White water blinded me and my heart dropped to my stomach. The wind was knocked out of me by the impact and the feeling of helplessness began to emerge. I was completely submerged in water, unable to breathe, there wasn't an ounce of oxygen still in me. Despite all the chaos, I composed myself and made my body stiff for a few seconds until my life vest brought me afloat. After my head emerged from the water I began to count heads, first I saw my sister, then Marcial and his Dad. “Where are my parents?” I asked myself as I was shot downstream by the bubbling white water.

Bubbling white water, although not an uncommon sight, it is something far too overlooked. It is unpredictable, not to be trusted, especially not with one’s life. It should not be ranked on a one to five scale, for its indecisive currents make each flowing second a coin toss between life and death.

On that Friday afternoon, my family and some friends set off to the river and all of us were ready to ride the rapids. Admittedly, I was not completely prepared to face the river, so I asked the tour guide what the rapids ranked on “one to five scale”. His answer comforted me, I could deal with level two rapids.

My newly established confidence that I had about facing the river encouraged me to sit on the front seat of the raft. Our journey downstream began. It was quite event-less at first, almost current-less. Then we hit our first rapid. As we accelerated towards the first wave, I thought back to the times when we had a speed boat and we would jump off the wake of the boats in front of us. I always thought our speedboat would eventually flip over but it never really did. There was no time to think now, we were moving closer and closer to what seemed to be a life threatening danger. I firmly grasped the ropes at the front the raft, closed my eyes and braced for impact. And then, nothing happened. I opened my eyes and there was no wave in front of us, I barely even felt it.

After the tranquility from the first rapid, I expected the next one to be the same. I was wrong. As I looked around, I noticed waves two or three times bigger than the first one. My heart began pounding to the rhythm of the waves hitting the rocks. I closed my eyes again, hoping for the same outcome as before. This time, I was punched in the face by waves repeatedly through the entire rapid but I kept my eyes closed in denial. I was able to maintain my balance on the raft through the rapid. When the water cleared up and i opened my eyes, I turned to the guide beside me and asked “Is this really level two?” in an effort to reassure myself that everything would turn out alright. His response was a less than comforting “Nope.”

“Row left!”. We were approaching the next rapid. His voice became louder. “Row left!“. The water in front of us was foam, deadly white, unpredictable foam. In the middle of that foam was a vortex about three meters in diameter. At that point I knew, no matter how hard we rowed, our fate was inevitable. Our raft would no longer absorb the shock of the waves, conversely, the waves would absorb our raft along with us. Our efforts to row to the left were overruled by the great force of nature. The nose of our boat began to sink.

The raft was at a ninety degree angle aimed straight down into the four meter deep hole. Time seemed to slow down. Everything was observable, the flow of the water, the chirping of the birds and the piercing sound of my mom screeching at the top of her lungs from a few feet behind me which was worsened by the echoing effect of the abysmal pit in front of us.

The scene played out in my head before we went in, I was going to be flushed away into the swirling death pool and suffocate. It didn’t play out that way however. The whirlpool didn’t spin me around and suck me into the water with grace. Instead I fell into a deep pit of water and when I looked up, I saw a four meter wave towering above me and as it caved in everything went into slow motion. From the corner of my eye I could see the tiny beam of light that seeped through the mass of collapsing water. It gave me hope that we would come out okay. That tiny bit of hope left me once my head came into contact with the enormous body of water above us. Just like being tumbled by a wave, the whirlpool completely disoriented me. I had forgotten something before i got tumbled, I had my life vest on! I floated to the surface and began to reorient myself.

Luckily, I was able to grab on to a rock and stop myself from going downstream and the tour guide, who was on the raft with my sister, Marcial and his dad, came to rescue me. Marcial helped me onto the raft and I was completely safe. Now I just had to hope that we would find my parents. After a few minutes we came across my mom attached to a rock shooing vultures away from her in an attempt to let them know that she was still alive. My dad was still flowing down stream, he had gone past the next rapid. We found him walking on the shore, apparently he had almost gone into the next rapid. After all the chaos, when everyone was safe, I asked the tour guide what level rapids we had just ridden. According to him we had actually gone on level four rapids without knowing it.

On the drive home, I re-lived the experience several times in my head and got a tiny bit of adrenaline from it. I keep it fresh in my memory for when I need to tell a story at the dinner table. At the time it was terrifying but It was an experience that will be imprinted in my mind until the day I die.