Whitewater Rafting - San Gil

Located in the mountainous region of Santander San Gil has become the capital for adventure sports in Columbia. Paragliding, caving, abseiling, mountain biking and bungee jumping are all available but by far the most popular is white water rafting as tourists travel from far and wide to take on the unforgiving Rio Suarez.

Considering I have never been fond of water I have spent a lot of time on this trip doing water based activities and rafting the Rio Suarez class 5 rapids has to be the most extreme yet. I did try and convince Karl that we should opt to do the tamer Rio Fonce which has class 1 to 3 rapids but this idea was shot down when the woman in the tour office described it as the baby run.

After psyching myself up we headed off for our day of extreme rafting. Our guidebook advises that this river should be attempted only by experienced rafters. We have done rafting once before in Thailand but that was many years ago and only had one difficult section which was class 4. I certainly wouldn’t say this gave us any kind of expertise. When we met up with the rest of the group it seemed everyone was in the same boat (no pun intended) with only a couple of people having done it more than once or twice.

Before going onto the water we were given a full safety briefing of what to do and what not to do whilst on the river. This included in-depth descriptions of how to react if thrown into the water in the middle of a rapid, what to do if the boat capsizes and what to do if you get stuck under the raft. This gave me a new range of scenarios to be afraid of.

Feeling sick I entered the water. We were given a short training session following the various commands then within minutes we were off down our first set of rapids. It didn’t take long for me to put the fear aside and enjoy the adrenalin pumping fun of being thrown around in the water. Each time we made it through a set of rapids the team cheered and I began to see what all the fuss was about.

During the first of the class 5 rapids the raft falls, spins and almost bends in half but we all say in. At the half way point our instructor gives us a chance to swim in the calmer section of the river. Then it’s back on board for the final half.

The last rapid was another class 5 and the two girls from the group in front of us fell out almost immediately. Listening intently to our instructor we followed and managed to power through. It was an extremely bumpy ride but we made it safely.

We both had a brilliant day and I was so glad I didn’t make Karl do the baby run.

Parque El Gallineral

Our last day in San Gil was a lot more relaxing. We spent the morning strolling through the local park. The trees are given a mystical characteristic as they are all draped in a moss called barbas de Viejo (old man’s beard).

We found a few bright ginger squirrels, a poorly looking parrot and some enormous tree dwelling iguanas.

A nice alternative to the many life threatening activities on offer.