White Water Rafting Escapades!

Today was one of the most insane days of my life. Being in New Zealand, I have to take advantage of some of the one time experiences…so I decided to head up a group to go white water rafting. When I was coming up with it, all I could think was, “this is going to be AWESOME!” but then when we piled into the van, I had a huge fear come over me. I was petrified. What if I fell out of the boat and they couldn’t get to me? What if I had to wear a wetsuit? How embarrassing would that be?! Goodness…all of a sudden, I really didn’t want to go.
Unfortunately it was too late. I didn’t have a choice anymore. We kept driving to meet our fate…while I thought, I’m about to meet my Maker.

Anyways, we got a little lost on the way there (it was about a 2.5 hour van ride) and it had started to sprinkle rain. We pulled up to the place and I was instantly nervous. There would be no turning back now. We walked into the office, signed a form that said “you can’t sue us if something horrible happens to you,” and we were handed none other than…our wetsuits and booties. Oh dear…my fear…had become a reality.

I put the wet suit on with help from this random Indian girl. Thank you! And…we were off to get instructed. Josh Bowlin, Brent Dongell, Joanne McKinnel, Jean Wan, Rachel Nigro, and Heidi Sattler were in “Yellow Submarine” raft. We owned it. After being instructed, we carried our raft down to the river and set off for our adventure. I was nervous and I was scared that I would pee my pants out of sheer fear. We headed down the first little rapid…not too shabby. Oh, did I forget to mention that we were going on class 5 rapids? Yeah, there are 6 classes…we were on 5. Mental.

It didn’t take us long until we headed to the waterfall. You read that correctly…waterfall. 23 foot drop. Oh my goodness (said in Brent’s voice). We stood up in the boat before we went over…to see what we were about to face. My legs were shaking from nerves, so I quickly sat back down. We were told to “get done” which meant “squish your body into the little holes so that you don’t die” places. We did that and held on for dear life. I guess that I didn’t realize that I could have seriously injured myself. All that I remember is going down the waterfall and being totally submerged, but there was NO way that my hands were letting go of the ropes. Rachel ended up falling out, grabbing ahold of Josh’s paddle and he pulled her up. “Just like Santa” she kept saying. We continued down the river and hit some more wild rapids and ended up soaking wet. Honestly…I haven’t had that much fun in forever…so good!

When we were at the end of our journey, everyone was told to pile out of the boat. I put one leg over…and keep in mind that I hadn’t fallen into the river yet. I put one leg over and then lost my balance and “BOOM!” I fell backwards…literally, on my butt and back..into the water. Just as we were getting out of the river. Leave it to me. That was a repeat of what happened when my friend Kyle and I went canoeing and I fell in when we were docking.

After that adventure, we decided to go to the hot river. I don’t know exactly what it’s called, but it’s a creek that is hot from the thermal heat underneath. So, literally…my skin turned red from the water being so hot. It was so crazy. Here I was, sitting in a stream and it was so hot that I had to move to the colder side of the stream. How crazy!

All in all…one of the best days that I’ve had here…so many adventures with such great people! It is definitely something that I will remember for the rest of my life. Oh, and did I mention that I went white water rafting in New Zealand