Rafting the Río Pacuare

So today has been awesome! The place I´m staying got us in touch with what I´m convinced is the best tour group that exists here in Turrialba. We spent the entire day rafting down the Rìo Pacuare through the rainforest, stopping for an awesome picnic in the middle. I wasn´t able to bring my camera (it was kinda wet), but we had a safety kayaker named Julio that took a ton of pictures then sold them to us. Unfortunately, I just spent 15 minutes uploading a few for you to see and then somehow managed to delete them all. I wish I could have taken a bunch of my own pictures because the scenery was so nice, but luckily Julio included some on the CD he sold us. Here is just an example of what I was looking at all day.

Okay I´ll add just a couple now so you can see me rafting :-)

You can tell we are all enjoying ourselves :-)

We also clearly go extremely wet, but it was warm out and so was the water, so no big deal. In fact, every time we had a long stretch of calmer, deeper water we would jump in and float along next to the boat for a while :-)

Standing up for the camera.

What our guide, Chalo, did to us while standing up: back us into the cliff so we all fell over. He was crazy! (In fact, the tour group we went with was called "Loco`s" and he liked to say he was crazy but not stupid). Other things he did that none of the other guides seemed to be doing (there are many, many groups rafting this river daily) included spinning around a bunch, getting us all to come to the back of the boat for one of the rapids, and waiting at the bottom of another of the rapids to ram into other groups coming through. It was so much fun! He also took us on a side trip up a little stream where we saw a bright red dart frog and a 6 inch x 1 inch caterpillar! At the end of the day they took us to a local bar for a beer with a view of Turrialba Volcano.

Speaking of which, I´m am staying in Turrialba for another couple of nights where Luis (the manager of our hotel) managed to get us 'the best' taxi to take us up to the volcano tomorrow. Apparently they drive us up and then wait there all day while we explore. It's great to be in such a friendly place and to have a couple of people to do things with and split some costs.

However, they are waiting for me now to get a bite to eat so I should run. Talk to you later!

Kaila