¡Me gusta el rafting!

¡Hola amigos!

Going to Costa Rica has given me the chance to try some things I've never done before. My favorite new activity this summer is whitewater rafting.

Many sports in Central America come from the United States, so they don't have a special Spanish word. In Spanish, whitewater rafting is just known as el rafting. 

To start our trip, our guides picked us up at our house in Turrialba. They drove a van that carried our big raft on top:

It was raining really hard in town, but our guides said it hardly ever rains in the morning at the river. Luckily, they were right! By the time we got to the river, the rain had stopped.

Our drive to the Río Pejibaye took about 45 minutes. On the way we passed a large lake formed by a dam. We drove around many twisty, windy roads high up into the hills outside of Turrialba.

The first thing we did when we got there was put on our life vests and helmets:

Here is a picture of my husband, son, and daughter in their safety gear. It is important to wear the vests and helmets because sometimes the river is very fast, which the makes the raft ride fast and fun, but also very bumpy. You can see a little bit of the white water behind my family — the whiter it is, the faster it's going. You can also see that there are many rocks in the river, and the helmets will protect you from a bad bump on the head.

Before we left the shore, our guide taught us how to paddle and how to follow his directions for keeping the raft going straight. Paddling is hard work, and we all had to work as a team to steer the raft down the river:

Rafting is also very wet, so I couldn't take my camera out while we were paddling. The picture above is of another family that was behind us on the river. The adults usually sit in the front to steer, and the kids sit in the middle to paddle hard. The guide sits in the back so he can see the river and everyone else in the boat at the same time. The second guide rides ahead in the kayak to find the best route through the rapids and to rescue anyone who falls out of the raft.

And guess what? One of us DID fall out of the raft! We went over a big bump, and it bounced one of us out into the water. Luckily our guide was very fast, and pulled that person right back into the boat before the kayaker even noticed he had fallen. 

Can you guess who it was?

(Luckily, it wasn't me!)

It was... 

My son, Jonas. He just turned 10 and is a good swimmer, but he was scared when it happened. After the guide got Jonas back into the boat, he pulled off to the shore to let him catch his breath and calm down before we kept going. He also let us climb some big rocks and dive into the river for a swim, which was fun for everyone! The water was clean and refreshing.

Not all of the trip was fast and exciting. Some times the river was calm and slow, and we could look around to see all of the jungle scenery around us:

We saw many birds, another blue morpho butterfly, and some horses on our way.

At the end of our rafting trip, our guides flipped over the raft to turn it into a table:

They put aprons on because they set up a surprise picnic for us to enjoy at the end of our trip. We had watermelon, pineapple, guacamole, and could make our own burritos with lots of delicious toppings. After all that paddling, we were hungry!

We had a really fun time rafting, and hope to do it again someday!

What was your favorite outdoor activity this summer?