I battled the Nile... and WON

Wow. What a crazy weekend. Really, I just have no idea where to start. We traveled as a group to Jinja (the source of the Nile where we spent a weekend toward the beginning of the semester) for some Nile adventures... a.k.a. white water rafting and bungee jumping. It was CRAZY. Really, there is no other word.

I had been rafting before in the States, but I am pretty sure it was nothing like this. We opted for the all-day class V rapids, which is kind of strange to think that the Nile, which is incredibly calm in some areas, has class V rapids. But let me tell you, it does, and they're intense! After a grand 5-10 minutes of orientation (no joke, it was the shortest orientation ever... and most of it was consumed with giving us life jackets and helmets... but those are pretty important, so its all good) the 25-ish of us and another 15-ish other people piled into open trucks for the drive from our hostel to the river. Then it was time for organizing into rafts-- our raft, "team henry" (Henry was our awesome Ugandan river guide) consisted of Laura, Megan, Tim, Kelsey, and myself. Pretty sweet raft if you ask me.

The river was flat at first, and we got a little bit of still water practice before attacking the rapids. We learned all the commands from Henry-- easy forward, backpaddle, hard forward, lean in, and my personal favorite, "GET DOWN!" We also got a few more words about saftey on the river, including about the safety kayaks that followed us all the way down the river. Nathan, a guide in a different raft, was showing us how to grab on to the kayak if we ended up getting rescued. He showed us a handle on the front of the kayak and said, "don't pull this handle." We looked at him, some people a little confused, and he explained by saying, "if you pull this [insert guide's name here... I can't remember] will not like it. His cover will come off and he might not be wearing any clothes" Haha even though all of the kayaker's were wearing pants... but it gets better. Allie, stop reading. This is PG (maybe PG 13?) rated. Then he said, "and you will see his black mamba and be jealous. You don't want that image for the rest of your life." Yeah... our guides made the trip entertaining :) Seriously though, they were the coolest.

We also practiced fun things like tipping the raft rightside-up for when it gets flipped and attempting to get back into the raft once you are in the water, which believe it or not was the hardest thing we learned. Our final test... swimming (or rather floating) through the first class I rapid. Luckily we all survived :)

We all jumped (or rather flopped) back onto the raft to get ready for the big ones... which we conquered like we were professionals. One of the rapids that we went on was called 50/50 (meaning you have a 50% chance of flipping), but we were literally the only raft that didn't tip. We told Henry that they needed to re-name the rapid to something like 95/5. Really, we were a little disappointed-- they were great fun and got our hearts beating rather quickly don't get me wrong, but as we watched ALL of the other rafts flip upside down, we wondered when it would be our turn. But it was coming...

A while down the river we went on this intense rapid and flipped completely over... exactly what we had been hoping for :) But during the time I was in the water, I wasn't exactly smiling. It was so intense. I really have no idea what happened... we flipped over, I was under the raft at some point, and then an undercurrent dragged me from under the boat and I was under water. During our little safety talk at the beginning of the river they told us that downtime in the Nile is about 10 seconds... meaning you could stay under that long (but probably not longer) before the life jacket brought you to the top. So there I was, under the water, feeling the weight of the rapid all around me, my lungs already starting to burn. Anyone can hold their breath for 10 seconds, I thought... 10 seconds isn't that long. I started counting... 1...2...3...4...5...6...7... the first 7 seconds went by pretty fast and I thought, "I can do this"... 8...9... suddenly the last 3 seconds felt more like 3 minutes... and then I felt the top of my head surface, and I flung my face out of the water to gasp for breath before getting dragged back under and pulled further downstream. Funny thing? I loved it. Well, maybe not around that 9th second, but afterwards I did... when I was back in the raft. Before we went, some people who had gone before told us that this rafting trip was one of the scariest things they had ever done... and that they seriously thought they would die. All we could say was: "yes! lest do this!" Haha. We have serious thrill issues.

Our other flip was a little less terrifying, but definitely fun. The good part was that I held on to the safety rope around the raft the whole time so while there was still a lot of getting thrown around, I wasn't under the water for near as long... and I didn't have a long swim fighting the current to get back to the raft. That was nice. We lost Tim on that rapid though... but a Kayak picked him up and put him on another raft until we got far enough downstream to meet up with them.

So all together we tackled something like 12 rapids, 4 of them class V, and it was one of the most fun things I had done... until the next day...

Sunday was bungee jumping day. Crazy. I went bungee jumping. On the Nile. Ahh! When we first got to the tower, I was terrified, and pretty sure I would chicken out if I didn't pay quickly. Once I gave them my money there was no going back. We all climbed up to the top, and I watched a few people go in front of me. Before I knew it, it was my turn. The man who ran the company was Australian, and luckily his voice had a way of calming my nerves (hurray great accents!) He asked me if I wanted to hit the water and I replied "yeah," sounding way more confident than I really was. "You sound pretty sure of yourself," He replied, "Want a lot of water?" "Uhhhh... maybe just an average amount"

I stood on the scale and the figured out how much rope based on my weight and I sat on a little chair while they wrapped my ankles with a towel for comfort and a strap to hold me to the bungee cord. As a Ugandan man tied me up the Australian, Jack, explained a few things... "When you hit the water, make sure your hands are in front of you and your head tucked in. If not, its a guaranteed two black eyes" Ouch. That didn't sound fun. Feet tied together tightly I jumped to the edge of the tower... and SLOWLY lowered my hands. Before I knew it he was counting down from three and I had no time to think before jumping face first off the edge.

It was an exhilerating and thrilling experience... really there are no words to explain it. You feel like you're flying and falling, all at the same time. Suddenly my hands hit the water, but it wasn't enough warning, and my eyes were still open. I plunged into the Nile up to my ankles, and then was jerked back up, contacts swirling in my eyes (thankfully, they stayed in my eyes... and my shirt, which I thought for a second was going to get left in the Nile, stayed on my body). After bouncing in the air several times I got lowered down into the raft where two more Ugandans untied me and paddled the raft to the edge. Defintely the experience of a lifetime... and I'm alive to talk about it :)

I have a video of my jumping experience... but sadly it won't load... maybe another day!