Day 162 - White Water Rafting

So, its like 8am, I'm knackered. spent half the night up last night writing this blog (which is stressing me out a little, but my appallingly bad memory needs it to remember everything for the next 70-odd years that I'm expected to live). and Anthony and I are hopping on a bus to Tully to go White Water Rafting. Its wildly exciting.



Anthony's always been good with presents right. since he bought me a massive jar of Jelly Babies (he knew me so well), he's always spoilt me. And this was no exception. Since he missed my birthday in September, he went and bought me ticket to go rafting with him on a proper, grade 4 river. And I was well excited.



We took the bus to Tully, then another bus up the river valley to the top of the 17km stretch we were about to raft down. And after covering ourselves in suncream (its pretty bad on the river) and donning life-vests and helmets, we were ready to go.



There were about 8 or 9 other rafts, and as everyone got a 20 minute lesson on how to raft, we geared up to get going. Now - rafting in south america is pretty different. You leave the top of the river, go down until either (a) someone gets injured or (b) you get to the end. Not here. Here, you stop after every rapid and wait for all the other rafts to pass by. About half of the morning was spent waiting for the othe rafts. It was pretty slow, and a bit annoying. But when we were shooting down the rapids, it was awesome.



Sometimes we're paddling like mad, sometimes crouching in the raft to stop from falling out. water is going everywhere, anthony's almost falling out. constantly balancing the weight so the raft doesn't chuck us out, until one rapid where we 'stage' a fall out by all leaning to one side so we get thrown into the squalling water. It was fun.



The afternoon was more relaxed. gentler rapids and more time rafting on the flats. It was good. less waiting around. and eventually we ended up at the finish line where we flipped our raft again and let the current take us downstream for a while. After drying off and heading back home, we headed round to Scotties - a rival hostel on the beach - and had WAY too much to drink with some of the guys from the raft. I ended up playing drinking games with some Irish girls (always bad news) and Sam was trying her hardest to get all the boys in the pool, naked. But it didn't work. and after being questioned by the police on our way home, we slept it off and drove back to Port Douglas with bad hangovers in the morning.