White Water Rafting

While Spencer was here we did one of the things on our 'wanna do some day' list and that was to go white water rafting on one of the many rivers here. It was on the Chiriqui Vejo river which I understand is soon to be a river of the past as they are busy building a dam on it. We were told that the river will only be usable for about 3 more years. bummer. We drove about half an hour uphill to get to this point only to be turned back because they were doing some blasting for that dam building that day. Therefore the entry point was unaccessable.

After waiting for about half an hour we went back to this point and they put the raft in over the edge of the bridge and dragged it overland to the river.

There were 6 in our boat including our guide. Wow! we had such fun, of course I couldn't take pictures as we were constantly getting soaked and the camera was safely stored in the van. However the short story is that Harry got dumped out twice and Rochelle once. Once he needed rescue as it was in the rapids. I hung on for dear life and managed to say in the boat. We were told that they were level 3 rapids but the girl with us said that they were more like 4 or 5 by US ratings. The guide said they were much easier to negotiate in the wet season as there is more water in the river so he doesn´t have to steer between the rocks so much. I thought it was awesome. The day was cloudy so the sun wasn´t beating on us, but the water was warm and when we would get soaked we were still warm. Spencer and I even went for a swim when there was a break between rapids. I don´t know how many rapids there were but suffice it to say 'lots'. We stopped for lunch and on the trip saw plenty of wildlife, birds, a boa and 3 sets of monkeys. I didn't lay eyeballs on everything as I had to leave my glasses at home for fear of losing them in the river and besides that they would have been soaked all the time. We were always getting pummelled with cascades of water.

So, here we are back safe and sound and very happy....