Birthday Adventures

The kids and I spent the day celebrating my birthday going down the Cartecay River.  Who knew what an adventure it would be?!?  Oh my!  I thought it was weird that I had personally never been down this river, nor heard of anyone else tubing down this river.  Turns out that there are only a couple of places now renting tubes for this adventure, and it has not been commercialized AT ALL.  We were put out on the side of the road…literally, given the well thought out instructions of "I'll pick you up after the waterfall in about 3 hours".  Wait, what did you say…waterfall???  To which he replied, "Oh it's not a real waterfall"  Famous last words I believe.

Needless to say, we had quite the adventure going down this river for 4 hours.  The boys went down in kayaks, me and the girls each had an inner tube.  There were many obstacles and many rapids to get through.  We all kicked it to survival mode at the end when faced with some of those "not real waterfalls".  All I kept saying to the kids was well we can say we are having an ADVENTURE!  Trying to keep them all from freaking out on me.  One thing to remember was there was no other alternative once we were on that river.  We had to just keep swimming swimming swimming…

In the end, we were very grateful to have that little bus pick us up after the not real waterfalls, where we all felt we escaped death. And very happy to get back into my little van headed home.  Here are a few pics from the internet on the Cartecay and the bridge where the not real waterfalls are at the pickup area.  Yes, we had no choice but to venture down these the best we could in innertubes!

Here are some pics of what the rest of the river looked like for the other 3 hours:

PS:  I just saw this posted on a groupon post for a rafting company on the cartecay:  Pro Tip: It is a small roller coaster-type experience. Individuals should have an adventurist personality.

UM YES, describes it perfectly!