Rafting the Nile
“Paddle harder!” I eyed the immense wall of white water to our right and pushed my paddle down with all of my energy, but I just scooped air – the raft was already vertical. I looked straight into a churning mass of white and green foam and grabbed onto the rope. My body rolled sideways as water seethed into the raft, covering everyone with a slick foamy coat. I held on.
Suddenly I was up again, paddling fiercely against several angry waves. I looked behind us at Silverback, the grade five rapid we just tumbled down, and watched another raft topple sideways and flip over forcefully. The rafters waved their arms wildly trying to resurface from under the crushing water.
As we were the only raft to stay afloat the whole day, we praised ourselves for being amazing rafters and took pleasure in a long stretch of calm water. As the other rafts continued downstream to attack two more rapids we pulled in to a lodge called The Haven and enjoyed an enormous lunch, a nap in a hammock, a three course dinner, and beautiful accommodation. Doug, Leonie and I’s rafting adventure was a two day event.
Rafting and kayaking are extremely popular at the source of the Nile. With an assortment of everything from exhilarating grade threes to fearsome grade five rapids, the Nile has some of the best rafting in the world and the depth of the water makes it ideal for beginners. Kayakers also train here in the winter and the whole area has an air of excitement and adventure.
Thabani, our guide, was one of the first Africans to set foot on a raft. He guided the Zambezi for nearly ten years, did four seasons in Colorado and has since taught numerous locals to enjoy adventure sports on the river they depend on every day. The next morning, encouraged by our anything-goes attitude and our excitement of the previous day’s success, he decided to try out some runs he wouldn’t normally do. This time we were not so lucky. We flipped the raft four times that day – the first two day expedition ever to do so.
The worst was at Vengeance, a rapid we would normally power through with little more than a good drenching and an adrenaline rush. We hit a wave sideways and Doug flew out, though he was still grasping onto the rope attached to the side of the raft. “Get him in! Get him in!” yelled Thabani, but three seconds later he was yelling “Leave him! Leave him!” The look on Doug’s face said it all – eyes wide with horror and mouth wide with excitement. He let go.
Leonie and I turned simultaneously to see where we were headed, and immediately gasped a huge breath of air. A swell of undulating white rose ominously in front of us and with a sudden violent thrust we were upside down. Since I was on the opposite side where we were trying to rescue Doug, I was the first to go under and after much washing machine upside down and backwards rolling under water I grasped something – the boat! I was hoping I’d be able to find the “Cathedral”, which is the space under a flipped boat where tiny bits of sunlight filter through and you can catch your breath, but I didn’t find any air; just rubber. I scrambled in any direction I could, but the river has its own way of directing traffic – once your hand may reach the open air and then suddenly you are thrust upside down again and can’t figure out which direction is up.
Eventually my head reached the surface and I found Leonie’s wide eyes looking at me with a frantic expression. I had been under a long time. Coughing and sputtering, Thabani pulled me into the raft by my life jacket and I lay on the bottom for a minute before I realized that Doug wasn’t there. I looked up to see him in the safety raft, fist-pumping the air and yelling outrageously.
For Nile Special, the last rapid of the day, we had the option of swimming down through the waves. Leonie opted to stay in the boat and Doug and I were going to hop out and float down solo when we were told it was safe to do so. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it to the point where we were supposed to jump. We hadn’t paddled hard enough to avoid the large wave to our right, and Doug and I, vertical in the raft, got launched out before we could do it ourselves. When I resurfaced, I was already far downriver. I held onto the safety kayak and Doug floated by me, beaming. Leonie and Thabani were nowhere to be seen.
Several minutes later Doug and I were both in the safety raft, but there was still no sign of them. The raft we just fell out of was violently surfing upside down at Nile Special wave, flipping and turning and being thrust around. Suddenly Leonie and Thabani drifted toward us in the current, wide-eyed and dazed. They had held on tight and surfed the wave for several minutes, their bodies repeatedly dunked into the rushing water and popped back out again and eventually flipped over altogether. “That,” said Thabani, shaking his head as he climbed into the safety raft, “has never happened on Nile Special before.”
Once we got our wits about us and waited for our raft to be spit out of Nile Special, we pulled into the Hairy Lemon, a secluded lodge on an island where we enjoyed cold beers and made a toast to both our horrific paddling and to our survival. Certainly a highlight of my journey so far, I have successfully rafted the Nile and am in the process of de-worming myself from the many, many parasitic organisms that can be found in the water. Ah, the magic of Africa.
These are some photos I took of other rafts at the rapid called The Bad Place. I also got some great footage with a headcam I mounted onto my helmet. Once I get it edited down into something more manageable, I will share it. Not for the easily seasick.
