Costa Rica 2024 – Day 4, Jan 23rd White Water Rafting

This is an entry I was really looking forward to writing. We had a little trouble getting a hold of the pictures, but our tour guide came through, and now we get to relive the experience: today, we went white water rafting TWICE, once in the morning, and once in the afternoon.

Aventuras Sarapiqui took us on the lower portion of the Sarapiqui river in the morning, where the rapids are less challenging, which allowed us to enjoy more of the wildlife. A portion of our journey took us through La Selva Biological Station, which I wrote about two days ago. The wildlife we saw included the following: three species of kingfisher, five sun bitterns, caimans, four species of herons, two species of tanagers, green ibis, osprey, cormorants, hawks, vultures, egrets, even more herons, toucans, sand pipers, social flycatcher(resembles a kiskadee), a swimming iguana, and two kind of macaws: green, and scarlet.

Our paddle guide, Diego, was pretty thrilled with the macaws, since he said it’s rare to see both on the same paddle trip. He was also excited to see so many sun bitterns. They are not endangered, but apparently, it was not common to see more than one. I was delighted to see the kingfishers demonstrate how they hunt, and everyone loved the swimming iguana.

After the morning trip, we drove back to the first launch point to have lunch. Then we drove upstream in order to tackle higher class rapids. The dam that is even further upstream releases water on a regular schedule, so our second trip was timed to take advantage of this. We had a blast!

At one point, Deigo offered for someone else to guide the boat, so I volunteered; Deigo took my spot at the front, and let me try to give the commands at the right times. I think I did ok, but I would love to give this another shot. My boat’s paddlers responded nonetheless, and Diego didn’t seem too scared by my inexperience. He’s been doing this for 14 years, so he knows the river like the back of his hand; he must also know that I could not get us into too much trouble.

Anyway, here are a few pictures I selected from the photographer service to share with you, see captions for snark:

About to get rough…
It got rough…
Laughing like little kids
Yay!
Let’s do it again!
Pura Vida! This was an actual command, to celebrate near-death experiences.
Not so many smiles when I started driving..
Smiles are back, except for Diego. But who says you can’t drift like a dirt track racer down the rapids?
We had to split our tour group into two boats. This is the rest of our gang.
No hands! You just gotta love a boat guide who does this to their crew. But you can see Chuck grinning through the mess. The kayak in the back is our rescue guy, in case of ejections(intentional or otherwise)

Random postings from our family life