This morning we woke up had to be ready to begin the day by
9:30am. We then bundled into a couple of mini buses and drove for two hours to
where the water rafting begins on the Nile. We were split up into groups of 9s
and 7s and given a brief training exercise on the river which included flipping
the raft over so that we ended up floundering in the Nile. The whole rafting
trip was 22km and lasted about 5 hours.
As soon as the training exercises were done we were
instantly thrown into the deep end. Our raft chose to do the most difficult
route which began with going over a waterfall called overtime and then a rapid
called Chop Suey. Overtime was pretty scary and we were all drenched, but the
raft didn’t flip and no one fell out. Our rafts under the leadership of the mad
and hung over Aussie Captain Tom were the only raft to do the Chop Suey rapid.
The rapid began pretty well, Tom was continuously yelling at us to row and then
to get down and hold on. Chop Suey saw the raft’s first loss, Holly disappeared
from the raft when a huge wave crashed over us. It was later revealed that
Captain Tom may of accidentally pushed her off the raft while trying to protect
himself from the wave, but the details are contested. 
We went through one more rapid before we arrived at the BAD
PLACE! Before we went into the bad place we got to see a raft flip over with
volunteers going everywhere, this surprisingly didn’t do much to boost our
confidence. As soon as we got into the bad place we were hit by a huge wave that
instantly took out Emily. Next thing I saw was Chris’s legs as he was thrown
out. The raft steadied out for a split second as a huge wave came up behind us
which Robyn, sitting opposite me couldn’t see. The last thing she did was laugh
before she was flung overboard. Kate decided she didn’t want to be taken overboard
so decided she would leap off the raft. Suddenly I was the only remaining
person left on my half of the raft and the last thing I saw was the panicked
wide eyes of Samir before I was plunged under water, spinning around and
swallowing half the Nile. I briefly resurfaced and then went back under; I was
picked up by a screaming man in a kayak and put into a safety raft. According
to one of the instructors who filmed our raft, we did the best surf all year.
As I was in the safety raft I was able to watch a couple of other rafts attempt
the bad place, one raft full of Chinese people lasted literally 3 seconds. As
the raft went up the wave the instructor leaped out straight away, the raft
continued up the wave and then went upside down in the air. It seemed as though
for a brief moment the sky was full of screaming Chinese people.
I later got back to my raft and it turned out the last
people on the raft were Lotty, Samir, Holly and Zeddy who were wiped out some time after me. After
the panic of THE BAD PLACE we had lunch and went back out rafting. We did a
couple of more hours of rafting and leaped into the Nile a couple of times, had
a BBQ by the rafts and then went back to the campsite.
At the campsite we stayed up late drinking, we made Captain
Tom do 6 shots, down a pint, do a funnel and hang upside down in the kayak
attached to the ceiling while he did another shot. He was very hung over the
next morning. I ended up being talked into doing a funnel and a load of shots
before going to bed.
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