Day 17 - July 2nd

By Danny Haak

After a day of driving and relaxing the real action had to start: we were going to raft! The place were this started was unfortunately in the middle of nowhere, so we had to drive an hour and a half through the beautifull landscape of Québec. There were some roads, but most of them were mountainroads: small, a lot of turns and almost gravel-like pavement, so a real challenge for the drivers. Nonetheless, it was a very nice trip.

We first had to get ourselfs a wetsuit, a helmet, a livesuite and a peddle, necessary items to have a fun boattrip. A traditional American schoolbus (which bumped a lot; just like in Southpark, a lot of fun it is!) brought us to the starting point of the rafting, some more in the middle of nowhere, but again a beautifull location.

First the instructors explained the safety rules (mad people, but very secure on safety), and then it started! First some lazy moving over the water, but soon it became better: we exercised some basic skills, like swimming in the fast moving water and flipping the boat (also necessary for some fun) and then it really started!

We went over small and larger falls, immense amounts of water passed by and there was no escape: if you survived a fall, the boat definitely went back to try it again, untill everybody fell into the water, was sought under water and had to swim tens of meters back to the boat or the side of the river. This process was repeated again and again: sometimes very scary, but a lot of fun in general!

The falls had crazy names, for example one was called the washing machine (because it rotated so fast) and one the dryer (because you get very wet, mad people, like I said before). After some lunch, we did the same track again. Cool!

The day ended with some hot bading (really nice, after this exhausting activity) and eating steak. Yum!