Turrialba - Rio Pacuare - San José

8 Dec 2005

River rafting on the Pacuare river

Today was one of the highlights of our trip. We went river rafting on the Rio Pacuare with the company Rios Tropicales. There were just 5 of us in our dinghy – 2 Spanish girls Maria and Cristina, Mario the guide and us two. Mario steered us expertly through the class IV rapids, shouting ‘Adelante todos’, ‘Alto’, etc., so that we all either paddled like mad or rested, allowing the current to do the work. I fell in twice just to add to the excitement, the first time with Maria. No harm done and they hauled us back in by the ‘scruff’ of our life jackets. In between the rapids we coasted down the river, spotting toucans, parrots, kingfishers and herons. Whenever we’d passed a difficult rapid successfully we raised our paddles so that they were all touching and shouted ‘Pura vida!’ (the Costa Rican equivalent of ‘Great!’ or ‘Cool!’).
Rio Tropicales took us back to San José in their bus at the end of the day, so no risk of more robberies when taking the public bus. By chance we had booked the same guest house that our fellow river rafters had chosen, Kap’s Place.