White water rafting Follow us on

White Water Rafting in Abruzzo, what an experience! I have to admit I thought I would get a big group together and use them as an excuse to try it out, as I was so scared about it. But now I feel almost silly that I felt like that, it was AWSOME!!!! The instructors where so nice and professional and made the experience just a complete fun event! It all started with getting to Civitella Messer Raimondo, what a view! The lake turquoise green and did I mention the view! Just wow! We got kitted out at the Rafting centre and then there was a 20 minute journey up-hill, again the views were breath taking. Once at the bank of the river we entered the water. We were all warned it?s cold and it?s mountain water, but even if the weather was 30 degrees, the water was 10 degrees and we were all glad we had the wet-suits on! Each boat had an instructor, Luca, Jeason, Stefano, Davide, Simone. We were split into groups of 4-6 people for each boat. The adventure begins! They gave us some basic training on the commands we had to follow, -Avanti-, -Indietro-, -Stop-, -Dentro-, -Up, -Tenersi- . We were told that the water level was low as it was the summer, and therefore we had to avoid more rocks than normal! Oh my God! It was amazing, Luca our instructor sure made us do more ?Dentro-, where we mainly went inside the boat and then ?UP- where we sat at the edge of the boat again, sometimes just for the benefit of doing it, but we did not mind. The team work between the instructors and the boats was unique, we were waiting for each other, making sure everybody had passed the more difficult passages on the river. Of course there was a competitive streak in every one of us, and we would cheer when some difficult passage would be conquered, and splash the other group if they would overtake us. But also we would help each other, and cheer each other on, when one boat would get stuck! Now imagine our surprise when we got stuck and the boat would not go anywhere, and Luca just shouts at us ?Saltellare forte-, they had not explained this command, so there was a bewilderment in the boat, what do we have to do? Looking at each other we were confused and not going anywhere? so we turned around to see Luca and all the other boats instructor jumping up and down to show us what to do! We all jumped repeatedly to dislodge the boat and laughed even harder till we started moving again. The complete group stopped for a break where we were shown how to float down stream in the white waters , but oh my God was the water cold. It just made us all the more determent not to fall into the water. It was almost 2 hours of complete and utter fun which taught us team work and friendship. A very special experience.