World Travel Guide Online

White Rump Rafting
Verdon River, France
As my body bounced hard across a range of submerged rocks, I reflected longingly on the time, just a few minutes earlier, when I had been peacefully drifting along a tranquil, innocuous river. I was warming up to the river then, back when the day seemed poised to inundate me only with awe-inspiring sights and the calm gurgling of slow-moving water – before the river showed its malicious underbelly.

One lazy summer, after spending a few uneventful weeks on the French Riviera, I decided to test my mettle in the machismo-enhancing adventure sports of the Verdon River region. Unfortunately, I found upon my arrival that the Verdon was running too low for most adventurous undertakings – there was a drought in the area, and the local dam hadn’t been opened in several weeks.

White-water rafting was off, but it turned out that these were ideal conditions for a leisurely alternative called a “canyon walk,” which sounded amenably spiritual, if not in any way manly. I decided to give it a try.

I met my fellow indolent adventurers – a middle-aged Dutch couple and a younger Austrian couple – at the rafting company’s gear barn. The Dutch were curiously energized by the prospect of our planned stroll, and engaged me in friendly banter while we awaited the arrival of our guide. One of the staffers helped us pick out our gear and suit up in the meantime.

The equipment required for the walk was, to be honest, a little disconcerting. First I tugged myself into a wetsuit, since the water
was rumored to be somewhat cold. Then I donned a helmet and a life vest, in case I should get swept up by the current. The alarms that began to ring in the back of my mind were not to relent for the remainder of the day, but I was far too naively enthusiastic at this point to pay them much attention.

Shortly afterwards, our guide appeared – a man I soon came to think of as The Deceiver. He said a few words of advice and encouragement (which should have triggered concern amongst all of us that his reassurances were necessary, but there you have it), and shuttled us a few miles away to the walk’s starting point.

There I was tossed directly into surprisingly deep, icy waters along with the other members of the party. We consoled each other with looks of panic and consternation, feeling all the while almost exactly like we’d been robbed and thrown into a river. I attempted to voice a query as to how thrashing about in the water qualified as a canyon walk, but it was difficult to communicate while the river was determinedly doing its best to put an end to my respiratory functions.

Sensing his precarious and rapidly diminishing authority with the group, The Deceiver cleverly distracted us with a dare. Without further guidance or insight, he encouraged each of us to scale and then jump from a five-meter-tall cliff into a swirling lagoon. To the best of my recollection, our target was approximately the size of a bucket. For reasons that remain unclear to me, we all took the bait and one-by-one plunged feet-first into the indicated puddle.

When it came my turn to leap, I hesitated for only a moment. I’ve always been a bit of an idiot about jumping from great heights (much to my mother’s dismay). But after all, we were on a guided tour – what could possibly go wrong?

I learned the answer to this unspoken question just moments later, when, following my screaming descent, the Dutch couple kindly advised me to keep my legs slightly bent on any future jumps – so that if I were to strike something below the surface of the water, I wouldn’t break my legs. This, honestly, seemed like the sort of thing that our guide should have mentioned beforehand. I looked up the rock face to see The Deceiver smiling down at me. He entered his brief freefall with his knees slightly bent.

Once the death-defying performances were completed, we merged into the river proper and drifted for a while. The gentle current tugged us along as we stared up at incredible gorge walls – the magnificent accomplishments of the very water that chilled our bones. It was a breathtaking experience to see the Gorges du Verdon this way. The combination of everyone’s bulky protective gear and the amazing backdrop made us feel more like explorers on another planet than gullible tourists shelling out cash to be repeatedly almost-drowned. This was more like it.

This serene period left me fully off my guard for what followed, and I’m sure the whole thing was part of The Deceiver’s cunning plan to bring everyone as close to death as he could manage without ensuing litigation.

My companions dropped out of sight one at a time. I thought I could hear their distant screams, but it was hard to be certain because of a roaring noise whose volume, I noted with alarm, was quickly growing louder. As I crested a line of rocks, I knew abject terror. Rapids.

When one sees white-water rafters bouncing along through river rapids and thinks, “They’re so dead. Definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent dead,” one doesn’t ever really stop to consider that at least those fools have an inflated raft between them and their doom. Take away the raft and what you’re left with is essentially a water-powered meat-grinder.

Enter the rapids. I pointed my feet downstream and held my arms out to the sides as I had been instructed, “to safely float with the current.” A belligerent rock lashed out and taught me to keep my rear end raised toward the surface. But once my hindquarters were pulled in line with the rest of me, my body’s hull dynamics became exceptionally more dangerous. I gained speed at a distressing rate. Within a few moments I was on a high-speed collision course for a very unfriendly looking outcrop.

The current spun me sideways before I slammed against the rock, so I completely missed my shock absorption opportunities and crashed directly into the boulder with a solid hip-check. The impact was staggering. As I considered the new pain signals flooding my brain, I took a silver-lining moment and reasoned that at least my collision would put an end to the problem – surely this sudden rendezvous with the rock had lowered my speed enough for me to limp over the rest of the rapids at a safe pace.

I was overcome with dismay as I realized this was not the case. Rather, the incident had left me stranded in even more dangerous currents that snaked through the most ferocious part of the rapids. I flailed out of control and pinballed my way along the river, adding bruises at a shocking rate until the white water abruptly ended, some fifty meters further along.

When I finally drifted out of the rapids, the person in front of me, one of the Austrians, gave only a quick glance in my direction. Since I was last in line, no one had witnessed my violently embarrassing white-rump rafting demonstration. That, at least, was a small consolation. I later passed off my noticeable limp as a pre-existing condition brought on by diabolical otters. I lived, somehow. In the end (at least everyone’s but mine), it was enough fun to justify the $20.00 cost. I particularly recommend it to anyone who can float in a full suit of armor.