We booked for this with our two grandsons aged 9 and 11, we are in our sixties, and none of us had any experience. Our leader Leon was great, as were the two other guides Tash and Ash. The other people who were on the trip were clearly more experienced. Would i do it again? Absolutely not. For us oldies the trip was beyond us, we had neither the skill or technique required to advance through quite turbulent water (grade 2/3) of the rapids, fortunately we had already made the decision to ask the instructors to take one grandson each, which was a wise decision. We made it through the first quite gentle rapid, but at the next one the ‘Washing Machine’ we came off almost immediately and then were pulled pushed and shoved for a long time being bounced of rocks, pulled into eddies, the flow was so fast we could get into the recovery position, eventually we were rescued, but I was pooped, cut bruised and with a swollen knee and ankle. One of my grandson’s and his instructor also came out of the boat on the same rapid, but he was quickly rescued by her.
At that point we wanted to stop, but …….You can’t get off!
So we managed to get to the end, me squeezed in the middle of the instructor and my younger 9 year old grandson. At the end it was clear that everyone else had a great time, and I stress we were looked after, but there is a moral here, please don’t do this if you haven’t done this before and are older adults, more importantly do not have young children in your boat if you are inexperienced or a greenhorn! Always put them with a instructor. If they had been in our boats, neither my husband and I could have rescued my grandchildren we couldn’t save ourselves. Moreover both grandsons were scared we were going to die and this frightened them. Can’t fault Leon, Tash and Ash for looking after us once we were rescued, and the other group who were experienced has a fab time. But we learnt a valuable lesson, and I dread to think what might have happened had we had one grandson each in our two man boat.