the nile river

Well there have been many more fun memories made in the last couple days, but I am going to skip straight to the good stuff. Rafting the nile was something I wanted to do when coming here after Meg told me how intense it was. She was hesitant to go again, but cowgirled up and joined the adventure. We rafted with Nile River Explorers who Meg used the time before. The river has changed due to a dam that was put in so our trip would have 4 new rapids to go through further down the river from the headwaters. Make no mistake this does not tame the river it just controls the flow. Kayakers from around the world come to hone their skills on this river. One of our guides was actually one of six individuals invited to London 2012 to do a trial run on freestyle kayaking and whether it would join the Games in the future.

We arrived at the river and got a nice comedic safety talk from the head guide who is the one mentioned above. Grouped into teams we got in our rafts and Hassan was our guide. It seems that most of the guides were kids that grew up in villages on the nile and are incredibly familiar with every part of it. We do the standard paddling cues, boat flipping and re-entering the boat. Now we are ready. We started paddling towards our first Class 5 rapid: Overtime. This one proved to be one of the funnest for me. I was sitting in the front of the raft with Meg behind me and Elisa from Belgium behind her. Sidenote: Meg having already done this and being slightly fearful for her life showed her courageous spirit and joined my raft rather than the "safe" raft that didn't flip once because they never went through the main rapids. Before each rapid Hassan gives a breakdown..."this rapid is Class 5 rapid with grade 2 waves, I will say paddle hard then GET DOWN and jump to the right side of the raft and then you will stay down and paddle into the waves" okay we got it. These directions generally finished when James who was in the front next to me were already entering the rapids so the last part was always a bit hairy. Overtime starts with an awesome 8 foot waterfall where it was clear from the beginning that we were about to submarine under. I fell in love right there! I have done rafting once before and it was supposedly Class 3. Whatever the case, Class 5 in Africa would be a Class 15 on the river I was on. These waves and drops were HUGE! We popped back up and paddled hard, got down, shifted right, stayed down and paddled through the waves. At the bottom we began retrieving members and paddles from the other raft that went through the rapids as they seemed to successfully flip every time. We quickly dubbed them the flippers. One of their team was asking later which side she was supposed to go to when told "left side" hmm.

The next rapid came quickly. We believe it was called Retrospect. This one had similar instructions to the first and was just as much fun. We entered the rapids and about the third wave our raft decided it didn't want to stay upright any longer. We flipped over and in the process you are supposed to grab the rope that runs around the edges and hang on. We flipped right side over left which meant I got boosted out over James and their was a brief tangling of bodies. I rode the rest of the rapids holding the rope and found I was the only one so started re-flipping the raft and pulling bodies back in. This flipping, gasping for air, finding lost paddles and dragging folks back into the boat became very familiar throughout the day.

Fast forward past more flipping and reapplication of sunscreen. We are told to paddle to the side and we are getting out. The Dead Dutchman rapid lies ahead and its a Class 6 that is illegal to run in a raft. Wow, the waves and power of the current through there was crazy. Death would for sure knock on your door in a raft so we were happy to sidestep that one. Then we are informed about the rapid we are immediately going into was The Bad Place. Really, you name a rapid The Bad Place... that does not sound like the place you want to be. Hassan briefed us on our 3 options, stay right we don't flip, go straight into the Bad Place wave or hit the V line, which after a right banking wave, shoots you into The Bad Place wave. I didn't offer my opinion much throughout the trip because I knew our raft was less keen on the idea of flipping and the potential to drown. However, with English not being Hassan's first language there was some confusion. The raft voted to go right. After which I said the V line sounded fun and asked about it with Hassan (where the confusion happened :). I was not excited about missing the main part of The Bad Place, but turns out Hassan assumed the V Line! Paddle Hard, Get Down, Hold ON! It was in this moment that I knew we had taken the V Line.

I started to take a deep breath and the Wave flipped our raft with such power that I launched straight out and was sucked straight down. The whole trip we were told to keep our feet up down stream if we fell out because of rocks. That breath I mentioned above, yea well that was mostly filled with water from the Nile (negating all of my previous water treatment efforts). I am under the water being spun where ever the rapids pushed me thinking really a lot of things because it was one of those time-slows-down-moments. Stream of conscious: "Take a breath..oh no breath just water..feet down stream...air... swim up...which way is up...open your eyes to look stupid... still can't see anything... still need air... oh wait I think that's the surface... swim up deep breath.... nope that was just a mouthful of water... get thrown around like being in a powerful washing machine... still hoping for some air... finally a little breath before shooting back under... and ultimately coming up and hearing a safety kayak call me. I happily swam over and grabbed his kayak.

After feeling like a two year old walking into the wave pool at Wild Waves I was grateful to be breathing again. Phew, I am out, amidst my coughing up what felt like a couple liters of The Nile, I noticed a Pink Helmet sitting on his lap and he was wearing his own helmet. I quickly realized there were only two pink helmets, Meg's and Stinky's. Oh wait, I should introduce Stinky. Lets just say I could smell him before I saw him. This guy was rancid. He felt compelled to sit in the front of the big bus-like truck we were driving out in, which to the pleasure of everyone's nostrils reminded us why showering was important. Okay, back to the pink helmet, I knew this was Meg's helmet and was immediately very concerned. My wife was being tossed around the same as me if not worse and somehow her helmet strap broke. Not good. I finally stopped coughing up water and looked downstream to see if I could pick out Meg's hair on a raft. Wondering if I was going to have to find a new wife, I was relieved that I saw her a hundred yards down stream in our raft. Needless to say Meg was definitely shaken up, but did some positive self talk and stayed in our raft rather than going to the safety raft. Personally I think she couldn't bear to ride with Stinky for the remainder of the day who occupied the safety raft.

We hit more rapids, followed Hassan's directions and managed the next few rapids well.We even had a rapid where our team worked together really well, as our guide fell out the back at the beginning while steering. The part about a rudder steering a big ship is true because in this case we were heading straight towards the rocks, but managed to dodge them. Alas, we arrived at the grand finale: the Nile Special. This was our last rapid and the longest rapid of them all. This rapid has a standing wave that professional kayakers and recreationalists train and play on. It is the third wave into the what Hassan called the Wave Train. Well the first two waves went great and then we shot up the third wave. Well, more like as we shot up the wave, it broke on us. Our whole raft flipped, and all of us were once again in the washing machine. Thankfully there were opportunities to grab a breath on this one. Then we were all flushed out into a calm part of the Nile and collected our raft, paddles and people. Wow, that was a fun day. The rapids here are amazing, and I am a little bit envious of these guides that go down them every day.

We finished with a meal at the takeout spot and thanked Hassan for his amazing guiding. Then we headed for Kampala once again. This morning we are about to leave to go and trek Silverback Gorillas outside of Bwindi in the Impenetrable Forest. Apparently it will be a pretty intense forest based off the name.

As I sit here writing this Meg is informing me of new bruises she is finding on her body: proof of a good day!