agua, agua, agua!

Water, water, water. People often say of Latin America, “just don’t drink the water.” We’ll get back to that later.

The men of my homestay woke up at 5:00 this morning in order to participate in this weekend’s mandatory team-building/fun activity: white-water rafting (in future weekends, groups of two or more will plan and take their own trips, at their own expense). When we reached the academy, J.J. (the on-the-ground-coordinator), opened the building to let our group inside. Taking a seat on a couch by some windows, I was surprised to see some garbage on the table in front of me. Our Spanish teacher, Gladys, who had locked-up the building the night before, arrived a few minutes later and soon asked me, “What’s that? Where did it come from?” pointing at the shriveled papers. “I don’t know,” I said, “It was like that when we came in.” After a short pause Gladys responded in frustration, “They’ve taken the computer.”

Only then did we realize that one of the windows I was sitting by was not simply open, but had been removed by burglars the night before so that they could silently gain entry. After stealing the computer monitor and an empty money box, they set a piece of paper on fire and left it as a signature or threat. Luckily, Gladys has theft insurance, and nothing else was stolen. “Now you see how it goes around here,” Gladys said in reference to our orientation and safety lecture two days before.

Our rafting destination was the Rio Pacuare, about a 2.5-3 hour bus ride from San Jose. As we travelled, the rural mountain landscape strongly reminded me of where I was in Costa Rica last spring on a mission trip with Eureka College. About halfway to our destination, we stopped for a group buffet breakfast near the summit of a mountain, overlooking the surrounding countryside. We were also introduced to the commemorative shirts that our rafting guides, who had designed them, were selling. The shirts carried these mottos: “I survived the rapids”, “life’s too short”, and “paddle hard”. Because the shirts, which dried quickly and blocked the sun, were designed for rafting, some members of our group bought them ahead of time to wear.

Upon my getting out of the vehicle when we reached our destination, I was immediately ambushed by fire ants, about fifty of which swarmed my feet and lower legs. Being near their nest, I resisted the urge to stomp on their anthill and kill all of them. The fire ants were also redeemed by some nearby leaf-cutter ants, which are quite friendly and also super-cool to watch.

The Rio Pacuare at its present water level contains many level-four+ rapids. If you don’t know what is meant by a level-four rapid, look it up and be afraid! From our launch point, however, the river progressed incrementally in difficulty and danger from placid level one to fiendish level four, making it a reasonable rafting option for crazy people. So after a set of important safety instructions, we began our four-hour, 18-mile trip down the rapids. My group of six rafters contained one other male and four females, as well as Juan Carlos, a rafting guide. His commands to us included “FORWARD!”,  during which we all paddled together (our guide could only steer if we had movement relative to the surrounding current); “RIGHT BACK”, during which those of us on the right side paddled back while those on the left paddled forward; “LEFT BACK”, which was the opposite of “RIGHT BACK!”; “STOP”, meaning, “stop paddling”; and “DOWN!!!”, during which everyone ducks into the middle of the raft and holds on tightly. Two expert kayakers accompanied our fleet of rafts, one as a photographer and the other as the rescue kayak.

Our first several rapids went well, and we successfully passed through a few level-three and level-four rapids, including “The Rodeo” and “The Cemetery”.  When one group intentionally flipped their raft in some mild rapids just for fun and some members of our raft wanted to flip as well, I remarked, “No. If we flip, it needs to be legit.” About two hours into our expedition, notwithstanding all of that experience and expertise we had gained, one thing went wrong and changed everything. That is, something went wrong involving a level-four rapid and a very large rock. When our guide Juan Carlos gave the command to duck, I grabbed the side rope and brought my weight towards the center of the raft. Almost immediately, I could feel many sudden and extreme changes in the raft’s speed, direction, and orientation. I also felt walls of water crash into me from different directions at different times, along with a few bodies. Next thing I knew, I was alone in the raft, struggling to keep it from flipping over. I also had to untangle someone’s paddle from the rope and my sandal (maybe my own paddle?) so that I would not be stuck to the raft. Looking around, none of the girls or the guide was in sight. David, however, managed to keep hold of one side of the raft.

