Not dead yet

So today was whitewater rafting. Cathy's done it a couple of times before, but I never have. So I was really looking forward to it, although booking it for the day after spending all day on the Great Barrier Reef was clearly not one of our smarter moves.

So after getting up at 6 am, being picked up at 6:30 and then spending the better part of the next two hours actually getting to the site of the river, we finally made it (on the upside, the view was spectacular. Sunrise lighting up clouds lingering on the top of a mountain chain called, no kidding, the Misty Mountains). And we had a blast.

The River is called the Tulley. The combination of this being dry season and the volume of rocks in the river meant that was more technical rafting rather than going flat out.

However, I still managed to end up in the drink.

Yeah, not entirely sure what happened. We were coming out the end of a rapid and I just lost my balance for second, the boat got rocked and in I went. Nothing too serious, I was back in the boat in less than a minute. Even managed to hold onto my paddle. But it was kind of mortifying. However, on the karmic balancing scale, I managed to grab people three times for the rest of the boat ride and prevent them from flying it. So that was good. We went down the river with a Czech couple and an Irish couple. The girl, Clare, was awesome because she was terrified the entire time and kept screaming and cursing. I think I learned new profanity today. Besides, cursing in an Irish accent is awesome.

So a good time, although we're both wiped this evening. Four hours of whitewater rafting will do that to you. And slightly pink. We've managed to avoid trashing our feet as in previous trips, but we're getting flashes of sunburn. Today it was our knees, of all things. The top of my head got singed pretty nice at the reef yesterday. And Cathy's back looks like it was stuck on a microwave on high for about five minutes. We're managing and really, a bit of sunburn is to be expected on vacation.

Tomorrow is a trip on a train and a skyrail up into the Daintree Rainforest, which will be nice and certainly not quite as draining. That just leaves us something to do on Tuesday. Not certain yet. Several people have suggested flinging myself out of a perfectly good airplane (no, they appeared to like me when they made the suggestion). But we shall see. Perhaps we'll go didgeridoo shopping instead.