Back in Cairns - Day 3

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What a day!

Today was White Water Rafting, sorry, EXTREME!! White water rafting. That was the name of the excursion. Although the only Extreme thing was the name, it was fun and a bit harsh on the body at times but not dangerous at all.

They picked us up from the hotel at 6:30 am so no much sleep there but we didn't come to Australia to sleep, did we?

We went around town picking up everybody else until they took us all to their headquarters where we changed buses and we started making miles on that bus...and after an hour and a half on the road we stopped on a road cafe where some had the chance to rent some shoes...Aida was lucky enough to get some, I only managed to get one right foot but couldn't find the left one so I ended up going to the river with my trainers instead.

Remember...if you go rafting you´ll need strapped shoes, call them sandals, trainers or whaterver...flip-flops won't cut it...despite of being the footwear of choice around here.

Anyway, at the cafe they splited us all in two groups, the extreme group and everybody else. The extreme group got into a minibus and headed for the river.

It turned out that the "Extreme" word is only a word, there is nothing extreme on the "extreme rafting", we were doing fewer safety stops, everyone and everything goes quicker on the extreme groups, in the other groups it takes ages to move from one rapid to the next and I know that because the begining of the rafting was like that and it took forever to do the first few meters.
The other noticable difference is that we were doing some exercises (you could call it like that) that the others weren't doing like jumping into a rapid and then get rescued by a rope or swim between rapids, or how to turn the inflatable boat around once it capsizes and we also practiced what to do when and if the inflatable boat capsizes.

We ended up in a cool team, 4 Canadians, Aída and myself...we called ourselves Spanada and we shouted it out loud all day specially when splashing water to all the other teams. :-)

The water wasn't very cold as I would have expected it from a river and we spent more time in the water than out of the water although most of the times it was on purpose since it was nicer just to let yourself go with the river swimming rather than rowing. There were a couple of high rocks from which we jumped into the water, probably 4-5 meters high.

I only managed to get a few pictures but perhaps I can add some more later one if I manage to get all the others.

Canada on the front, Spain on the back, crazy Kiwi guiding.

We managed to capsize once and we all suspected that the guide did it on purpose (probably wanted to test whether we were listening when he explained what to do in case of capsizing).

We stopped in the middle of the river for a quick bite (a burger and a drink) and quickly enough we were back on the boat rowing and splashing the competition...

I think everyone got to the end of the trip full of bumps and sratches all over due mostly to all the rocks at the bottom of the river which we were hitting us continuously every time we landed on the water.

It was a very strong sun all day and despite of the level 30 protection we used all day we still managed to get a pinkish shade that looked like something that may become slightly painful tomorrow, we'll have to wait and see.

After the rafting we decided to go to town and see whether we could make good use of the free wifi for a little while but it was way too slow so we got up and rather than walking we both hopped our way to the bus station, our bodies have received a good beaten today and it was showing.



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