I really wanted to try riverboarding ever since I heard about it from Helenka and Natasha.

I actually didn’t research it that much… I thought we would spend the day travelling down the river on our riverboards, occasionally going through rapids… basically a slightly more extreme lazy river experience.

Wrong!!

Rosemarie couldn’t find any thermoses to bring their coffee, but you can definitely always find a jar in our old house. :D

Eating pre-riverboarding snacks and getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Starting to get more nervous because apparently “no Scott can’t switch to regular white water rafting because it’s all booked up” actually means “we’re pretty much shut down and there is actually no white water rafting happening at all and your group are the only people here”.

Ah well, let’s get ready to go. Helmets and wetsuits, check!

Make wraps in the owners kitchen who is not there for some reason, check!

After a little bit of instructions, in to the water! First we went down a medium rapid. Some water was inhaled. But we did ok. They ask if we want to go down the bigger rapids… sure. Much water inhaled! Much stress! Much flipping upside down! Much bumping into the things! Much tiring! Rosemarie and Scott were traumatized because they spent a lot of time under the water.

Then instead of continuing down the river we had to paddle furiously to the side, climb out, and walk back up through the trees and rocks, wearing flippers!!

None of us really enjoyed the big rapids that much so instead we tried to get onto the standing wave. A few of us managed it, but only with the help of our three guides. One guide would go out first and get settled on to the wave and ready to catch us, and another guide would paddle out beside us and show us the angle we needed to get to the right spot/push us into position. Then the first guide would literally yank us back onto the wave when we rushed over it. Then when we fell off the wave, the third guide would paddle after us and make sure we made it back to the shore.

Groundboarding?

Resting. Everything was super super super tiring. Thank goodness we had the guides to push and pull us places when energy levels were plummeting. Everyone tried a few times to get on to the wave, while the other people watched/rested. The guides took no breaks.

Sarah did not care for the rapids hahaha. Instead she went down the very gentle side a couple times.

We did all go down the big rapids one more time at the end of the day. We were slightly more successful but only because the guides were shoving us into position hahahaha. They seriously did so much work for us.

Done for the day.

Back at home nursing injuries. Rosemarie banged up both ankles, and Scott smashed his knee on a rock. He also hit his face on a tree branch while hiking because he was looking down at his flipper feet. GOOD TIMES. We all had sore abs the next day too.

Helenka had fun, but I’m not sure any of the rest of us would actually go riverboarding again. It was so hard!!!