I'm behind on sharing my Fiji trip pictures... will try to get caught up! One of the most incredible experiences of my whole life took place on our third day in Fiji. Mike and I booked an all-day river rafting excursion that left from the resort at 5 a.m. and didn't return until well after eight p.m. that night. I had read the descriptions, talked with people who'd gone on this before, and was excited about... but as it drew nearer, I began to wonder if I was NUTS... we are not water people. We've never rafted. Mike hardly ever swims if he can help it. But, it was bought and paid for, and we WERE up for adventure... so that morning we set out with about seventy other demonstrators and their guests in buses to head for the hills. We were the largest group the tour company had ever had.
Here we are early that morning while on a break from the 3-hour bus ride into the deep interior. Do we look trepidatious? We were! The bus ride was hair-raising! Straight up and down hills, all slick from a big rain the night before, with huge flooded potholes and little washed-out areas in every ravine. I had to close my eyes during the parts where we were spinning our wheels and sliding towards the edge--no guardrails, no shoulder, and straight off the side of the mountain if we didn't make it! We never saw another vehicle the entire way there. We were truly in the boonies!
We were really impressed with everything about the rafting company--except the description of the "20 minute walk" to the put-in site... it was a strenuous hike up and down several big hills, with steep, uneven stairs and rickety "hold your breath" bridges, all made more interesting with the addition of rain on slick red clay. All in a hot and humid rainforest! I was actually willing to go in the raft at that point!
And I'm so glad I did... because what followed was the adventure of a lifetime!
That's Mike on the left in the front, and I'm on the left in the back in the red t-shirt. Tami White and her friend Shawn were teamed up with us and a funny and STRONG Fijian guide named Abraham. We were also delighted to be in the same raft as my good friends Wendy and Cheryl, who live about an hour from us here in Wisconsin. We always joke that we have to earn the annual incentive trip in order to get together, halfway around the world!
It alternated between peaceful stretches of canyon, with breath-taking waterfalls around every bend, to some lovely rapids that were breath-taking for entirely different reasons! A couple people in our group did fall out, but not anyone in our raft, thankfully!There were a couple of stretches where I said aloud to Mike, "Honey, I love you. It's been a good life. I've been proud to be your wife." Everyone laughed--but I was only partly kidding! Eeep!
We had a brief stop for lunch about mid-way. Right as we were finishing, the sky open and gushed rain for about five minutes. Then it passed just that quickly (all that extra water makes for an even more exciting ride!) Other than that, we had perfect weather. We did wind up with a little sunburn on our noses and the tops of my knees were bright pink. It was hard to keep sunscreen on when you kept getting doused with icy waves or the cheeky guide would swing you under the waterfalls. I even went swimming in the afternoon--and found out it was way deeper than it looked!
Oh, I have so many more really great photos I could show... but I will stop there. I hope you've gotten a taste of what that insanely exhilarating day in Fiji was like for Mike and I. I will forever be grateful to my dear customer friends for making this trip possible. I swear I am the luckiest girl in the world.
oh how FUN! I'd react the same way, go from excited to exhilerated to petrified! lol
The rock bluffs look like The Dells - next time you could stay closer to home and ride a Duck! :)
Thanks for sharing your excursion.
Posted by: Jenny | 05/23/2013 at 07:08 AM