on one foot to the raft and we all carried it through the bushes and back to the bus. Everybody seemed happy that we were alright, even though we went into a rock, had three people go overboard, and passed the exit point. I say it was the best rafting trip I will ever have.
I just hope it doesn't happen again.
- The Blogger
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