White-water rafting in Zambia!!

Africa! We have just returned from visiting 3 countries on the dark continent and we are awed by its beauty and the struggle of day-to-day life. It shares some similarities with other places we've visited, but combines it all together in a completely different way. And each area is distinct from the next. Different struggles and different successes, different things to enjoy. There were many heart-breaking situations we saw and heard about - so much to process. Not a dull moment, that's for certain! What with daredevil activities, a death threat or two, close encounters with wild animals, church politics and illness, we had quite the time!

We met up with our friends Daryl and Sabrina Neufeld who are volunteering in Namibia for a year at the local hospital as a pharmacist and a physio-therapist. You can check out their blog at http://www.neufeldsinnamibia.blogspot.com/

October 2

They drove from Rundu to Katima and then on to Livingstone to meet us at the airport. We travelled 24 hours, and then were delayed another 7 hours for our last 1 hr flight! We arrived, tired and excited and without our luggage. Stores were closed - it was 7pm after all. But thankfully, the Neufelds had enough stuff to lend us what we needed for the next day of white-water rafting on the Zambezi river at the base of Victoria Falls!!

October 3

The rafting was so much fun. We were a little nervous, and didn't know what to expect, but if I had known before what I knew after, I would have been even more excited! We drove in an open truck with bench seats to a Tire shop - that's where Bundu Adventures has its headquarters. (It's all very random, and I was never really sure where we were going or what we were doing.) But we paid there, and then headed to the falls! After an amusing safety briefing (featuring our guide, "Potato" reading an abbreviated list of all the possible injuries, followed by "Blah, blah, blah - just sign it!"), we got our safety gear and walked down the gorge to the river. There were lots of rafts, from different companies, but our guide was the best by far. We had spirit! We were the only raft giving each other high fives with our paddles. And Potato would explain each rapid with great detail, telling us where we were headed, and why. It didn't do us much good on the first rapid, unfortunately - we went down backwards which means much less control over the direction of the raft. The difference it made surprised me since I felt totally out of control the whole time, but I soon noticed that Potato was very skilled at steering our raft, even when we were too chicken to paddle at first!

Here's Marc almost falling out of the boat. My paddle held him in long enough for Daryl to haul him back in. There were no other accidental spills until later on...

Woohoo! Full recovery!!

Thumbs up!

Brace yourselves!

Yup, that's our boat!
One rapid was so scary, they were going to close it the following week. Wonderful timing! Wise, or chicken? You decide... I chose to leave our raft, (just for that rapid) go down the easier way, and let one of the daredevil riverboarders have a turn on the raft. Sure enough, the boat flipped, and everyone was thrown out. Daryl was thrown far and my raft went to pick him up. Sabrina surfaced underneath the raft, and had to go back under to come back up again. Potato gathered everyone quickly since they had to be on the raft (now upside down) before the next rapid. Woohoo!