White Water Rafting in Wild Costa Rica

Written by Bessie about Costa Rica. Feelin' normal
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Coming to Costa Rica is wild. The roads are bumpy, animals surround, and it rains cats and dogs hours out of the day as it's "winter" here in paradaise. The great part of these things together though, is that it makes for adventurous rafting.

It began the way most exciting things do down here, with a bumpy ride. We tromped through Palm Oil plantations and organic spice farms smelling fresh cinnamon, vanilla, mint and of course, eating leaves.
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We get down to the river, and it's well, rocky and wet looking. The rafting starts out as most other excursions: 1,001 things to avoid so you don't get hurt or die: "Keep your foot lodged like this or you'll fall out." "Don't think, just do everything I say." "Never let go of your paddle." Kristine was looking a bit white in the face before heading out onto her first rafting experience, but she kept it together.

We headed down waves called things like Caesar, the larger Caesar's Son, and Robin Hood (get it, steal from the rich, give to the poor? - keep your wallets and bling bling in a secure place.)

It was pretty exciting rafting. The river was class III, and our guide was working really hard to stear us into rocks and holes in the river that would give us thrills and get us soaked. He would yell for us all to get inside the raft just so that our body weight would push us down deeper into the river as we hit obstacles and get us soaked.

At one point, the people on the other raft with us were all ducked down into their raft enjoying some major splashing, and they got stuck there near a rock. Ready for action our guide led us right into their raft. As you might expect we were like a scene from the Titanic, crashing into raft and rock, and we sent a guy from the other raft flying out into the waters. I've never seen someone so scared in my life. Not to worry, we didn't leave him on the river.

All in all it was a great time, and we had a nice family bonding experience paddling our hearts out. We even got to see vultures eating a cow along the river. How's that for family fun.

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Uh-huh, it was eXtreme. Here's a little video our Argentinian guide took.

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