An Amazing Rescue from a Raft

I have been rafting for almost 7 years now and last night at 7pm on the local news I saw some rafting that I have never seen in Costa Rica. Anybody that has been to Costa Rica knows that it can start raining at anytime. We are in Feb. which usually is a dry month but this week the rain really started coming down. There is a particular area called the Chirripo River which is not a commercially rafted river but is filled with class V's from start to finish. The Chirripo river yesterday with all the rain that came down was filled to the max. The river was a dark chocolate color and just fast flowing, large amounts of water from bank to bank.

The problem with this immediate flooding of the river is that there was a man taking river rock in a back-hoe in the middle of the river because before the rains came you could walk across the river. It turns out after the river flooded the man did not have time to drive his bould-doser and was stuck in the middle of the river. Anybody that knows anything about rivers knows that they can have the force to move just about anything from large trees to bould-dosers. Fortunately a group of 4 rafters went into the river up-stream and made there way to the man among large rapids and fast moving water that put their lives in extreme danger. The day ended with the rafters making an amazing rescue and the man from the bould-doser getting out in time before becoming a victim of the river. To all my fellow rafters out there I think we owe a great applause to the four men who made the rescue yesterday as they took their skills to a whole new level. Just for the record rafting in the Chirripo river is not commercially rafted and other rivers of Costa Rica are considered much more safe for taking part in the sport of rafting.