Puerto Viejo de Talamanca
Trip Start
Oct 22, 2006
1
4
18
Trip End
Nov 23, 2006
Puerto Viejo de Talamanca,
Costa Rica
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
So, it's been decided that the best way to get from point a to point b is to river raft it, especially when the guides are as laid back as they are in Costa Rica. But, man, these people are on time. Our pickup time was 6:30 and our guides were there at 6:30, pulling away by 6:31. While they may be extremely punctual, everything else seems a bit lax, for example the liability waiver, "sign this in case you die."
As we started our float the guide had Rory and another guy jump out, so the rest of us on board could practice rescues. Not completely understanding what our role was in this rescue, a Swiss tourist and Emmett followed suit and jumped in. Suddenly 4 of the 6 members of the boat were floating. Our guide was not impressed as the four of us floated along side the boat laughing hysterically.
After getting pulled out, Emmett immediately fell off into a Class I rapid, which at the time felt like it could have been a IV or V. Screw feet forward, floating on your back...he scrambled back to the boat with a look of terror on his face, much like a wet cat trying to find the pool steps. It was a disaster from the get-go.
The only low point on our trip down the Pacuare was when our guide intentionally flipped us (in case you die) in a hole and the two of us immediately got stuck under the boat as it floated through the rapids. Were we calm and collected in finding a way out from under the boat? No way - panic set in immediately as we flailed for our lives.
Dinner with the Canadians
It was a classic moment of men in the wilderness at their finest hour, panicking in the face of danger.As the trip settled into smooth waters, we began to reflect on our manly feats of the afternoon and came across downed power lines dangling in the water. In seemed a bit unsafe, especially when we saw a group of local kids cutting sections of it with rocks while standing in the water. Apparently it's their only source of income, pulling in a buck for every kilo. I doubt they would have screamed for help when getting tossed from the boat. Just hand them a blunt object and they can make due on the river.
From the raft trip we were dropped in Puerto Viejo, a small surfing village, at our hostel Rocking J's, which is basically a commune of hammocks on the water. The Canadian couple we had met in San Jose, Bobbi and Kirk, were already there and the four of us eyed the hammocks all thinking "seriously?". The problem with these hammocks is that they're all interconnected and whenever one person moves, the whole room shakes.
Too tired from rafting and proving our manliness we found some chow in town and fell asleep in our hammocks along the Carribbean with a lighting storm rolling in over the horizon. It finally hit us at this point that we were in Costa Rica. The initial shock of being here had worn off, we had made it through our first adventure and a tropical storm was coming in.
Comments
More manliness...
That sounds like the first time I went river rafting. Granted I wasn't in a foreign country, thus it was inherently safer, but you are scrambling under a raft and fighting for air, pretty xtreme (for B's humor). Sounds like you guys are having a blast. I can only imagine the shit talking afterwards, 'dude I was fine under there, i was cool calm and collected but man you should have seen the look on your face!' LOL
Oh and on a quickside note, thank you Boot for writing these and saving us from Rory's elequence, or lack there of.