Day 121: Rafting, Sans White Water

We all woke up today after a good long sleep, and surprisingly none of us had a hangover! We packed up all our gear and drove on out of town to seek out the river we had booked ourslves at for rafting. Our appointment was for 11am and we arrived just in time at the river! We met our rafting guide, the other 3 people who had signed up for this raft, and then got all suited up with gear. We walked down to the river's edge and were led into an exercise session to loosen up our joints for the trip. Our rafting guide didn't speak a word of English so Eric had to translate everything for us!
I had been rafting once before back home in BC and remember it being an absolute blast. This was going to be great fun!!!

The river's water was actually pleasantly cool (unlike the frigid waters we had swam in with the teen girls the day before) and the gorge was absolutely beautiful. Steep volcanic rock walls with waterfalls and dramatic cliffs welcomed us as we hopped onto the raft and set sail downstream.

It turned out to be a fun day, but not quite as exciting as we had hoped for... The rivers are really low this time of year, so there was pretty much no 'white water' on this waterway for us to throw ourselves down! In fact, the water was so shallow in places that we often got stuck on rocks! A few times, we even got stuck mid-rapid and had to GET OUT OF THE RAFT and CARRY OUR RAFT to deeper water! Where's the adventure in that? That part was kinda disappointing, but we still had great fun. The weather was hot, the scenery gorgeous, and we got to do some swimming and even some cliff-diving in the gorge. And hey for only $28CDN for three hours of being outdoors on a river who can complain? We all had good times and got REALLY SUNBURNED! My knees were crimson-red by the end of the day and hurt like hell. Feel free to call me Lobster Boy!

After rafting we were all starved but wanted to have dinner back in the city so we drove back to Seoul. It took about 2 hours to get back to the city and luckily traffic was fairly minimal. We headed back to Itaewon and then went and had a DELICIOUS dinner at an Indian restaurant. I've had some disappointing Indian food here in Korea, but this was sinfully scrumptious! We gorged ourselves on the buffet and then rolled on home afterwards. Rafting didn't turn out quite as we had hoped for, but we still had a blast this weekend. It just goes to show that often the most fun things in life are the times that are totally random and completely un-planned (like frolicking with teen girls in creeks, or dancing with Koreans at a BBQ under the stars!) Haha! :-)