The water was rough and I felt nervous. Crispen steered the boat while his two leery companions joked and laughed at us. How could they let our balsa raft, made of 10 logs strapped together, float freely down this stretch of the river? Tim in his kayak was hopelessly trying to control the raft, but it was too big, so he secured it with the rope of his float and the float to our boat, making the boat more unstable.
The waves were getting bigger and the current stronger. The sky was a menacing dark grey. Things happened suddenly. The balsa overtook us and was heading downstream fast. Crispen and his gang stopped laughing, ’Pongo! Pongo!.’ Transfixed by the mighty rapids of the Pongo, unprepared and unequipped, we would surely drown.
Crispen sped in giant waves anxious to overtake the balsa before it would haul us into the rapids. As he was turning the boat a towering wave was racing towards us side-on. François grabbed me and warned me to hang on.
‘That wave might capsize us. If so, try not to swim, either go with the current or hang onto the boat.’
I clutched François, whimpering, petrified, eyes wide. The wave crashed over us. We were flung about. Dark water and I were one. Boat and river merged. I slowly registered that the gang was bailing furiously as wave after wave rocked the boat. In this mayhem, the balsa wedged itself under the boat lifting it partly out of the water, motor screeching. Upstream Tim watched, horrified.
We hit another wave on its edge. We shot towards a vertical cliff. Abruptly we found ourselves in an eddy. We pulled on to the narrow rocky beach. Everyone was talking, crying, laughing. I stood aside, quiet, totally spent.
We missed it by minutes.
Burnside Writers Group 