Part Two; Potato, Crocs, and High 5's

A few minutes of paddling quickly trained Julian's English family of four and us to be rafters, as long as Potato stayed on the oars at the stern. The boat was rigged as a combination oar and paddle boat. A few riffles were followed by a class three and a legitimate class five rapid. The boating was accompanied with frequent banter between Potato and Stanley, the guide in the other boat. Numerous high fives in the center of the boat with our paddles kept our minds off the crocodiles. Have I mentioned the crocodiles in this river? They really were there on the banks in the calm pools below the rapids. They weren't the big ones and there were no stories of anyone being chewed on in this stretch of the river, but the thought of swimming with something that can eat you kept me out of the water. John, on the other hand, swam a few rapids, by choice! My eyes never left him while he was in the water and I was pretty nervous. Twenty-five kilometer and about twenty rapids later we reached the sandy beach take out. We had no flips, no one flushed out of the boat, and we all had our feet and hands intact. The four men in Stanley's boat swam repeatedly and flipped twice! The guides have this river so wired they can flip or not based on passenger desires. Some of the rapids are as big as the Grand Canyon waters. A cable car, which we needed to sign a waiver before getting in, takes you from the beach to the rim of the canyon. However, the porters deflated the rafts and carried everything up by foot, almost beating us to the top. A delightful lunch and an hour shuttle through three local villages, where we dropped off the porters, brought us back to Chanter's Lodge. The banter lasted until we dropped Stanley off at his village with Potato' departing words, "Say hi to your wife and my children!" River guides are the same all around the world. The company, Bundu Adventures, and the guides were save, professional and very competent boatmen.