Rapid Rafting Extreme

Today was the day we hit the water – literally! After a stormy night with the most intense thunder I’ve heard we were booked to do White Water Rafting on the Nile. Sadly Anita was unwell overnight (tummy bug) and not feeling great, so it was just the three of us.  After a hearty breakfast we were fitted with helmets and life jackets and loaded onto a truck. There were 14 rafters, 2 kyakers and a Nile River Experience employees. A long bumpy drive across country brought us to the river. We were spilt into two rafts of seven and assigned a leader who was to guide us through eight rapids after some preliminary training. We shared our boat with a Norwegan couple and a British couple. Each had one partner who was working in Uganda and a visitor from home. The other boat was similarly international in flavour.

We set off and quickly encountered our first Grade 5 rapid we stayed afloat but missed going over the trickier route of the waterfall. All determined to do the crazy routes further down stream. The next rapid was a Grade 4 but hit by a wall of water we capsized – all great fun. Between the Rapids we had some 20-30 mins of steady paddling with a chance to catch up with our crewmates. We did a further rapid staying afloat this time even with the turbulence. We all got out and bypassed the awesome Grade 6 rapid. We got straight on and did the lower half of these Rapids which were Grade 4.

We had another capsize later and this took us longer to get back on the boat. At all time we were aurrounded by safety boats and one of these picked up Bex and took her to the other boat which had annoyingly not capsized.

Then the final rapids – amazingly although really turbulent and awesome walls of water most of us stayed on and we stayed afloat. Bex and one other crewmates did not and as we were tossed about on the waves I sat on Matt. We emerged drenched, but pleased with ourselves. We had survived and it was awesome. We all jumped in the water before returning to shore and a late lunch. A truly awesome day.