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Wednesday October 4, 3007 (Day 8)
Whitewater Rafting
Our exciting day of white water rafting started when we where picked up at our hotel in Port Dougles
and taken on a scenic drive to the Tully river, 1 ½ hours south of Cairns. The road snaked through
the Great Dividing Range and passed rainforest-clad peaks of Mt. Bellenden Ker and Mt. Bartle Frere,
Queensland's highest mountains.
White water rafting is broken into 6 grades (in the U.S. it is broken into 4 levels). The Tully River
is Australia's north guaranteed tropical white knuckle adventure with rapes up to grade 5.
We experienced some difficult rapids with high, powerful, irregular waves set amongst the world
heritage rainforest. The grading of the rapids is based on the difficulty of the rapids with grade 4
requires constant maneuvering of the rafts to negotiate the rapids.
Our rafting adventure covered 5 action packed hours of rafting. We where asked three different times
if we wanted to go swimming in the river and we took two opportunities. It was wonderful. We also
stopped midway and had a riverside BBQ lunch served at the Rafters Cage, deep in the Australian rain
forest.
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