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“RROOWW!” “HARRD” “HARRDERR!”

Panic sinking in, nine oars thrusting into the foamy, white, roaring water, we row for our lives right into the thick of a Grade 5 rapid, and the impending doom that I somehow seemed to get a front-seat view of, stupidly volunteering to go up front. It’s fair to say I’m well and truly bricking it!

Death's door at The Nile's source

Simon Wadsworth
2006-09-04 10:59:52

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rapid. I could steer the raft right, to a Grade 4, and float us safely through with a few bumps, but you don’t want that.” (“Yes we do” said a couple of the girls). “No no, that’s dull. The other option is to get to a place called the 50:50, where a 3m wave meets a 5m wave into a hole. I can try and get us into there and if you can row it hard enough, I can made it 80:20 that we flip, ok? But you have to row hard otherwise we’ll end up in The Bad Place and you don’t want to go in there. You really don’t want to go in there. So row hard when I tell you, ok?”

We rowed bloody hard!

I’m not sure what the odds eventually were, but we did flip again, and once again all nine of us were chucked into the full force of nature, one of those helmets will be mine trying to survivelike a spider down a plughole, before coming out the other side, every one of us with a cut somewhere on our bodies. We were shaking, overjoyed with mutual relief and pride that we had survived, even if most of us had another day to go, and many never wanting to flip again.

That night, with free beer, punch, soda and dinner, we camped on an island in the middle of the Nile, sitting round the campfire talking, and, with probably a slight over-obsession, watched horny fireflies trying to attract a mate, before getting some much needed sleep in our tents.

Until the final two rapids, the second day was much calmer, and for some of the way, we connected all the rafts together and sunbathed or swam, while gently floating further down the Nile, stuffing our faces with Cadbury’s éclairs. On the penultimate rapid, those that wanted to flip swapped with those that didn’t, but we still ironically didn’t flip, so we just jumped out instead! Then we came to Manilal (‘The Crazy One’ in Swahili), the last rapid of the trip, and due to the back-current, one we could go through again and again (if anyone felt inclined).

Basically, ...