Liquid Death

Our White Water Rafting experience on the Pacuare River in Costa Rica.
Photos by DeAnne (for the most part)
Captions by Batman (the opinions expressed are not necessesarily those of the creator of this blog . . . except the ones about how hott Brandon is)

The Pacuare river was beautiful, even during the muddy, rainy season! The rest of the year the water is clear. I did write letters to Brandon, Jocelyn and Kal just in case I didn't make it. I was a little nervous . . .but I had an excellent time and look forward to white water rafting again! Pura Vida!!

On with the experience:

So these are the muddy, anaconda filled waters of Costa Rica. I don't know what crazy person came up with the idea to jump in some overfilled plastic boat which is basically the water riding equivalent of an ejector seat. But, here we are on this beautiful river during the rainy season. Pura Vida!!




Just look at this magnificent, moss-covered deathtrap just waiting to capture any sucker dumb enough to get close. And if we look to the left, we see a suckerus humanus ready to test it out. Pura Vida!!


Here we have the Stud/Dud pairing. Fortunately, both were geeked up in dorky looking helmets and almost useless lifevests just so that there was more equality in the world. Pura Vida!!



Here is a girl who was always trying to make a move on me during the trip. Even when my wife was sitting across the boat. I guess it must have been the way that the plastic kept pulling my boardshorts up so high that the Olympic divers in Beijing were starting to get jealous. I had to let her down easy. She was a pretty good row partner, though, despite what our drill instructor a.k.a. guide thought about our pairing. Pura Vida!!





Here is some guy hitting shamelessly on my wife. Again, I blame the shorts which are altogether distracting. Mom was also showing a little bit of nervousness as we began. Honestly, she'd already been through the zipline. How hard could this be? Pura Vida!!



And there is the Loser boat, guided by Cristian, the Latin version of Dave Erickson (he's not in the picture, but if you'd seen him and had any clue who Dave is, then you might actually know what I'm talking about). We did our best to ditch them, but they just kept following. Oh well, I guess we could be nice. Pura Vida!!



Don't let it's beauty fool you. Many a virgin we sacrificed over this waterfall in hopes that the tribe would be more fertile. I think they should have kept the virgins and tried harder. P.S. if you actually believe what I'm saying here, well time for another CT. Pura Vida!!



Here we have a man overboard. He was actually so good looking, that everyone in the boat jumped out to save him. They used the excuse "this pretty canyon is the only place safe enough to get out and swim," but I knew better. Pura Vida!!



Apparently, they had a hard time figuring out which side of the boat I was on. Pura Vida!!



Here's Chris, close to our boat. His boat was actually no where in sight at the time. We just left him. Pura Vida!!



How many pictures of these guys do we need? Pura Vida!!



Again, here is half of the Stud/Dud team. We also left him since he was too busy flexing his muscles to get in the boat. Pura Vida!!



And here is DeAnne, sporting one of the lovely bandanas we all had on her wrist. Little did she know that pretty soon, she would be red, white and blue. Good thing the Olympics were going on. Pura Vida!!!!



Well, we survived. Despite the intense aching in our shoulders and the severe burns everyone of us received to our lower thighs, we really had an awesome time. The river has class III and IV rapids. The only thing bigger is class V, so not bad for a bunch of beginners. Too bad we don't have a picture of our drill instructor/guide. I could have used it for motivation for the rest of my life. . . to stay out of the military. Pura Vida!!



This is what we call Collateral Damage. We had to shave DeAnne bald after this. There were some awkward questions about her health, but we made it through. PURA VIDA!!!!!!!!!