White Water Rafting

In Bali, we went white water rafting two times! On the first time, our dad thought his back wouldn’t do well on it (because his back was injured some time ago) so he sat it out. We all were really excited to raft. When we were ready, we got helmets on, life jackets on, and we got our paddles. To get to the rafting starting point, we rode in the back of a tiny little truck with no roof for about 6 minutes and then walked down a TON of stairs to the river. We were put with another large group that was split between two boats–they were all Australian. It was super hot when we climbed down the stairs but it was cooler once we were on the rafts. Our guide, Yogi, was 22 years old and he was really nice. Some of the rapids were very big/fun and some of them were a little bit calmer but still really fun. The Australians LLOOOVVVEDD to scream (there were a bunch of teenage girls between the two boats) and they were in front of us, so every time there was a rapid ahead and they would scream, we would think that what was coming would be really scary. On our way, there was a waterfall that we stopped at — it was so powerful! We got to go under it and it was so hard against our backs! It was insane how forceful it was!! When we were pulling the rafts up to it, Yogi said to us, “Do you want a free massage”? We asked him not to put the raft under it, and instead we pulled over and got out and stood under it. Of course, the Australians screamed really really really loudly! 🙂 Our guide and we started a chant that went like this: “Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oy Oy Oy!! Bali Bali Bali, Oy Oy Oy”!! We chanted it together as we went down the river. There were occasional hotels along the side of the river that were so gorgeous! They were on the top of a grassy hill with lots of trees and a view of the river… We thought it would be so cool to stay there!! In another place, we saw a bridge that was made out of boards and some of them were broken and they had fallen off! It was really high and was ascending from one side of the river to the other. It looked like no one had used it for a long time. Close to the very end of the trip, there was a long waterslide that was so fun to go down! It was about 50 feet in length and we went really fast! (editor’s note: the waterslide was a man-made section adjacent to a dam to allow for safe passage while avoiding the drop-off over the dam.) I loved rafting so much. After we got to the top of the hill and took the truck back, we told dad all about it. We also said we thought his back might actually be okay! So, two days later, we all went rafting again and he was able to join us. We all had tons of fun going down the river together!