Wet & Wild

  Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States
Friday, July 18, 2008

On Friday, Deb wanted to do more gallery hopping as well as some shopping and I wanted to go river rafting! There are several companies that offer half day raft trips down the Rio Grande north of Santa Fe and I signed up for one at the Santa Fe Rafting Company. Deb dropped me off at their place and then went on her way. The put in site for the river is actually close to Taos so I probably should have waited until we moved on to there, but I'm here, I'm going! We all (twelve us) piled into the van with a trailer carrying two rafts behind us. The guides, Anna and Julius, are founts of local information, especially Julius. The ride to Taos is about an hour and he has a non-stop spiel of local information. We pass the Camel Rock casino and many others on the way north. We also pass through the town of Espanola which he tells us is where lowriders originated. Wikipedia seems to disagree, but I'll take his word for it since he grew up in the area.
 

Before

We arrived at the Quartzite landing and were all given PFDs as well as helmets and paddles. We got the mandatory safety lecture about staying in the boat when at all possible and how to get back in if we fell overboard. Then we were off. Since this is July, the river is not flowing all that fast, but there are still several fun rapids, but not the Class III talked about in the brochure. Our guide, Julius, asked for volunteers to be lead paddlers, and since no one else offered, I said yes. This meant that I sat in the front of the boat and the other paddlers on my side were supposed to match my cadence, or at least that was the theory. We then started down the river. The river was a traffic jam of rafts. There were at least twenty rafts from four or five different companies, all going down the river. And while this seems like a traffic jam, there was very little jockeying for position, we all just waited a few moments and we were off.
 
Julius had stories and names for each of the rapids, the Cheese Grater, the Birth Canal, Baby Huey, and Decapitation Bridge are just a few that stuck. As we went through the first rapids, he told us the mantra and sequence that we were to repeat for each rapid, first, paddle raised in the air, and then, shouting out loud, "Stay in the boat". This appears to have worked since we didn't lose anyone overboard.
 
As we approached the rapids with the run called the Birth Canal, another boat was stuck between the two rocks that form the passage. Guides from other companies were of the banks with ropes out trying to pull them free and the boat just wasn't moving. The guide finally had to deflate the floor and side pontoons to get the boat free, all of this to the background of catcalls from the shore.
 
We then took our shot down the same run. Since the water was low, Julius knew of another run to the right that took a bit more boatmanship, but had a higher volume of water. We followed his shouted commands, forward, reverse, back right, back left, and shot the gap perfectly, everyone in the boat, and we were clear.
 
Below these rapids was a large backwater where everyone could go overboard and just float for a while in calm. We hung out there for a while and then went on.
 
The next rapids were formed by a giant rock, nicknamed Baby Huey, that had fallen into the river a few years ago from the mesa, five hundred feet above. You could still see the track that it had taken down the side of the mesa before bouncing off the highway and flying across to land on the far side of the river.
 
After this, there was one more rapids where the photographers were stationed.

Rapids 5

These rapids had the most drop and volume so it makes the most dramatic photos. Following this, we floated on down the river to the take out point. The guides set up a table for a snack of taco chips, watermelon, and cookies. We then packed up the rafts on the trailer and got back on the van for the hour drive back to Santa Fe. What a fun day!
 
When we got back to the company's location in Santa Fe, Deb picked me up and took us back to the RV so I could get cleaned up for dinner. We went to a restaurant called The Compound, a Santa Fe landmark. The meal was superb and a great way to finish out our time in Santa Fe.

The Compound