
On the second day of the cruise, when I had run into the garden lounge to fill up my nalgene before heading out with John, Sue Fan, and Raegen to a Mexican dive shop I felt a tug on my backpack. "Grab 'er. She must know," the raspy voice said. "Ex-cuse me, I'm tawking to her," it continued, tugging on my scuba fins and awkwardly speaking about me in third person to my face. "Where ya goin' with those flippers," the inquisition started at a volume level high enough to create a gaggle of onlookers with hearing aides. The more I explained that I was just getting off the ship and heading to one of the thousands of dive shops in Cozumel, the more suspicious she became and ironically convinced that I was withholding some sort of information that would send her and her man friend on the perfect snorkel.

The description in the field office guide listed class II and III rapids. Not the IIIs and IVs we would like, but fun enough for a leisurely day in Central America. My friend Christine had mentioned that her meal on the rafting trip the year before was the highlight of her voyage, so my stomach growled in anticipation as we loaded the, gasp, coach bus en route to the river.
I knew something was amiss when we stopped after only 45 minutes in an area that was flat. The river we had read about was over two hours away and was of course attached to those things called mountains. When the tour guide went over our schedule, explaining the class I rapids (is there even such a thing?) we were about to embark on, it was clear that when they had loaded the bus earlier that morning and taken inventory of the clientele (there were 5 of us under 60) they decided to amend the itinerary.
Considering the turbulence was on par with the jungle cruise at Disneyland, it was amazing to see how many times we spun out and hit the embankment. "Row! Row!" I would occasionally yell like the self-appointed coxswain, somewhere between frustrated and bemused at the secret decision of our entire boat to stop rowing every time we'd run into the face of a "rapid." "One, Two!" Raegen and I shouted in harmony with our poor guide, who had been berated by Barbara (who despite her inability to use a paddle was apparently a raft master in her former day) on just about every account and was having a challenging time getting our raft forward -- a task I would imagine is unique to class I.

I thought I had seen it all when one of the passengers on another boat, fully clothed beneath his lifejacket, decided to jump out of his boat and into the water. I mean, why not? I was at first concerned that it was the 91 year-old who had just undergone back surgery and was not able to sit -- why that person would voluntarily sign up for a rafting trip, we will never know. The good news was that it was a man who had only suffered from overheating, and the calm waters made it possible to actually jump out of a raft during a rafting trip without any possibility of drowning or drifting.

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