Yesterday it rained cats and dogs all day long and Turrialba didn’t really show itself in its prettiest light. (Or maybe that was just my own bad mood influencing things…) In any case, I wasn’t too excited about going white-water rafting today. But when we opened our curtains today, the sky was blue, the sun was shining and the woodpeckers outside of our window were doing their best to wake up insects and everything else in a 5 mile radius. All was right again. So off we went to raft on the Pacuare, supposedly one of the best rivers for rafting in central America.

The last time we went white-water rafting was in New Zealand in 2003 so it’s been a while but it turns out that rafting is much like riding a bicycle – you don’t forget. We shared a boat with a couple from San José and our guide Rainer. The rapids ranged from level II to IV (VI is the highest) but even though Rainer warned us that we might flip on one especially tough one, we just sailed down the river smooth as butter. Except for that one moment when I almost fell out of the boat. But my foot was stuck under the bench in front so I managed to drag myself back in before a rescue mission had to be initiated.

During our lunch break, Rainer entertained us with some crazy stunts (even crazier considering that one of his legs is only half as long as the other one; he reaches for his crutches at the end of the video):

After lunch we continued on the softer part of the river and did some swimming alongside the boat (great fun floating down on a life jacket but it’s a bitch to get back into the boat afterwards).
We landed in Siquirres, where we’ll head again tomorrow on our way to Puerto Viejo, and drove back to our hotel Turrialtico near Turrialba. (A very nice place which will not be getting a mention in this post. Even though they do have very thin walls and we happen to have very vocal neighbours…)