Rafting
Rafting on the Arnold River was awesome! On Tuesday 21th or July, we went rafting. My second favorite thing to do is rafting. I still like hiking the best. Rafting is a great experience and it’s exciting for most people. Before rafting, we were at school waiting for the bus. When the van arrived we drove into town, they took us to there “equipment store” and we got all our tools ready. Our raincoat sort of thing, life jacket and helmet. Then we travelled to the place we were about to raft on. The five instructors introduce themselves. They gave us some cool facts about some leaves and other things we could eat to help us in the wild if we ever needed it. Then they told us about safety on the raft and how to pull someone up if they fell out.
After that, the fun began.
I didn’t really step out of my comfort zone because I have done rafting a lot of times with my friends and family, but the biggest challenge was probably working with people that you haven’t worked with before. I had 5 people in my raft. Rhys, Grace W, Brayden, the instructor (Georgia) and me. The best part of rafting was the rapids. They weren’t very big, but it was really fun, my second favorite part was standing on the edge of the raft without holding a paddle. I didn’t fall in somehow but I jumped in seconds later.
Sadly the rafting ended and we played a few games on the grassy field where we stopped. We played three games. Evaluation, woctopus and a game I can’t remember the name of. We had to get in pairs of two and the person would say “face to toe” and one person would put there head on the other person toe. The game was about teamwork. Then we got in the vans and drove home on around two 2 o clock. When we got back to the little shed we gave them their gear back and got dressed in our warm clothes. After that they asked for feedback and asked us some questions like, “what would you do differently next time?” then we drove to school where we got picked up by our parents.
As I said at the start rafting was awesome!
Rock climbing
On Thursday the 23rd, two days after rafting we went rock climbing! Sadly it was wet so we couldn’t go rock climbing on real rocks because if we went rock climbing on real rocks it might be dangerous. So instead we went to the rec centre by ST. Patricks. When I walked in there and looked at the walls I thought it would be a piece of cake! I thought… it was more challenging when I started to climb it because when it comes to hights I’m a scardy cat. Anyway, before I get to climbing here is the back story. It all started when we were at school. We had just gone rafting a day before that day but who cares? We were about to go rock climbing! So some vans came to Paroa School and we got in. When I went to clip my seatbelt in I discovered that it was indeed munted. So I got first class, the man offered me to come in the front seat with him so that I didn’t have to sit by the girls and I could still talk to my friends. Anyway we got to the Rec Center and we meet some of our instructors and they showed us the jobs that we could do. After about an hour we went climbing. They set us into groups of three. I was with Alisha and Georgia. So they made me go climbing first. Before we started they told us to say things like “ready to climb” and “ok” when they asked me, “what do you say?” so I said “if I don’t return tell my friends that they were great” then I started to climb. This was a really tall wall with lots of tiny pieces that I had to climb on. I was happy with myself, I got about halfway. They couldn’t get past the first few rocks. That’s one advantage of being small. Anyway, I came down and did a job called the backup rope or something similar to that. If the person who was belaying stopped and let go I would rush up to the lock in the rope and pull the rope down. After they tried to complete it they didn’t and we moved to a much easier stage. I didn’t complete that one either but Georgia did. I had a go at belaying Alisha. It was really easy we only four steps. I had to grip it, pull it down to lock it, put my hand on the opposite rope that was in the lock and hold it and slide my hand up and restart. After we had finished for a lunch break the instructors showed us them climbing the hardest wall. It didn’t look fun… but after that, we started climbing again. About half an hour later we stopped climbing and we played some games. Oh, and I saw some of my old friends from St. Patricks a year ago. But they are now in high school. So, in conclusion, rock climbing is my third favourite activity.
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