Messing about on the river
17 March 2018
Judy and myself decided to go all the way back up to the Rio Grande river today so that we could take a ride on one of the lazy river rafts. We had real problems getting the right price for the route taxi 🚕 because it varies from 150 JAM$ to 1500 JAM$. Then when we had the correct price we told them that we would only take a red licence plate taxi (because we were told to do so and for insurance purposes) so they closed ranks and tried to intimidate us, they said it was a long walk to the river, (over15 Km) so we just walked 💯 metres round the bend and flagged another one down who wasn't in on the con. Then when we got to the raft area and found our guide/rafter he doubled the price from what he told us yesterday, we decided not to ride, when we got back into the taxi 🚕 the driver took us a few hundred metres back down the road and got us onto another raft, we had a great gentle ride up stream, the rafter worked extremely hard both punting with a pole and pulling us along through the shallow rapids. We saw where the high water marks were and the destruction that was caused by the flood water 💦. At around midday 🕛 we turned back down stream, I jumped off the raft and decided to swim in the cool 😎 waters, it was very easy using the flow of water to take me back but I had to climb back on when we got to the shallows, in total I swam about a mile. The swim was just the thing to keep me cool in the midday heat. We saw plenty of wildlife including a very large buzzard.
When we returned to the road we waited for our return taxi 🚕 and had a beer 🍻 at one of the many shacks/pubs on the roadside, here I met a young Street wise man (6 years old) called Kevin, I showed him a few finger tricks and bought him a drink.