We're up very very early to head out to go white water rafting on the Pradas River. Our driver was going to be in the lobby at 5:00 for the long trip from Kota Kinabalu to Padas Gorge.
It's still dark out when start the journey. We're travelling by car to the city of Beaufort about 2 hours away. From there we are board a train to the Padas Gorge. Our driver gets us to the train station an hour before the train is supposed to leave. We wait outside but there isn't much more than a parking lot so we wait inside. We open our takeout breakfast that the hotel made for us. It reminds me of a mock chicken sandwich. I only eat half of the sandwich and go out and give the other half to our driver. About 10 minutes before the train arrived, Alex brings over Rio, who introduces himself as our rafting guide.
We board the train at Beaufort and settle down into seats and begin the ride. We're about two stations in when we're advised that we need to switch trains. We stand around at Halogitat Station until a new train comes by. We board and it needs to shuffle and connect with a train car at the station. It's not smooth. There's a simultaneous terrific jolt and banging noise as the cars hook up. The train goes to Rayu which is the end stop for the rafting adventure. The train is making a temporary stop while all the paddlers disembark, walk over the tracks to the rafting compound, leaves our bags containing towels, change of clothing, etc., and then get back on the train.
The train gets going to the next stop Panggi, which is the stop for the start of our rafting adventure. We get out and walk over to the rafting buildings. There we get our gear (life preserver and helmet) and then receive our dry land training. We get assigned to boats and walk down to the rivers edge.
Our boat will have 8 people. There's room for 6 paddlers and two of us will sit in the first two rows in between the paddlers and hang into them via the webbing on the life jackets. There will be opportunity to swap with a paddlers during the run.
We also do a bit of wet training. Everyone in the boat is required to exit the raft and then climb back in. I’m unable to hoist myself out of the water without assistance. It seems whatever upper body strength I have is overwhelmed by my under body weight. It turns out most of us had that issue. The water was so warm.
The rafting guidelines for this 3-4 level of white water rapids required you to be able to swim. There was one woman from Korea in the boat who not only didn’t know how to swim, wouldn’t even get into the water to do her wet training. All the training was conducted In English, I’m not sure how much she understood. And the waiver was in English. But in Thailand, I suspect it’s harder to prove negligence, so nobody objected to her being on the raft or made her do her wet training.
Judith and I are paddling in the middle part of the boat and we have the non swimmer sitting in between us. Judith is paddling left on the port side; I’m padding right on starboard. I have my feet wedged in under the seat bolster in front of me. The seat bolster is secured to the raft and wedging my feet in allows me to lean out and still stay firmly planted in the boat.
We paddle through the first few rapids and it’s great fun. There are 9 in total. All the rapids have names — I wonder if the “washing machine” or the “Snake” are used in other rafting locations.
We come up to the most difficult of the rapids and our guide indicates we have about a 60% chance that someone will end up in the water. We start paddling hard and slide over the first lip of the rapids bow first. After that we started sliding starboard first.
I remember thinking this wasn’t the ideal direction since I was sitting on that side and the water was rushing over the gunnel.
I could feel and see the water picking up the port side of the boat and Judith slipping down into the middle of the boat. By this time the raft felt fairly vertical in the water and I was horizontal to the water. I could feel water filling my helmet.
And then as quickly as the raft became vertical, to my great surprise, the port side of the raft fell back onto the water and my body got lifted out of the water. I started paddling again and we continued to slide sideways through and out that set of rapids.
There was a great relief to be finished that set of rapids. Our guide was dumbfounded as to why we all didn’t go over. I think it was a combination of weight distribution (thank goodness for the heavy guy on the port side at the bow of the raft) and perhaps fortuitous wave action that helped right the boat. I truly thought we were going over too and was already thinking about preparing myself to get my foot unwedged so I wouldn’t be floating upside down through those rapids.
The next hardest rapid involved navigating through the channel and avoiding 3 large rocks that are spread across the waterway. I could see two of the rocks as they stuck out of the rapids by at least a foot. At least that’s what it looked like from up stream where the water was pouring around it. From the backside, after we had made it through, I could see the rocks were significantly higher as there wasn’t gallons of water trying to be pushed over them from being on the upstream side of them. I didn’t have to look behind; we actually went through backwards...
After the last rapid we could jump into the water and float/swim to the exit point. It meant staying on the right side of the river, otherwise there was a possibility that the current would sweep you past the exit point and the rafting company would need to rescue you.
We climb out over the big smooth slippery rocks in the river. You can’t see them, there’s so much sediment in the water that the visibility is zero.
We dry off and then eat a tasty buffet lunch. We decide to purchase the photo package taken by the rafting outfitters. It’s all going well so far. Eventually it’s time to get back on the train and take it back to Beaufort Station. We get the last two seats in the train car. Judith is cold as the car is air conditioned, but I don’t have the same issues. We change trains at Halogitat Station and get off at Beaufort. Our driver and car are waiting for us and it’s a 90 min trip back into the city.
By this time Judith tells me she thinks that the buffett contained MSG. She’s really not feeling so great. In fact, she gets progressively worse. She hopes to be better the next day, which is good because it’s a travel day and it’s no fun to have stomach issues when you’re traveling.
