Day 203

18 August 2013

Awoke to another beautiful day in the tropics, man have we been lucky with weather the last couple of months.

Morning started pretty slow just meandering around Cairns and completing mundane tasks like grocery shopping!

1pm we had some lunch and started packing our backpack for our white water rafting adventure! Bus picked us up outside the caravan park with rafts in tow and we then picked up 6 other people who were coming on the tour too. The bus drove us to the top of the rapids on the Barron River and we were given our life jacket, helmet and paddle. Kitted up and ready to roll...

Jump in the boat, there was 4 people and two guides in our boat so not overcrowded which was good. Guide gives us the rundown on the commands he will be shouting at us down the rapids... Forward paddle, backward paddle, get down, on the job, over and hold on. Told what to do if we full out of the boat etc etc and then we are off!

The first one was just a little rapid but still fun as you get flung down and then up! I was really good at the hold on command! While I had prepared myself to at some stage go overboard, I wasn't going without a fight! Haha. Few bigger rapids and lots more water being splashed up, spinning around, going backwards, side wards through the rapids, it was great fun! There is a few calmer pools where you can jump out of the boat and float down...this was so cool, the pull of the water is pretty strong so you just have to put your feet up and lie into it and let the water take you! Hardest thing for me is pulling my ass back into the boat!

You then go down a rapid where the water is flowing in both directions and creates a sort of a wave the boat can just sit in. They call it surfing but pretty much you paddle up into this wave and then it flings you around and absolutely drenches you with water, boat fills up with water, try's to drag ya under then pops you back up. So forward paddle, forward paddle, forward paddle, then get down!! We did this quite a few times and every time the guide tried to make it more likely that we would fall out! He even let air out of the boat to make it more bendy! Eventually he got one guy out of the boat (great photos of this!) so he was happy with that and the rest of us were happy cuz we stayed in the boat!!

Overall it was so fun and the guides were great! We would definately recommend this tour (Ragin Thunder) to any beginner rafters...if you have been before you will probably want something more challenging and they have harder rapids too but this was a great first timers run! Loved it! And the scenery as you are coming down is great too.. Rainforest everywhere and in the calm waters it is very tranquil.

Afterwards they show you all the photos they took while you were rafting and you can buy all the photos for $30 on a USB. I haven't put them on the computer yet so will have to post the best photos in another blog....sorry! There are some goodies and there are some shockers!!

Buggered after our big arvo we spent some time in the spa at our resort and hit the sack early!

Carly & Joel

 

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