Pura Vida Costa Rica - Day 8

White Water Rafting Day

Today we traveled from San Jose to the other side of the continental divide for a white water rafting tour.

This is a shot from the mountainside road that brought us there.

Here is something I hadn't seen before. Two rivers converging, one fro the top of an active volcano, the other, just feed from mountain steams and rain water. The difference is striking!

Here we are headed to "Nowhere Costa Rica"  and I see this sign for Copa America Centenario. This is a tournament being held in the USA for the very first time in June. I have tickets to one of the games being played in Chicago, USA vs Costa Rica of all match ups! I believe the Ticos have a good chance of beating us in this game, so it would behoove the residents of this area to sign a satellite contract to watch the game... We'll see.

 The rafting tour starts out of this little village. We take our bus to the river, but it can't take us all the way to the launch, There are too many snakes in the area. We then take turn loading small groups into vans to get through the dangerous area.

**picture/video coming**

Here we are, ready for instruction and ready for launch.

Here's a typical stretch of the river.

Here we are in one of the bigger rapids of our class 2-3 tour. We're in a "down" position to avoid being tossed from the boat. Time to get soaked!

You can see our safety guide up ahead in the kayak. He's responsible for pulling people from the river if they get dumped.

Here's our guide with his entourage of river rafts...

And our tour comes to and end on a sandy beach 12 miles from where we started. This was not the most challenging river but that was OK with me. Personally, I've had enough excitement for the time being.

Short walk back to the bus.

This area has a huge number of banana and pineapple fields. Chiquita and Del Monte both have a presence here. You can tell their fields by the plastic bags around the fruit, which helps the fruit stay nice and clean.