We arrived at Drift Adventures at 8am and were given life jackets and an army-style metal can to keep our belongings in. We were then loaded onto a bus that looked like something out of an Indiana Jones movie, with hippy-style painings all over the inside.
Brant (how perfect is that?) was to be our guide for the day: a young 20 something, fresh out of college, far too good looking for his own good, so much so that one of the older ladies in our group (not Rachel) continuously embarrassed him by promising to set him up with a young lady as soon as she possibly could! The other guides were a little hillbilly-like and they acted a bit like the guys on Jackass (for those two have ever seen such rubbish). They looked like brothers with scrawney ginger beards and mustaches and wore their baseball caps slightly tilted back and gave each other high-fives every few minutes. I felt like checking our insurance policy again, just in case.
It took 45 mins to drive the scenic route to the ‘put-in’ – the place where you put your boat into the water. We were loaded into the large dinghy: 12 of us plus Brant. Brant rowed us down the Colorado River pointing out stuff along the way. For example, the place where John Wayne stared in Rio Grande – the film set is still there.
The views were picture book views. It was exactly as you would imagine – only real. We kept having to pinch ourselves to make sure we weren’t dreaming. The water was calm for most of the 7 mile journey and we floated gently around bend after bend between towering rock formations and Brant navigated the occasional rapid, when cool Colorado water would splash over the sides of the dinghy, catching one of us unaware and soaking us. Water collected in the bottom of the dinghy but that didn’t seem to matter. From time to time Brant would get one of us to hand out fresh cold water as temperatures were in the 90’s.
At one point Brant stood up and stepped onto the edge of the dinghy and promptly backward- somersaulted into the river, leaving us poor punters up the creek without a paddle (or at least a paddler). Maybe they should have checked that none of us had a pacemaker before doing it! But he was back with us within a few minutes.
During the journey we all chatted. Onboard were Americans from various states, some Belgians and us Brits. The American ladies near us were facinated with Rahcel’s accent and kept trying to mimick her. They especially like the word ‘Puddle’ in Rachel’s Rochdale accent. One lady, who came from the banks of the Mississippi (somewhere I can’t remember) said ‘Purrdle’ in that wonerful southern American drawl.
We were met by another bus when we reached our 7 mile point and taken back to base in Moab. We made sure we left a good tip at the desk for when Brant returned. He had gone on to another trip and we felt he deserved a ‘well done’ and they don’t get paid much. One day he hopes to go onto teach gymnastics and, judging by his excellent somersault, he should be just fine.
Unfortunately, we didn’t take our camera on the rapids for obvious reasons so there are no photos to share with you.
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