WHITEWATER Cost Rica: The Pacuare River

By Tom

London, England

My first summer after college in 2004 I spent the summer working in Costa Rica for a company called Adventures Cross Country leading American teens on outdoor trips. We took them backpacking through the rainforest, sea kayaking on the coast, and whitewater rafting on the Pacuare and Reventazon Rivers. While rafting, we were guided by Rios Tropicales, considered by National Geographic magazine to be one of the top 5 outdoor guiding outfitters in the world. The Pacuare River is also frequently put on top 5 lists for world whitewater rivers, so the experience is not one to be missed.

After arriving in San Jose this week I went in and talked to the folks in the Rios Tropicales office and explained that I was a former ARCC leader that wanted to kayak along with a rafting trip and that my fiancee wanted to come along in a raft. While they don't normally bring kayakers along, they made an exception for me and wrangled up a kayak and some gear for me to follow along on a rafting trip.

The Pacuare cuts a deep gorge through the mountainous jungle terrain of eastern Costa Rica. When Julia and I arrived at the put-in the next morning, we stepped off the bus and were immediately greeted by a giant tarantula on the ground. I loaded into my kayak (after checking it for spiders of course) and Julia loaded onto a raft with the Pacuare's only female raft guide and we headed down the river. The water was warm and tropical and we both wore only our life jackets, contrasting sharply with the rivers we run in Wyoming and Idaho where the water temperature is laughably close to freezing and we typically wear thick layers of dry-tops and fleece. We could hear howler monkeys growling in the trees around us and waterfalls cascaded into the river from the surrounding cliffs.

The Pacuare River' sole female raft guide, Andrea

The water was higher than normal because of increased rains that week. The Pacuare has almost continuous class III (on a scale of I-V) whitewater, with four class IV rapids thrown in there. While I have kayaked and rafted class V before, I feel more more comfortable in class IV rapids as there is frankly much less chance of drowning. The safety kayaker for the rafting trip that led me down the river said that he took someone like me down the river a month earlier and the guy had swam out of his kayak eight or nine times until they finally tied his kayak to a raft and made him paddle in the raft. I made it through the bigger class III's and the first few class IV's without having to roll my kayak, although the technical, manic class IV's did get my attention. I was also caught slightly by surprise in one rapid by a big hole that I dropped into and muscled my way out of, coming up to see the safety kayaker and a couple of the raft guides looking at me with a look of stunned surprise in their wide eyes.

I was told that the last class IV is the biggest and by far the most difficult for a kayaker. In all of the rapids up until that point, we had run them ahead of the rafts and then set up to rescue any swimmers most of the way down them. I hate running rapids among rafts as they block your view of the rapid and you stand a good chance of either running into them or them running you over. (In my first three-week trip down the Grand Canyon, the only time I swam out of my kayak in 218 miles of whitewater was during a raft-on-kayak collision). However, a nearby kayaker was getting tumbled around in a hole just above the last class IV so the safety kayaker and I waited to make sure he was all right. By the time we were swept into the last class IV, we were in the middle of the seven rafts. "I don't like this ONE BIT!" I complained loudly to no one in particular. I danced my way down the rapid dodging rafts and feeling like a squirrel on a highway among semi-trucks, but got pushed off my line and knocked over on the very last big wave,trying a couple of times before finally rolling up.

There is always a sigh of relief one breathes after making it through the biggest rapid on the river. The feeling of having made it among a group of kayakers or several boats of raft guides is palpable. The last class IV rapid feeds into a flat pool surrounded by sheer, green cliffs with a waterfall cascading into the river and an Indiana Jones-style foot bridge suspended above it. From there on, I breathed easier and spent more time talking to Julia in her raft and enjoying the beautiful scenery and easy whitewater of the river.

Image from tripsource.com