Whitewater rafting in CR

First of all, if there are any parents reading this blog, realize Josh and I are still alive (obviously) and doing pretty ok. I meant to take this time to write about community activism online, but unfortunately, we had somewhat of a near death experience, so I will write about that and then go to bed. We went rafting on the Pacuare River. It is ranked 5th or so in the world for rafting. The water levels are quite low at this time, so it is safer than other times of the year. Neither Josh nor I have whitewater rafted, though we have both canoed quite a bit. The rapids on this river range from class 1,2,3, and 4. Class 4 rapids are getting up there. Our raft had 6 people and a guide. Only one other person had ww rafted before and her experience was very different than this river. We got close to half way down the river and had successfully navigated a couple of class 4 rapids. Our guide was coaching us on an upcoming class 4. At some point during the beginning of the rapid, our raft went up a rock and dumped all of us off except our guide. I cannot even tell you what it feels like to be rushed underwater being pushed against rocks and trying to catch your breath. Our guides very carefully instructed us at the beginning what to do if this would happen. I listened. Basically swimming is a hopeless manuveur. You need to fight to keep your legs facing forward in the direction the river is moving. In the process, keep you head out of the water, keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. I kept my mouth closed as well as my eyes. Luckily at some point, with my paddle still in hand I was able to reach another raft just in time to hit a huge rock. I was hanging onto the raft and a very nice man helped me into the raft. After I caught my breath the first thing I wanted to know was what happened to Josh. All of us from the capsized boat were in the rescue raft except Josh. A few minutes later I saw him and our guide floating down the river in our raft. Josh was worse for wear than I was. He was pushed under water and was scraping along the bottom of the river. He has some scrapes and probably will be showing bruises in the morning. His leg was bleeding, but it could have been worse. Afterward we got the story from our guide how we tipped and then the rescue mission story from the people in the other raft. Josh lost his shoes, one woman lost her helmet. Everyone came out ok though a little shaken. We continued on down the river as we had no other option. The river was better after that though several individuals in the other rafts fell out now and again. We hit one more class 4 which pumped up the adrenaline, but we pulled through as a team and I am happy to say we are dry, at our hotel and the bed is calling both Josh and mine name LOUDLY! The woman who lost her helmet and her husband bought the disc with pictures and will be sending me a copy when they get home hopefully, so it will be good to see what we went through later down the road. There are no pictures of our big accident- happy about that actually.