Today was a big day! This morning, we got up bright and early to go WHITE WATER RAFTING!!! Personally, this was the most exciting event of the trip. We were told the river we were going to be in was 9 degrees Celsius (48 degrees F)! AAH cold! Even for someone who is not a Southern Californian, this temperature is pretty darn chilly! Not to worry though because the rafting company prepared us. Over my swimsuit, I put on a wet suit, booties, a cover up, life jacket, and a helmet. You can imagine all of us looking super sexy, of course. Here we are!
We split into rafts, and I volunteered to be in the front! There were 8 people on our raft, including our guide. No sorry, they don’t let you plunge down the rapids by yourself (good thing)! Before getting in the water with the raft, our guide, Marcus, told us to go jump in the water. We all thought he was crazy for a couple seconds then realized he was serious! So, me being the one-foot-at-a-time kind of person, I slowly walked into the water. Then, I see Geoffrey come running towards me, and I am pushed into the freezing cold water against my will! Ya know that feeling when you gasp for breath because the water is so cold?? Yea, that happened to me. It was pretty exciting though. I recovered then went back to carry the raft into the water.
Marcus (our guide), told us the rapids we were doing were levels 2 and 3 (the highest is 5). So, not too hardcore, but just enough to get your heart racing fast. After we had gone over a couple rapids, he challenged us by telling us to do certain things on the raft. He first told us to stand on top of the outer ring of the raft by holding onto everyone next to us in a big oval circle. Even though I’m pretty good at balancing, it was surprisingly very hard! No one fell off luckily. After a while, we all got on the outer ring of the raft once again and let go of the people around us as Marcus had told us to. So, there we were, balancing on top of a raft while the strong current was taking us downstream. Ordinary day I would say, haha! It was such an amazing feeling, kinda like a high on incredibly clean air and water. There is nothing like having freezing glacier river water sitting in your wet suit, and not even caring because you are so focused on not falling out into the rapids!!! I definitely recommend anyone go white water rafting!
After showering, I had an Austrian hot dog, so big and tasty! We vedged at this service stop for a while: eating, playing volleyball, and receiving our rafting pictures. Later that night, we arrived at our hotel in
