Drop Me in the Pacuare

Location:
Costa Rica

Pacuare River, rafting, rainforest

By Brandon Markway

My girlfriend, Sarah, and I landed in San Jose, Costa Rica late on a Thursday. We were greeted by throngs of taxi drivers vying for our affection, as taxi drivers often do. We quickly chose one just to get out of the chaos and directed him to our hostel. He drove with maddening jitteriness and at speeds that did not feel right. Despite being an engineer, I could not guess with any confidence what might (or might not) happen to our bodies were we to actually hit another car while traveling at 160 km/h. We eventually made it to our hostel where we could rest, adjust to everything and start to enjoy a relaxing vacation.

We had come to Costa Rica for adventure, but I’d had my fill just trying to make it from the airport to our bed. At our hostel, we looked at things to do around San Jose and found that there was a rafting trip leaving around o’dark-thirty. We’d wanted to raft the Pacuare River, but that night I thought we could just approximate the excitement by taking cabs around the city. We learned that rafting the Pacuare –one of the top five rivers in the world (we were told)– could soon end due to proposals to dam it. A few hours later we were boarding a van for our day of rafting an 18-mile stretch through Costa Rican jungle.

The Pacuare River winds through beautiful canyons of virgin rain forest. It was late in the day when I could appreciate this, since the river wasted no time introducing us to the class III-IV rapids it promised. We were told that the initial stretch would be the time to learn to work together, as if this was a three-legged race and the worst that could happen with limited practice was a few grass stains. When we hit the real whitewater, I could not remember ever being on watercraft before like this. I was in the front, incessantly dipping under the water, but without worries as I was too busy trying to follow every barked command. I can’t be sure of the exact rapid, if it was “Pin Ball” or “Double Drop” or “Certain Concussion,” but at some point we became completely vertical before the raft swallowed us. I bobbed up and down, inhaling water and scraping rocks. I was sure this was the end. What an awful way to go –drowning on my second ever rafting trip. As I weakened, I hit a spot where I came up and was not immediately thrown back under. A man in a kayak reached out, pulled me up and got me to the overturned raft. One...two...three people lying atop the raft. Our guide was scanning the water. I panicked.

“Where’s Sarah?”

Our guide apparently was still trying to get to know us, because he replied,  “What? Who?”

“My girlfriend, Sarah! Where is she? The female, the smallest one, the only one not here."

He pointed to her motionless head, her lifeless arms, moving through the rapids. As she got closer, panic turned to despair. Then as he pulled her aboard and she rolled over, the most overwhelming relief I’d ever felt overcame me. She smiled with a calmness that betrayed our recent dip into merciless water. How could she float downstream in those wild waters with such nonchalance? She simply followed the directions that my instincts ignored.

Following our unplanned dip, we stopped for lunch along the riverbank and I couldn’t have been happier to be stationary. I hoped they might dam it while I enjoyed my snack. When we resumed our trip, the next couple miles showed the gentler side of the Pacuare. It was so hot by then, and the waters calm enough, that we jumped in and floated alongside the raft for a while. The previous turbulence completely left my mind as I let the current have control. As we approached the last run of rapids, before our take-out spot, I was the last to reluctantly crawl out. I had forgiven these waters and we easily made the final run. When we left the water for the insane city, I only hoped the Pacuare would always remain untamed. Today, it still is.