Monday, December 08, 2003

White Water Rafting the Tully

Up at 6:45, showered, breakfast, then waited for RnR to pick us up at 7:45-8:00. They came, we picked up some others, bought a waterproof camera, then headed to Tully, to teh RnR office for check-in and get shoes. There's a bunch of religious people on our rafting trip, wearign name tags that say "Gods Grace Saves" or some such thing. They were all from California. And old people (part of the religious group). One woman looks like a grandma.

We all hopped on the double decker bus and headed up the mountain to the start. There were 10 rafts in our flotilla, each with 6 or 7 rafters and one guide. Court and I were with a couple from England, and three of the religious zealots, including the grandma. Our guide was a kiwi. I'm not sure what people were thinking, especially the cultists, many were in their normal clothes. Most oddball was an older man, perhaps 40-50ish, wearing a button-up dress shirt and long slacks and dress shoes. And he rafted in that!!!! Geek!! The grandma in our group, we found out, was 74 years old! And she's always wanted to do some white-water rafting, so here she is, rafting a grade 4 river in Australia. Good on her!

We rafted down the Tully river, through lots of grade 3 and grade 4 rapids. About 1:00, stopped for a great lunch of sausages and burgers. Then continued on.

We never slipped once, and none of us took an involuntary swim. Court was halfway in the water backwards at one point, and I had a good mind to toss the rest of her over the edge of the raft, but didn't because of rocks.

Grandma took a head butt from one of the others in our boat, and need medical attention. She was a good sport.

Finished rafting about ??? (no watch on), and got back on the bus and back to RnR headquarters to have the opportunity to buy pictrues and video. We didn't buy, but the pictures were good. Court and a permanent grin on her face the whole time, and I look like I'm forever terrified at what I'm looking at. It's funny. Court cheated and took pictures of the pictures with her camera.

Back to the hostel abotu 5:20, I called and booked a bus up to Cairns for Wednesday and booked my free night at the hosetl there, then used internet and browsed for hostels in Los Angeles. Went to the supermarket, made supper, wrote in journal, watched TV (watched Survivor, the Pearl Islands was it?), then to bed.

No comments:

Post a Comment