I was glad that it worked out that we were with Mike's parents. Sterling has a lot of experience rafting and I knew that would come in handy. Although moments before we got in the raft he was telling us all stories of the times he fell off a raft and was dragged by the current and several other scary experiences he has had while rafting. I was basically planning my trip to the ICU at that point. I was almost in tears as we got our instructions from our guide and did a few practice drills. Then we set off. The very first rapid was a class IV. Talk about initiation by fire!
This picture sums up the first 30 minutes of my trip down the river. Curled up, hanging on for dear life. I was glad to have my mother in law in the back with me, every time we ducked she would put her around around me to protect me. This river had very little "float time" we were constantly paddling.
After a while I got the hang of it and I started having more fun as my fear turned into adrenaline. I was glad there was a photographer who could capture some of these moments. Mike and Dad crack me up in almost all of this pictures. One moment that wasn't captured is when our raft got stuck. The water was really low and there were a lot of rocks to get through, our guide warned us it would get dicey. We got stuck and our raft started filling with water. Our guide had us all jump up and down to try to relieve the weight on the raft so that it could rise off the rocks enough to move a little. However, that didn't work. Our guide finally had to get out of the raft and pull us down from our "perch" and back into the water.
A little over half way through our trip we stopped for a snack of fresh fruit and to rest. All the guides took a raft and flipped it bottom side up. Then they cut up the watermelon and pineapple on it. It was pretty cool. We even got to swim in the water a little bit. It was ugly water though, light brown. It is because it is water run off from the Volcano and it has a lot of sulfur in it. That also means that no fish live in it, which is why I was ok with swimming in it for a little while.
After our break was over it was back to business. I was really having fun now and wanting to keep going for longer than just 45 minutes more. As we got close to the part of the river we would be getting out on we thought we were done, no more rapids. We were wrong. We were one raft behind Jeff, Camille, Kayleen and Jessie and were watching them go over what looked like an easy rapid. Then all of a sudden we see Jeff flip out of the boat and Camille fall halfway out, keeping her body is with only the strength of her legs which were still in the boat. We were so mesmerized with what was happening to them we didn't hear our guide yelling at us to paddle was we entered the same rapid. Luckily Jeff and Camille both got back in the raft in time for us to hear our guide and help out. We never flipped over and I never fell out which is what I was praying for.
After we got out of the water and dried off they took us to a restaurant that they own and fed us lunch. I was sooo good. The rice was the best I have ever had, the black beans had a ridiculous amount of flavor, the casada was cooked to perfection and there was this thing that looked like a potato wedge (but much lighter in color and not fried) that was to die for. One of my favorite meals of the whole trip. Mike said it was a more typical Costa Rican dish. I wish we could have gone back for dinner.
When we got back to our hotel the volcano was finally visible for the first (and last) time of the whole trip. It was beautiful! Volcano Arenal is an active volcano although it only spits fire rocks every once in a while and hasn't done even that for over a year. Several year ago there was a major eruption that killed several people but now a days it is pretty quiet.
After a long afternoon of relaxing, uploading pictures, facetiming my mom and games we all headed to dinner at the restaurant at out hotel. I loved having dinner together every night. I always looked forward to it. The only thing I had a small issue with is that all of the restaurants were outdoors with obviously no air condition. This meant I wasn't able to atempt doing my hair in any other style that wet bun or scrunched. Anything else would have turned my head into a lions mane. That night we took one last dip in the hot springs and got drinks from the swim up bar. It was hard to leave the hot springs!
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