[June 17-20, 2011]
photo credits: jm & noel
Water under the bridge!
Waaaah! Would you look at those rapids!!!
I bet that is not even a part of the 24 rapids that we are going to get through in this advance rafting course that we chose. There's no backing out now!
I bet that is not even a part of the 24 rapids that we are going to get through in this advance rafting course that we chose. There's no backing out now!
Before getting started, we had to make sure we had water for a full 4 hours of non-stop-rafting action.
We needed to secure our stuffs as well, we placed them inside our dry bags.
My man is ready!
Picture-taking here..
and there..
More than ready! Go-fight-win!
Uhmm...okay..you will go nowhere with that Langga hehe!
Ate of Kagay Rafting CDO, helping me out with the straps and making sure this life vest will never get away from me.
Hahaha!
Wacky-ing!
Weeeeee! <3
The biggest life vest there ever is...and it's mine!
Paddles ready...set...?
Ooops! Not to fast..we need to have our briefing, we are, after all, taking on the advance course.
And so we did, we listened to Kuya of Kagay Rafting CDO, giving us all safety precautions and instructions
under the manchanitas.
And right on cue, heavy rains poured and joined our briefing ! Perfect!
Our excitement leveled way up!There's no stopping US and the rain now. When the briefing was over, we got no other thing to do but to PADDLE!
And paddled hard we did! We actually paddled for our lives to survive the rapids and the rain!
As they say, a picture paints a thousand words. So I'll let you paint your own words with the rest of our "buwis-buhay" pictures below.
There were instances when we needed to gather at the center of the raft to get through giant waves.
Easy-breezy....NOT! haha! Boy were my arms tired--not from paddling but from holding on to the rope on the side just so I won't fall into the river.
Looks like chaos but we were having so much fun!!!
The storm has passed and we've reached calm waters..but definitely not for long.
Strong currents & rapids ahead!
We got through that and now we are looking for more!
and yes there's more!
More water to drink!!You can't help it sometimes. Haha!
There were parts of the river that didn't have strong currents and our guide said we can get off the raft and take a swim.
But getting on the raft is not as easy as getting off.
I needed our guide's help to pull me up and drag me back to the raft. Thus, my face!haha!
I needed our guide's help to pull me up and drag me back to the raft. Thus, my face!haha!
After the quick swim, we're back to business. Off paddling them rapids we go!
According to Kagay CDO there are various levels of rafting:
The first two levels are nothing more than a sudden drop in elevation. In these rapids, the river picks up speed and makes navigation just a little bit more difficult. In the second level, the placement of natural barriers such as rocks and cliff walls add to the difficulty.
Level three rapids are trickier than the previous two, due to its physical characteristics. The sudden burst of speed is accompanied by a gauntlet of rocks that can easily sink your raft. Some level threes can be found on river bends, which adds to the technical difficulty of the rapid.
Level four combines all three rapids into a single series of long and difficult set of rapids. The mere fact that navigation through a level four rapid is almost impossible without extensive rowing experience makes the level four the toughest of all manageable whitewater rapids there is.
Beginners are advised to avoid all river tours that involve these types of rapids.
That is why for this rafting adventure, we chose the advance course package:
4 hours actual river run
24 rapids
Class II-IV rapids
There were also times when we were dragged into the "side-pocket" of the river, where they say there are caves, snakes & even monkeys!
Back paddle please!
Phew! That was close.
When we're not so busy paddling against giant rapids, our guide gave us some information regarding the trees, stone formations, types of rapids and just basically anything we needed to know about Cagayan river.
Yes we listened, but most of the time we just laughed. His lecture was interestingly funny!
There's definitely F-U-N written all over our faces!
Before this whole adventure started, this guy was a bit hesitant on the adventure we were going to take.
But look at him now. Haha! Glad you had fun langga!
I mean hey, we ALL had the best time!!!
After 4 hours, we made it!! We survived all 24 rapids!!
Yey!
This is a map of the entire river placed on the wall of Kagay CDO Office. Isn't that amazing!
That's our post-adventure look. We waited for our pictures at the Kagay CDO Office before heading back to ate J's house for dinner.
Haha!
No comments:
Post a Comment