River Rafting Adventure

So I’m back! River rafting was a lot of fun. We were each in two person rafts that were about the size of a canoe and we went down the Breede River. It was pretty calm overall, though there were a few rapids. Much of the time we were floating and jumping in to swim. The whole trip was very restful and relaxing.

Our guides were quite interesting people. They were both white South Africans who were both sunburned and looked as if they hadn’t left the beach in years. On our first day, they brought an elaborate lunch setup including a flower-printed umbrella and they even rolled up every slice of meat for us to eat. Apparently that is company policy. That night though, something else that was apparently company policy is that dinner always takes longer to cook than you think. They had been cooking dinner for about 3 hours when someone asked when it would be ready. They said we would eat “now now.” Apparently this is an African phrase we didn’t understand because it took them 3 extra hours to finish cooking and serve the meal. “Now now” apparently means in awhile and “just now” means in a little bit, but shorter than “now now.” What we really wanted to hear was “now,” but we didn’t know that at the time.

The next day was also interesting. Neither of our guides had actually gone down the section of river we were going down. They had also forgotten to book four of the boats for an extra day. So that meant we had to find substitute boats. To make things better, when we were partway down the river, one of our guides decided to get out and swim. He then decided not to get back in a boat. When we got to the take out point, he was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he had decided to swim down the rest of the river. That was the end of the adventure, but it was great fun.

I think tomorrow I’m going to head to church for Easter so I’ll be sure to let you know how it is!