Rafting the Nile

I would like to say that we conquered the Nile last Saturday, but I think a more appropriate response would be that we survived it. It was amazing. Terrifying and exhilarating. Exhausting. 8 hours of rafting, of the same rowing motion… left arm up and down, right arm forward and backward. Even sleeping hurt. I wish I could post pictures with this blog, but we haven’t gotten them back yet, hopefully later this week. Somebody has to pick them up from Kampala. But it was amazing. You will understand the intensity of it when I show you the pictures… but I’ll give you the highlights =)
First off, you must meet Olow, our rafting guide. He was the bomb. He was also tainted by the American rafting guides because oh my, that man had a mouth on him. I hadn’t heard that much cursing in a long time, and it’s even weirder when it’s said in a Ugandan accent. But yeah, along with his cursing, he loved to lie. The lying wasn’t all bad though, if he had really told us what kind of rapids we were up against… I probably would have had a heart attack before every one.
Take the waterfall for instance. I was so nervous to go down the ‘4ft drop’ that he told us about. How we must stay in the boat and that it can’t flip because the water is super shallow and super rocky at the bottom. How when we did our down position in the boat we had to make sure our knees were still up because they would be scraped off when we hit the rock bottom of the waterfall if they were down. Well, most of this scenario is still true, except for the length of the drop. Take our four foot waterfall and times it by three. The drop was at least the length of our raft… crazy.
But yeah, so the best part about this story is after we survived the waterfall we decided to take on the harder rapids right after that. We were the ONLY boat with that stupid idea. Those waves ate us alive. We were like, yeah we can do it! And then our boat was swallowed by the Nile, chewed a little bit, and then spit us back out. We flipped. The worst part of the boat flipping, is when it lands on you. They say don’t freak out and you’ll be fine, but yeah, try not to freak out during the situation and I applaud you. I drank a whole lot of the Nile in those rapids. But, we all survived! I did feel kind of bad, poor Tina (she was sitting behind me in the boat) and when we went down the waterfall our boat like folded in half, and her face smashed into my helmet. We thought she had broken her nose. So not only was she drowning in the rapids after the waterfall, her nose what throbbing. Just so you know, her nose is fine, she barely bruised at all, not even noticeable unless you were looking for it. But yeah, not even our guide enjoyed that flip, and most of the time he was trying to flip us. Oh and just so everyone knows… I saved Dean in those rapids. Oh yes. When he popped out of the water I grabbed him and dragged him to the boat before the next set of waves came. Who’s the damsel in distress now J I enjoyed it.
My next favorite section of rapids was the very last one. The Nile was roaring, but we conquered! It was quite funny though (quite funny in the American sense, yesterday Joy and I learned that every time our brother or friend told us they were doing quite good, it meant that they weren’t doing good at all. We must have looked like the biggest jerks, we’d always be like, oh good when they said that… boy were we wrong). But yes, as we headed towards the last section of rapids we were preceded by a huge floating island of plants. The plants didn’t get the memo though. Before the last set of rapids we had to get out of the water and walk around a section that was just way to rocky to raft on… and if they don’t even raft it in Africa… you know they’re bad. But yeah, the poor island, they floated along, and then got eaten. It churched kind of like a smoothie in a blender… I was glad it was the plants and not me.
But we got back in the water. In the middle of rapids, and were just like… here we go! There were two big sections of the rapids to get through, we survived the first, we didn’t flip and nobody fell out. But we were nowhere near done… up ahead were the most intense, angry waves I have ever seen… including “The Bad Place” (class 6 rapids). Previously we had agreed to end our trip on the class three. Olow had given us three options, class 1 class 6, or class 3. In that order across the river, one being closest to the right side of the shore then six then three (the farthest from where we were and had to pass the six to get to the three). Well, when we were there, it all looked like a six to me, except the one, which looked like a pretty nice option. But Olow had a plan of his own. First off, a 3 rapid there didn’t even exist, Olow lied… again. We got into position, we were going to travel across the waves to get to the rapids Olow desired for us… Olow desired, not us. Now, while Dean might have a different interpretation, he was in the front of the boat and couldn’t see anybody so he has no place to criticize or judge. I was terrified, we were all terrified. When Olow said paddle hard… we paddled hard (contrary to what Dean thinks) I paddled like my life depended on it. But I was screaming the whole time. If terror has a tone, we captured it. We were all screaming “I don’t want to do it! Where are you taking us! I don’t want to go here! I want the one! Where are we going! I don’t want to do it!” it really was a beautiful chorus of terror and fear. I just wish it was caught on video. But we paddled, into what I thought was the mouth of death, but the Nile had mercy… and I guess Olow is a pretty smart guy as well. We made it, nobody died, and unlike the boat that went before us, we didn’t even flip. But oh boy, I don’t think my heart has ever pumped so hard in my entire life. It was amazing. The Nile is a crazy river. I’m so glad I did it, and even more glad that I survived. We flipped twice (well three if you count the practice flip while we were learning what to do) and I fell out once when our boat didn’t flip, everyone but Abigail and our guide fell out that time; payback for her being the only one to fall out the time before. But even after it all, I came back pretty much all intact. My only casualty was a piece of my big toe nail got ripped off, a few scratches, a couple bruises and a sunburn on the top of my legs. It was a good day.