Let’s go EXTREME!

16/02/2012

The end of our east coast travels is drawing nearer but we still have a few more adventures to look forward too! Today we took a trip from Mission Beach to Tully for a day trip White Water Rafting, which we’ve both been really excited about.

Ever since Brisbane we have prayed for nothing but sunshine and we’ve been lucky enough to be granted our wish, however as everyone knows water sports are always so much better after a good spell of rain so instead we prayed for the sunshine to take a vacation. I don’t know who’s looking down on us, but a big thank you to whomever it is as the night before a storm set off, dousing the area and continued throughout the follow day.

The minibus that collected us from Mission Beach also collected 3 others from the area and we all got chatting on the hour-long ride to Tully, which proved useful as when we got to our destination we were asked to put ourselves into groups of 6/7. So we teamed up with the German and the couple from Brazil from our bus and then a set of twins from Sweden. There was something like 60 people heading down the rapids that day, but as we had booked the ‘extreme’ opposed to the ‘standard’ tour we only went down with 3 boats of 7, making for a much more fun experience. 

(Ignore how ugly I am in the above photo)

What separated the two tours [apart from the smaller group numbers] was that the ‘extreme’ tour wanted its participants to get as wet as possible. We got to flip our boat at every opportunity, jump out into the rapids and let the water fling us downstream, jump off high rocks, body surf, slide down waterfalls, swim in the calm stretches [of potentially crocodile infested waters] and drink from the fresh springs. 

The rafting itself was fun, our mentor would scream commands at us and we’d all jump around the craft to steer ourselves over rocks and rough waters etc, but doing that all day I would have found tedious. We were so glad we did the extreme version as it was the out-of-raft experiences that really made the trip [we’d recommend it to anyone]. For example there was one waterfall we got to slide down, which was only small, but once you hit the water below the current swept you along its bed and wouldn’t let you leave for 5/6 seconds which is a lot longer than it sounds!

The whole day was so much fun. We had a great group in our raft and our mentor was really cool and loved how up for anything we were. By the time we got back to the bus we both felt absolutely battered, but my god it was worth it! We want to do it again…

That night our sore bodies went back to Scotty’s Beach Housel, where we had also spent the previous night. It’s a super chilled out hostel where the safe were always friendly and eager to chat to its tenants. Like the night before, we sat at a long table located by the pool, whacked out the Goon box and played a few card / drinking games with everyone staying there. It can be nice just spending hours chatting to people you would never normally meet, from all over the world, knowing you’re not likely to see them again. It’s freeing, you don’t have to pretend to be anybody and you learn a lot.