Day 3 - Rafting with Courtney

By Courtney Roush

On our third day it was time to have some real fun, because today was our white water rafting adventure! It was an early morning for us leaving our hotel at 6:30 a.m. making our way to the Caribbean side of Costa Rica. It was a two-hour bus ride when we finally made it to Rio Pacuare for our rafting. We had to get off our nice charter bus and pack into three vans to make it through the winding dirt roads in the rough mountain terrain to where our rafts waited for us.

Once we made it, we were all separated into groups of five or six. My group consisted of Faith, Taryn, Shar’Rae, Molly G, and Kasey with our amazing raft guide, Manuel. Faith was the most important out of our group because she was given the great job of having the GoPro strapped to her chest. We made the most of it by capturing a lot of great rapids on our trip!

Now of course we learned a lot of different signals and strokes so we knew how to conquer the mighty river, but we also learned one of the most important rules when rafting in Costa Rica: to celebrate with a paddle high-five after a job well done yelling “PURA VIDA!” Of course our group yelled this all the time because we did such a great job throughout the trip J. 

Another important rule we learned was the “get down!” rule. If our instructor yelled this anytime, we would have to sit right in the boat and hold on tight. We did this a couple of times and it was fun seeing us throw ourselves down and cling on to the raft for dear life, and then having to scramble back into our positions and keep rowing. Early on, when we hit our first big rapid, Coach Dawn’s raft went before us. In her raft was her family and Russ. Well one minute everything is normal, then the next the huge rapid comes and we see Lexi fly right out of the raft! The instructor immediately jumped in to save her and got her safely back on board. She was a trouper after that scary experience and fortunately the only one who was thrown out.

Continuing on after that, Manuel loved doing different tricks with our group. For one trick, we had Faith sitting on the front of the raft with her feet hanging out. This was called “riding the bull.” We went down some rapids and with one big one, she went flopping back into the boat. Another one we did was we went backwards down a rapid with our eyes closed! He kept yelling at us to keep our eyes closed and we kept paddling backwards and then he yelled out “Oh no! I forgot about the waterfall!” of course this was a joke but when you can’t see anything, you expect the worst and boy did we hit some rough waves! A couple of us almost fell out but the adrenaline rush was totally worth it.

Another trick that he did was when he told us to all stand up and circle around in the center. Stand up in a raft…is he crazy?! But of course we trusted Manuel with our lives and did as he said (reluctantly) and latched on to each other with all our worth. We were able to keep our balance for only three seconds before we started to topple one way. Then the rapids came and we were thrown back from one side to the other as we hit each wave kneeling at this point. It was awesome! We couldn’t stop talking about it afterwards that we actually stood up going down rapids.

We did stop on the side to eat lunch for a bit and one cool thing we saw was a red tree frog. After that, Manuel had some more tricks up his sleeve. He had one side face forward and the other side with their backs turned to where we were spinning in circles going down some rapids! We then came up to a canyon with mountain faces on each side of the river. Manuel had one more trick to play with us here where he told us to all get on the right side of the boat. He told us when need to make up for our horrible balance when standing up so we had to get on the very edge and then hold on to a paddle with both hands. We of course trusted him because we survived standing up going down rapids with him, what could go wrong? Man were we fooled.

We all start leaning back waiting for something cool to happen and WHAM! He pushes the paddle with us right into the water! It was definitely fun to laugh about and it was nice to just relax and swim through the canyon. With the hanging vines, trees, and light rain coming down, the place was absolutely breathtaking. You really felt like you were in a rainforest. After that, it wasn’t long before we made it to our journey’s end. It was sad to leave since it was such an awesome experience and one I definitely won’t forget.