From Puerto Viejo, we were trying to figure out the best way to get up to La Fortuna to see the Volcán Arenal. On a bus, it would have taken roughly 10 hours with about 5 stops in between. We decided that was not a good option. Having 4 of us, we could have taken a cab for $50 per person, which wouldn’t have been too bad. The third option was doing a half-day rafting trip which would drop us off in the area we wanted to end up in for only a little bit more than the cab would have cost. BINGO! So we got up early to catch our bus to the spot where we would begin the rafting trip.
The Pacuare River was rated by National Geographic as one of the top 10 river trips in the world, so I was pretty excited to get it going. For those of you who haven’t done rafting before, you have a guide who calls out instructions such as (paddle) forward, back, or down if you’re coming up to a big rapid and you need to get down in the boat in order not to fall out. Our team of 6 was doing pretty well until once we were coming up to a big one and didn’t hear our guide say “DOWN!” leading us to all go crashing on top of each other and one guy to get busted in eye by a helmet. Luckily, nobody actually fell out of the boat.
Our tour started off pretty calm, but then got pretty crazy!
This was definitely one of the highlights of my trip and I can’t wait to go rafting again!
4 Comments
Hi Nick!
Just caught your post on pacuare river rafting. I wonder if you might have had Ricky as your guide on the van back to La Fortuna? I see you had Roberto as your rafting guide. Ricky is my husband, and together we have a tourism company here in la fortuna – http://www.puravidaeh.ca – as well as a blog – http://www.costaricatravelblog.com
Just wanted to thank-you for the post. Pura vida from la fortuna!
nikki
Hi Nikki,
Ricky was our guide in the van to and from the rafting trip. He was really funny. I will definitely check out your travel blog!
You have red the write-up in peoples magazine September2011, too, right? The writer had some photos from his travels through the world and wrote extremely similar about his trip. Oh man, and I’ve to stay the following four month in my boring hometown till i can travel once more.
i love your blog, i have it in my rss reader and always like new things coming up from it.