Three weekends ago, all of the volunteers from the Central Valley region went to Turrialba to raft the Pacuare River for our regional VAC meeting. I don’t remember what VAC stands for but it’s a committee of volunteers for volunteers. They put together a lot of trips and activities for us all to come together and get to know each other better.This trip cost about $60 per person and it included the rafting, transportation and lunch made by our guides. They dragged one of the rafts onto the land and flipped it over so they could use it as a table and they prepared lunch right there on the river for us. We had tuna tacos if I remember correctly; it doesn’t sound too appetizing but trust me, after a couple hours of rowing, you’ll eat anything. It was actually really good and everything was really fresh because they cut up all the tomatoes and avocados and everything on the raft-table. And for dessert we had Chikys! Chiky is a brand of cookies; they’re rectangles with one side being chocolate and the other just cookie.
The Pacuare River is one of the world’s top 5 rivers to raft and it was awesome! It has mostly class 3 and class 4 rapids and there’s a long slow part where you can jump out of the raft and just float for a good while. Also, we stopped and went ashore for about a half hour to a nearby waterfall. The water landed on a huge stone step that we were able to swim to and sit on; it was pretty cool.The water hit you hard enough that it kind’ve hurt! It was a fun trip and a great experience and I would definitely recommend rafting the Pacuare to anyone that comes to Costa Rica. It’s affordable and worth every penny: we rafted for a couple hours or so before lunch and another hour after. It had been a while since I had gone rafting and I haven’t gone many times, but I’m pretty sure this was the longest of the trips I had been on previously and easily the most fun.
I’ve spent the better part of the last two weeks with a second-degree burn on my back.The same cousin that I took with me to the mountains wanted to go to the creek and build a dam so we could have a little pool to swim in. It seemed like a good idea at the time and we definitely had a lot of fun doing it, but ten days of pain makes me think otherwise now. I put sunscreen on at the start of the day and reapplied to my face and neck halfway through but I never reapplied it to my back. I have a theory that my host sister didn’t put nearly as much on my back as I needed, but it’s my fault for having my shirt off for that long and sleeping for an hour or so on a rock wasn’t very smart either!
The dam we built wasn’t as good as the ones I used to build with Heath and Andy but it served its purpose. With my friends in Roanoke, we were always really careful to build our dams with rocks that fit each other like a puzzle so not so much water got through. It’s easy to just throw a bunch of rocks in a pile but if they don’t fit together just so, the water will rush between them. Grass clippings and leaves are great for filling all the tiny holes that you’ll inevitably have among the rocks. I was hoping to build a sweet dam like in the old days, but my cousin preferred to just throw a bunch of rocks in a pile. Even so, we managed to get the water up past our waist at the deepest part.
The aftermath was devastating though. Interestingly enough, I wasn’t burned at all in any other part of my body – not my face, not my neck, not my shoulders – nowhere except for my back. And burned it was. The first day it was just really red, almost purple, but it didn’t hurt. From the second day until a day or two ago it hurt a lot and I had tons of little blisters and a few big ones. One was about as big as my fist and was completely full of water. It almost looked like one of those bags that goldfish come in sometimes. It’s almost fully healed now, but it’s still red and feels warmer than usual and I have several scabs down my spine where I got burned the worst. I guess when I laid out on the rock, the skin around my spine was exposed a lot more than when I’m standing and maybe it’s more delicate because of that. At least the pain is gone; now it just itches like crazy haha!
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