Costa Rica: Part 3

Our next adventure was river rafting. These first two are while we're getting a little river orientation. Of course I'm thinking... yeah, yeah, nobody's going to fall in or anything. Jared also observed that essentially every picture of us on this trip has the exact same expression, a huge smile. These may be some of the only ones that are not like that.

Once we got going it was clear that this was not going to be an easy ride down the river. Now I've been rafting before so I had an idea in mind, but this seemed slightly more treacherous. Really, things were fine until the rapid right after this one. The main reason is that our guide was trying to yell the commands to us in English with a thick Spanish accent. Half our boat only spoke Spanish so that didn't help, and the rest of us could not understand him. That is why our boat is completely sideways and about to hit a rock in this shot.

Again, sideways...
High fiving after making it through the first rapid (shirts are still dry). The next rapid was no better in the whole understanding department, "was that left back or forward?" Not to mention the sound of the waves crashing about us as we swiveled in every direction but where we were supposed to. Oh it was still fun, just crazy. We ended up hitting some wave on the side of the raft that dumped me and the guy in front of me out. Jared contests that the spill was very graceful as I plunged on my back in the middle of the rapids. (Sorry, no pictures of this as everyone was busy rescuing people and paddles). Did I mention that it was also pouring rain at this point? That, my desire to stay in the boat, and the fact that we still couldn't hear instructions made the portion after that feel like we were in some crisis/must survive/dramatic movie scene or something... also pretty fun actually.

The rain let up, completely by the end, and we began to be able to control the raft and understand our guide more too. We had some really great runs through the rest of the river. It was an absolute blast, as our faces prove.

They also let anyone who was brave enough jump in the middle of a rapid at one point. That was great too (and much less scary than holding on for dear life on the raft :) I love this one of Jared.Watch out Michael Phelps

And here's me

The group of survivors

I was pretty sure they said to look sexy or something and this is my feeble attempt, showing off the pasty whites... but apparently I was the only one who got the memo.

This was so much fun!!! I'm really glad we went. We got to go rafting through the beautiful rain forest of Costa Rica! So cool.