Unfortunately, it did price Fran and Jo (see Chiang Mai and Bali posts) out so they didn't go with me, which was a pity, but I still found a decent guest-appearance crew on the river. You can see them to the right there. I'll get to some introductions later on.
I had to be up at half 5 to get out and down the road for my bus, but thankfully was able to fall back asleep shortly there after for most of the two hour drive from Cairns to Tully, where the river is. Hilariously, the second song to come on my MP3 that worning was Swept Away, by Flyleaf . . . Auspicious!!!
Then we got some tea and coffee and some breakfast and while it was a little early, I had to force myself to eat because I've done this a few times and it can be pretty gruelling paddling in the sun for hours on an empty stomach.
Once we got to the river we were given our life jackets, helmets and were organised into groups. The ideal number of people on a raft is 6, plus the guide. Most people tend to come in groups of between four and two so it tends to work out pretty well. There's also ways a few threes and there's always a a couple of ones (like me) so with some mixing and matching everyone's happy.
I ended up, through absolutely no machinations on my part, on a raft with five girls (which is cool, but actually four girls and another guy would have been ideal - sometimes you don't want to feel like you're just the "guy"). There was the Twins, who were twins from Brisbane, Elaine and Amy whose name I also forget, from Melbourne, and Didi the Dutch damsel, who just so happens to be a 2004 Olympic Tae Kwon Do medalist. Macca was our guide.
Everyone was a bit shy at the start but after the first rapid, Alarm Clock, we were much more awake and attentive, because we were wet and scared and had just gone down a rapid, totally dependant on each other. Macca was great too. His plan of attack for most rapids was, "Just keep rowing forward!"
In fairness though, despite there being more water, bigger rocks and higher grade rapids, thise place was infintely safer than the Bali experience. Travelling in a group, each of the 8 rafts on the river would work as a team to ensure that everyone got down safely. This was particularly evident at one of the largest rapids, called Theatre. Here, we stopped to spot for the first few boats down. Meaning Macca parked us up at the bank and went down by land to the bottom of the rapid, waited with a rescue rope for the first two boats, who them took over while be came back up to us and brought us down.
This way, if anyone falls out of the boat, there's someone around to throw out a rope or do whatever might be necessary to get them out of trouble as quickly as possible. That's more or less what I needed when I was in Bali. The last thing you want is people floating down rapid on their own. However, thanks to Macca, we had no serious incidents and managed to get down Theatre fully intact! Look at us celebrating!I can't remember the ins and outs of all the different rapids, but I'll give you a few highlights.
The next big one was the combo of Foreplay and Wet & Moisty. I fondly remember this particular rapid from the last time. This is where I fall out of the boat during Foreplay, got ground off some rocks by the raft and ended up going down Wet & Moisty on my own. Fun times!
This time it all went a bit better and while we all got thrown around a bit in the raft, no one went for a swim. We managed to get all the way down to the waterfall at the bottom called Orgasm (there's a theme here) where we were able to cool off from the hot sun!
After that we stopped for lunch, which by then we really desperately needed. I ate a burger and some sausage, though I'm pretty sure it wasn't a pork sausage. And I drank several dozen cups of water while I was at it. Also met a bloke who recognised me from my wrist bands but I'm going to tell that story seperately.
Double D Cup is pretty cool (and also kinda dangerous). It's not a big fall, but where the water hits the river it makes kind of a suction pool which if you get stuck in can spin you around for awhile and not let you up. This is actually where the rapid gets it's name . . . sort of . . .
Not long before I was here ten years ago there was a guide on the river for Raging Thunder, one of the companies that does the rafting course on the river, who was rather attractive and well endowed. Running this rapid as part of her normal day, the raft tipped and she got caught in the spin. Somehow, her life jacket came lose and was pulled off her, along with her top, so when she finally did come up, gasping for air, her clothes and life jacket were half-way down the river. After that the rapid was renamed in her honour.
Or so the story goes . . . it could be bullshit, but when I told it, Macca said that's what he'd heard, though he'd not been on the river back then.
It's not all plain sailing though. Sometimes things don't quite go according to plan. Sometimes, you look like this ->
I don't think this is a photo of the story I'm about to tell you, but it's fairly illustrative of the kind of thing I mean.
The plan was to go in at an angle so that when we hit the current at the bottom of the fall, the water would pull us left and away from a large rock. Instead, we went down straight and hit that rock head on, bounced off, spun round and went backwards down the river a bit. We call that Plan Z.
We stopped in a few places to swim round because it was so bloody warm that we were boiling inside our jackets and helmets, and we also stopped to jump off rocks and rather sheer sliff faces and I even lost my cheap 2 euro sun glasses because I forgot to take them off before I jumped off a particularly high rock. As soon as I hit the water they went swimming!
Eventually we got to the end and we dragged our boat up onto the shore and went off to change. Then we piled into the bus and headed back to Rafter's bar where we were to be sold much merchandise at extortionate prices!
By the way, this is the team, I meant to show you them before and I'm too lazy to scroll back up and insert this earlier on. Some things never change!
First there's Macca, our guide, twins 1 and 2 (Eyrn and Xanthia), Amy at the back and Elaine in front of her and then Didi behind me (that wasn't supposed to rhyme, it just happened that way).
Back at Rafter's we grabbed some drinks and I bought the DVD and CD of photographs from the day, which is where all of these came from. I was hoping to get some clips from the DVD up but the internet is so slow that it just isn't worth trying.
After rafters we packed back into a bus and spent another two hours getting home. By the time I got home it was after 7 and I was wrecked but feeling great.
That's something else knocked off the list! And a must do if you're ever here. Well worth the two hundred dollars.
Talk to you soon,
Shane.
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