Advertisement
Published: November 19th 2008
Paddle Hard!
You have to paddle hard over these because it looks better in photos.‘Raging Thunder’
When we booked the white water rafting trip we had the option of regular or EXTREME…it didn’t take long to make the decision.
We were picked up from the hostel at 6:30am and driven by bus into the hills towards the Tully River which was actually used to film a scene from Jurassic Park; how awesome is that? It was about a 1.5hr drive to get to the destination and much of it was up a very narrow, windy road through the hillside. Along the way we saw signs that warning of crocodiles and the guide informed us that we would probably get injured in some way (snake bite, croc attack, poisonous spider, thorn bushes) if we tried to explore the dense topical forest in the area. They also told us that the difference between EXTREME and regular is that the guides don’t give a shit about our safety on the EXTREME tour.
After a brief training session we boarded the raft; Nick and I in the front and 3 German girls in the middle. Our guide sat in the back to steer the boat. Our guide’s name was Paul and he was a Kiwi (from New Zealand).
The
section of the Tully River that we rafted has 46 rapids and 16 of them are a grade 4. The grading system is a scale from 1 to 6; 1 being a fart in a bathtub, 6 being impossible like Niagara Falls. They say that as soon as someone survives a grade 6 it becomes a grade 5. So, 4 is a fair challenge. The river course that we took was 13km long and absolutely riddled with boulders and volcanic rock formations. We hit many rapids hard and even flipped the raft upside down on one occasion. Along the way, we jumped out of the raft and body surfed down long stretches of rapids which was awesome; you can really feel the power of the river this way (I swallowed some water…pretty hard not to). We stopped to rock jump from cliffs and peers that were as high as 8 meters. This was really fun! Nick and I hurried back up the rocks to get as many jumps in as possible. We drifted through a waterfall and felt it pelt down on us…nice cool off because you work up a sweat, especially when the sun is beating down on you
Hold on!
Here we go over a rapid..it's even more fun than it looks. at 32*C. There was one area where we got out of the raft and plunged down a rapid that pulled you under for up to 8 seconds; we had to equalize the pressure in our ears because we were pulled down pretty far below the surface and didn’t want to rupture our ear drums…this was pretty scary, but well worth it. We shot through many technical areas where we all had to shuffle to one side of the raft to avoid being hung up on the rocks. After the 13km we were all exhausted and headed to the local pub for a few beers and laughs. Nick and I entered a draw to win a $100.00 photo package and as luck would have, we won! We got a cd with all of the photos from the day and they are really amazing. We were so happy that we won. Enjoy the pictures and look forward to my next post which details our trip to the Great Barrier Reef where we scuba dive to check out the world heritage site and explore one of the most delicate and beautiful ecosystems in the entire world.
Jake - Out.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.046s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0229s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Jason
non-member comment
holy shit man, that sounds EXTREEEEEEME!!!!!! your trip looks f-ckin awesome