A White Water Philosophy
- 5 Nov 07, 11:28 AM
Posted from: Abancay
Today was by far the biggest day on the Apurimac! Before today we'd been having fun rafting down grade 3 and 4 rapids - my first experience of rafting and I loved it! The crew were alternately rafting and filming and everyone was just getting the hang of manipulating the boats and enjoying themselves.
Bruce among the rapids
Today though, the river really started to get exciting and difficult. It was a real compliment to me that our river guides wanted me to have an attempt at the massive 5+ rapids, but this water can be really quite dangerous - even our river guides, who know this river and raft it frequently, have flipped over going down some of these white water sections.
Bruce鈥檚 boat speeds past.
Obviously, it's important for the crew to get footage of me giving the big rapids my best shot and this meant that before huge rapids like the Toothache, which really is a potentially dangerous ride, there was a lot of waiting for the cameras to be set up before I got back in the boat to take it on. This basically gave me a lot of time to get nervous, particularly with everyone else commenting that the more they looked at this thing, the more scared they got!
The river guide follows Bruce down the river.
Fortunately I didn't get particularly scared - I consciously rationalize in these situations to recognize that the excitement and anticipation of doing something adventurous is positive and that's why you do it! I make myself see the worry as a negative emotion, and for me, it's not something I should focus upon and let develop. So, that was my rafting philosophy today - and it obviously worked because I had a great time. A truly amazing two days on the Apurimac river!
The team
This blog was transcribed from an audio recording
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