White Water Rafting

Quinn feeling better. Fun to have her back

Yoga (just me and Shelby this time). Breakfast (no Quinn). A bit of downtime.  Then...

...off to white water rafting (with Quinn!)

Yeah.  Quinn was ready to rally.  We are pretty confident that she has mono again.  Possibly Strep. Because of the possibility of the latter, we started a course of antibiotic (I bring a couple of Z-packs overseas for this very reason).

Not much to share here.  We went rafting.  We were placed in Raft 1 with Warner, our guide, and a couple from Canada. There were 9 total boats in this tour - 6 guests to a boat, plus a guide.  Warner is one of the jefes here so our boat ran first and he had the whistle to order the other boats when to depart or meet up again.  The big boss, Hiram, went last. Among the crew were two kayakers - one went on ahead to take pictures while the other trailed in case of a "swimmer."  You don't want to be a "swimmer."

The rapids were class 2 and class 3. Fairly tame, but fun nonetheless. We got good and wet and I almost went overboard twice (swimmer).  Our guide was awesome.  He has been doing this for 19 years.  He let us voluntarily Go into the water during a calm stretch of the river and then even let us do a class 1 set of rapids as "swimmers."  Feet up and feet forward to protect against rocks. Quinn, Aubrey, Shelby and I all floated down the river for about 20 minutes this way. Very cool.

We took a break halfway thru the tour for fresh pineapple and watermelon. The guides just flip a raft over and slice up about 3 dozen Pineapples and watermelon -  and there we ate off of our makeshift table while on a rocky shore. Goats wandered up to us from a local farm and ate rinds out of our hands.

The last half of the river was pretty tame. But I gave my GoPro to one of the kayakers. Can't wait to see that footage.

A toast! Extracting sugar to make Cachaça

After the rafting we got a nice Casado meal again from a local organic farm/restaurant. I liked it. They also served some coffee grown and roasted from the farm. Mild roast. Very good (I don't usually love straight coffee, but this was good). After the meal they showed us how they extract sugar water from the cane. We sampled the juice. We (I) then sampled the fermented, 100 proof drink from the sugar cane.  One tiny little sip for me and Quinn was enough. Gross. Tasted like rubbing alcohol smells.

From there we went back to the hotel. Room service tonight for us. Quinn is hungry (she hasn't eaten anything yet today).  Hopefully she is trending the right way.

By 7:30am we will outa here on our way to Tamarindo.

Finally! Arenál with no clouds! Magnificent!