So, Thursday morning it was up and at em at 6 am for our pick up by Rios Tropicales for the whitewater rafting trip. This is the same trip that Alan and I did in 1993 (?) and we were psyched to do it again with the girls.
After a 1-1/2 hour bus ride, lunch at the Rios facility and another bus ride and tractor ride, we were at the river. Our guide was Henry, a Costa Rican native who has never traveled out of the country. Luis was guiding the provision boat that had our clothes and the other supplies for the trip. Rafting with us were 2 girls about Amy's age who had just graduated from college and were completing an internship with Rios.
We had a great first day rafting the class II and III rapids. Henry was great about doing extra stuff like letting us jump off an 8-foot tall rock into the river and paddling back to eddys so we could surf the wave and swamp the boat. I kept looking over at Claire to see how she was doing and she had this huge adrenaline-junkie smile on her face the entire time.
We got to the Rios compound at about 3 pm. Unloaded the boat, went up to our room and changed into drier clothes--nothing in the rain forest is ever truly dry. We then went down to the central area and relaxed in hammocks and read magazines and books.
The rain started about 4 and it was a steady downpour as you can see here--
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0DG5Gqa734.
We had a great dinner that night of rice and black beans (of course), corn and wonderful grilled chicken. Claire ate more than anyone else and had lots of beans and rice and 3 pieces of chicken. The growing girl needs her food.
We went to sleep that night in the pitch black of the rain forest with the birds chirping and the rain coming down. Here's the video. I am panning around and you can see a few flashes of light but it just show how dark it is in the rainforest. This was shot at 8pm.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Cr64ECUTM
We got up the next day and had a great breakfast of fresh fruit--we had wonderful fresh watermelon and pineapple at every meal--rice and beans, eggs and ham. After that, it was off to the zip line at the camp. We had given up on doing a zip line because we couldn't work it into our schedule at Jaco
so this was a wonderful surprise.
We did a small, four platform zip line around the campsite. At one of the platforms, Amy said to Al, "I can't see the ground. All I can see is the forest." To me, that's how a zip line is supposed to be. We had a great time, Of course, Claire came in too fast to each of the platforms and the guide had to catch her but that's just her adrenaline-junkie personality at work.
We took off around 1 to finish our rafting trip and, of course, Henry had some surprises lined up for us. One of the things he liked to do was let someone, usually Claire, ride Superman style through the rapids. This involved her putting her hips up on the bow of the raft, holding on to the ropes, bowing her head down and letting the white water splash over her.
We paddled back into a bunch of eddys, rafted over rocks and swamped the boat a few times. We hiked up to a pool and waterfall and crawled behind the waterfall to watch the water come down in front of us. Henry pulled a rock out of the water and rubbed it into a paste and then decorated Claire's face the way the natives do in the rainforest.
The rapids the second day were much better with several Class III and Class IV rapids. They were a lot of fun. Any time Henry had something kinda crazy for us to do, he would introduce it with "OK, what we can do here is..." paddle back and surf that eddy, swamp the boat, do 360s through this rapid...but his best trick, he saved for last.
Toward the end of the day, he started with his "what we can do here is" and he proposed that we all stand on the upper edge of the boat, hold hands and stand up as we raft through the Class II rapids that were ahead. The others in the boat always looked to Alan and I to make the decision since we were the supposed adults in the boat. We looked at each other and said, "Sure!"
So, we all climbed up onto the sides of the boat, held hands and started surfing through the rapids. About 1/2 way through, Alan who was across from me, fell forward and neglected to let go of my hand as he fell. This pushed be backward at which point, he remembered to let go of my hand and I fell backward into the water. I was ashamed that I was the only one to have fallen into the water, but, like Humpty Dumpty, I was pushed.
I rode through the rest of the rapids in the "nose and toes" swimmer's position, was picked up by the safety kayak and taken back to the boat. Even with the swim, it was a great way to end the day.
We went back to the Rios operations center, had some lunch and boarded the bus back to San Jose. We got packed up that night, had a meat-filled meal at the Fogo Brasil steakhouse and left for the airport the following morning.
All in all, it was an incredible trip filled with fun family time and incredible adventures. My only regret is that we didn't get to visit more areas--Arenal volcano (Al and I visited there on our first trip), Monteverde Cloud Forest, or even have time to see the historical sites in San Jose like the National Cathedral. Guess we'll have to save that for another trip. But, I wouldn't have traded those for our time relaxing on the beach or rafting through the rainforest.
Now, time to start planning the next big trip. Hmmmmm, where to go......................
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