GET DOWN!!!

The adventures never seem to stop in this country. We spent one Sunday on a trip to Rancho Baiguate, where we went rafting. It was a simple treat, something that we could enjoy doing even in the States, but that we could never duplicate the experience there. We arrive at the resort early Sunday morning, where we were greeted by a breakfast consisting of eggs, pancakes, fresh fruit, and an assortment of other delights. Needless to say, we almost fainted at how American the meal was. After we ate, we had to wait for the other groups to arrive before they gave us our preliminary crash course on how to handle a raft. The video they played was cheesy, to say the least. It was a group of six men sitting in a raft, on the grass in what looked like someone’s backyard. They were over exaggerating the motions and the music was typical “epic sports” music. The instructions were typed on the screen in four different languages, and we found it funny that the English version was represented my Britain’s flag, even though there were far more Americans who visited this location.

After our crash course, we had to suit up. They gave us all the black wet suits that looked like Styrofoam wrestling uniforms, helmets, and life jackets to wear over our swimsuits. We climbed into two big open-bus-type-truck things that lugged us and our rafts across town to the river. On the way there the employees, all men, were jumping around like monkeys, climbing on the outside of the buses, bouncing off the rafts, grabbing branches from low hanging trees, throwing leaves at each other. They were like professional frat boys. Hugo and Frances, a couple of blokes we had met before from one of our facilitators at the discoteca, were the most rowdy of them all. They were especially fond of picking flowers from the trees and presenting them to various girls on the bus.

Once at the river, they divided us up into our various boats and gave us yet another rafting 101 crash course, this time interactive.  Before long we were all in the water, ready to tackle the rapids. Apparently we were the only ones ready because we just sat in the water, anchored to the bank for about five minutes. Once we finally took off down the river, our guide, who ended up being Hugo, which is pronounced like Ugo, not with the H sound (because that would mean his name was Juice), decided to test us on all the commands we just practiced on the bank. Watching us adjust our seats a hundred times must have been real entertainment for Hugo, because he would tell us a command, like “GET DOWN!” in as panicked a voice as he could muster, and then tell us to go back to our positions after a few seconds. Not to mention that he would do them at inappropriate times, so it was useless for us to do most of what he was telling us to do. It didn’t take long for us to catch on, so we decided to use our brains and only follow his instructions when it made sense to.

Realizing that he had been thwarted, he resorted to the next best thing, swimming. Hugo liked very much to tie us down to some bank and just jump into the water for a casual swim. He even at one point had us hold on to some weeds so he could climb up some rocks and belly flop into the river, which I’m pretty sure was not deep enough for him to do that safely. He and his frat brothers would take turns doing dangerous head-first stunts into the river, and we cringed at every trick. Hugo did a very impressive three turn  dive from a rock in the middle of the river, that we were just sure he was going to break his neck upon hitting the ground of the river, but he miraculously resurfaced, without so much as a scratch on him. He was a pro.

He thought it would be funny to give us all silly decorations to put into our helmets, but I resisted as we were putting weeds on our heads. Hugo specialized in humiliation, we realized, as he pulled the one girl in our boat who couldn’t really swim well into the water unannounced, and then rescuing his damsel in distress. We also ran into a lot of rapids that almost took our faces off. The first one created such a splash in our faces that we couldn’t fight it, and we found ourselves struggling to keep our raft from tipping over. Another time, after ramming into another raft, helping them out of the jam they found themselves in between a rock and a hard place, our boat was traumatized by the rapids and from being out of rhythm due to the previous collision, that we again proceeded to tip the one side, two of our girls basically in the water. April especially was head first, bottoms up in the water just when Kathryn’s newfound mother instincts kicked in, rescuing her by a swift grab to April’s life jacket. It was so fast, it took all of us a moment to process what had just happened.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped for juice and sandwiches, because we were so extremely famished from our lack of rafting. All the stop and goes were really hard to deal with, so we, apparently, had worked up quite an appetite. They fed us ham and butter sandwiches, which are gross, and some strawberry juice, which was refreshing. We had to eat fast, because we were quickly being approached by bulls. Literally. Bulls. I’m not lying to you. Once back in the boat, we refused to make half of the stops that Hugo had scheduled for us because we realized that we had spent most of that morning floating on the bank instead of fighting rapids. Understanding our frustration, Hugo let some of the stops go, but of course he couldn’t ignore all of them so we stopped every 5 minutes instead of every three.

 At the end of the run, we were the only boat to successfully make it to the end without tipping over, because we’re pros. One boat had a really bad crash, one guy broke his nose from the collision. It was pretty bad, and to be honest, I’m not really sure how it managed to happen since we rode the same course they rode, and it was very mild (and that’s coming from someone who’d never been rafting before).

Once everyone finished the course, they loaded us back onto the buses and took us back to Rancho Baiguate, where they tried to sell us crappy photos of ourselves. The lunch that we were served was, of course, La Bandera, which was a nice treat still. Oddly enough, even though you eat it almost every day here, you are always grateful for rice, beans and chicken, mostly because you know what it is, and you know it won’t make you sick. We lingered at the resort for a while, admiring our awkward tanlines, taking a dip in the chlorinated pool (a feature we were very excited about), playing a little volleyball. We almost didn’t want to leave, but then a giant group of Dominican middle school-ers showed up, and it was time to go.