It's still dark out when start the journey. We're travelling by car to the city of Beaufort about 2 hours away. From there we are board a train to the Padas Gorge. Our driver gets us to the train station an hour before the train is supposed to leave. We wait outside but there isn't much more than a parking lot so we wait inside. We open our takeout breakfast that the hotel made for us. It reminds me of a mock chicken sandwich. I only eat half of the sandwich and go out and give the other half to our driver. About 10 minutes before the train arrived, Alex brings over Rio, who introduces himself as our rafting guide.
We board the train at Beaufort and settle down into seats and begin the ride. We're about two stations in when we're advised that we need to switch trains. We stand around at Halogitat Station until a new train comes by. We board and it needs to shuffle and connect with a train car at the station. It's not smooth. There's a simultaneous terrific jolt and banging noise as the cars hook up. The train goes to Rayu which is the end stop for the rafting adventure. The train is making a temporary stop while all the paddlers disembark, walk over the tracks to the rafting compound, leaves our bags containing towels, change of clothing, etc., and then get back on the train.
The train gets going to the next stop Panggi, which is the stop for the start of our rafting adventure. We get out and walk over to the rafting buildings. There we get our gear (life preserver and helmet) and then receive our dry land training. We get assigned to boats and walk down to the rivers edge.
Our boat will have 8 people. There's room for 6 paddlers and two of us will sit in the first two rows in between the paddlers and hang into them via the webbing on the life jackets. There will be opportunity to swap with a paddlers during the run.
We also do a bit of wet training. Everyone in the boat is required to exit the raft and then climb back in. I’m unable to hoist myself out of the water without assistance. It seems whatever upper body strength I have is overwhelmed by my under body weight. It turns out most of us had that issue. The water was so warm.
The rafting guidelines for this 3-4 level of white water rapids required you to be able to swim. There was one woman from Korea in the boat who not only didn’t know how to swim, wouldn’t even get into the water to do her wet training. All the training was conducted In English, I’m not sure how much she understood. And the waiver was in English. But in Thailand, I suspect it’s harder to prove negligence, so nobody objected to her being on the raft or made her do her wet training.
Judith and I are paddling in the middle part of the boat and we have the non swimmer sitting in between us. Judith is paddling left on the port side; I’m padding right on starboard. I have my feet wedged in under the seat bolster in front of me. The seat bolster is secured to the raft and wedging my feet in allows me to lean out and still stay firmly planted in the boat.
We paddle through the first few rapids and it’s great fun. There are 9 in total. All the rapids have names — I wonder if the “washing machine” or the “Snake” are used in other rafting locations.
We come up to the most difficult of the rapids and our guide indicates we have about a 60% chance that someone will end up in the water. We start paddling hard and slide over the first lip of the rapids bow first. After that we started sliding starboard first.
I remember thinking this wasn’t the ideal direction since I was sitting on that side and the water was rushing over the gunnel.
I could feel and see the water picking up the port side of the boat and Judith slipping down into the middle of the boat. By this time the raft felt fairly vertical in the water and I was horizontal to the water. I could feel water filling my helmet.
And then as quickly as the raft became vertical, to my great surprise, the port side of the raft fell back onto the water and my body got lifted out of the water. I started paddling again and we continued to slide sideways through and out that set of rapids.
There was a great relief to be finished that set of rapids. Our guide was dumbfounded as to why we all didn’t go over. I think it was a combination of weight distribution (thank goodness for the heavy guy on the port side at the bow of the raft) and perhaps fortuitous wave action that helped right the boat. I truly thought we were going over too and was already thinking about preparing myself to get my foot unwedged so I wouldn’t be floating upside down through those rapids.
The next hardest rapid involved navigating through the channel and avoiding 3 large rocks that are spread across the waterway. I could see two of the rocks as they stuck out of the rapids by at least a foot. At least that’s what it looked like from up stream where the water was pouring around it. From the backside, after we had made it through, I could see the rocks were significantly higher as there wasn’t gallons of water trying to be pushed over them from being on the upstream side of them. I didn’t have to look behind; we actually went through backwards...
After the last rapid we could jump into the water and float/swim to the exit point. It meant staying on the right side of the river, otherwise there was a possibility that the current would sweep you past the exit point and the rafting company would need to rescue you.
We climb out over the big smooth slippery rocks in the river. You can’t see them, there’s so much sediment in the water that the visibility is zero.
We dry off and then eat a tasty buffet lunch. We decide to purchase the photo package taken by the rafting outfitters. It’s all going well so far. Eventually it’s time to get back on the train and take it back to Beaufort Station. We get the last two seats in the train car. Judith is cold as the car is air conditioned, but I don’t have the same issues. We change trains at Halogitat Station and get off at Beaufort. Our driver and car are waiting for us and it’s a 90 min trip back into the city.
By this time Judith tells me she thinks that the buffett contained MSG. She’s really not feeling so great. In fact, she gets progressively worse. She hopes to be better the next day, which is good because it’s a travel day and it’s no fun to have stomach issues when you’re traveling.
everything ok ... no posts for 3 days ...
ReplyDeletecolin
ps cool white water !
All great, back home now and putting in the last few posts. Just got a little behind...
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