Crash Sequence

It took some time to regain orientation and understand our situation. Current passing over a large rock in the rapids creates a “hole”, or dip in the water. These holes can be quite large, and they have a strong suction current that can trap objects indefinitely. For David and I, the entire raft was stuck in the hole, being pulled back toward the rock by the suction current, and pushed away from the rock by the current flowing forward over the rock. For about one or two minutes, David and I helplessly assured one another that we were okay and would continue to be okay while trying to think of some way out of the hole. Meanwhile I desperately tried to maintain the raft’s balance. I was most worried that if the raft were fully sucked back to the rock, the water, pushing down on one side of the raft from above the rock, would flip the raft again and  throw me into the water, possibly even into the depths of the hole behind the rock. If we could get out of the hole, I could pull David in and we could ride the raft to the next calm place and then swim ashore.

victory... for now

I was caught with the paddle (now broken)

looking for a way out

David holding on as the water tries to flip us

My best guess now is that my worst fear was exactly what happened. The raft got sucked too close to the rock, and  the current flowing over the rock flipped the raft and plunged me underwater, holding me down while the suction current held me in place. As I waited for the life jacket to carry me to the surface (I had no orientation at this point) my nose filled over and over with water, which was automatically swallowed by reflex. I was unable to see or feel my position in the water, but when I finally surfaced, I knew I had done so only by the change in sound. I then gasped for air before being plunged back beneath the surface by the currents and swallowing more water. Luckily, the current had now carried me away from the suction of the hole in which I had been stuck, but I was now in danger of crashing into other rocks.

final moments

plunged beneath the surface

Our safety instruction told us to position ourselves into a feet-first back-float in this situation so that we could see where we were going, breathe reliably, and avoid hitting our heads or necks on the rocks, but this was impossible for me in the strong current with water full of boulders. Every time I tried to reposition myself, my legs hit a boulder, causing me to tumble face-first back under the surface, swallowing more and more water. I then remembered another safety instruction we had, which was to look and listen for instructions while struggling in the water. Looking around as I continued to oscillate between above and below the raging waters, several people were cheering, with the spirit of, “Go, Mark. Way to be intense.” Also burned into my memory is an image of the photographer, who, standing on a rock some distance away with the camera to his face, gave me a giant thumbs-up for providing material for some great action shots.

Soon, instructions came from the rescue kayaker (who reached me after having just helped the other five people from my raft who had been thrown out initially). “GRAB THE BLUE ROPE!” he said, referring to a rope on a raft behind me. During this time, I struggled to continue breathing. My chest was tighter than anything I had ever felt before, and I had never worked so hard just to breathe in. I felt like I was trying to breathe with a high-powered vacuum cleaner nozzle in my mouth, and I had to fight against this suction with all my strength.  Once pulled into the raft, I began coughing up water and belching. By the taste present in my mouth, it was apparent to me that I had been vomiting some in the water (perhaps to make room for swallowing more water).

No sooner was I not drowned than I was forced back to my own raft to finish the first half of our trip. I was somewhat shaky and unsteady at this time, but I noticed as others stepped into my raft from the rafts that rescued them that they were quite shaky, too. I have a strong suspicion that my dreams tonight will be centered around rafting disasters.

During our lunch stop, more details began to unravel as to what actually went wrong with my raft. My friend Andrew, who was in another raft, said that my raft and I went over him when it flipped. Apparently I managed to hang-on through the midst of a 360 degree flip that threw off everyone else. (Correction, a review of photos shows no evidence of this flip, which must have been an illusion for the passengers in Andrew's boat). When the raft tipped a second time and threw me out, David continued to hold on as the raft stood vertically in the water for a couple seconds, meaning that he hung from the top of the raft with his feet completely up out of the water. While capsizing is relatively common, the guides remarked that they had never seen THAT before. The raft then came down outside of the hole it was stuck in, so David was lucky enough to be able to leisurely hold on and tow the raft to shore.

Also during our lunch stop, which was on a sandbar near several Native American dwellings and people, I noticed some members of our group wearing the “I survived the rapids” shirt and I made a couple comments about it. Of course, the irony would be for someone to buy that shirt and wear it while rafting, but to then not survive the rapids.

Now about drinking the water in Central America: so far, I have been drinking tap water in Costa Rica without any problems, since the water here is purified like that of the United States. However, anything that could be “in the water” to make people sick in Mexico or elsewhere is almost certainly in river water, and I drank A LOT of that today. We’ll see what happens…