Our Great Adventure: San Gil Day 317 01/08/2015

It was both noisy and hot for most of the night and neither of us managed to get much sleep. At least it's cheap! We had breakfast on the roof top terrace of the hostel before getting ready for our rafting adventure, heading to reception for 0900 ready to be picked up anytime between then and 0930. Just before 0930 the lady on reception realised that we'd booked with the hostel and frantically phoned the rafting company. Luckily they were able to send somebody round to pick us up and we headed to their offices by the river to pick up another 2 couples and 1 family who'd also booked to do the trip. After hooking on the dingies we set off in the van to head upstream on the Rio Fonce to where we would get on to the river. There were roadworks on route and the traffic had managed to completely block the road, despite the presence of two (completely useless) people who were suppose to be directing the vehicles. Es Colombia! Surprisingly there was very little blasting of horns, especially for this part of the world. We eventually turned off the road, donned our life jackets and helmets whilst the two instructors took the dingies down to the water. We had checked that the instructors would be able to speak English so were slightly bemused to find that they couldn't. They actually asked a German lady if she could translate for them. Most of the instruction seemed to be about what to do if you fell into the water. After obligatory photos we got into the larger dingy with the other 2 couples with the family heading off in the smaller dingy. The river was fairly benign as we set off but we soon approached the first rapids before reaching calmer water again. For a lot of the time we simply floated down stream which gave a good opportunity to look at the surrounding scenery. Further down stream we hit some rapids side on and 3 of our fellow rafters went in the water. Surprisingly the cameraman was there and took a video of the full event. We both had a very strong suspicion that it was all staged by our instructor. Continuing on we had the opportunity to swim down some of the rapids, all declining with the exception of one guy. It didn't look much fun and the river was very brown so we were glad to stay in the dingy. After about 90 minutes and 10km we reached San Gil. It had been a great experience and one Diane thoroughly enjoyed (despite her concerns of falling in the water and losing her lenses) although it was a bit benign for Simon. We walked back to the hostel to get changed out of our wet clothes before heading out for a late lunch at a small courtyard cafe near the main square. Afterwards we had a walk around the town before wandering back, enjoying ice creams and chilling out on the roof top terrace. In the evening we ate at Sam's gastropub, clearly set up in competition to Gringo Mike's, and enjoyed traditional gringo food of steak/burger and chips which we thought we deserved after our action packed day washed down with a couple of bottles of beer from the BBC!