Davao city the largest city on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Davao city has a land area of 2,444 square kilometers and one of the progressive cities in Mindanao. Aside from that Davao City has a lot adventures to offer that is good for tourists and also to non tourists. It was month of April 2008 when my boyfriend and his co-workers decided for an extreme adventure. They have decided to have a wild water rafting adventure. I've never done it before so I give it a try. My boyfriend had already tried this before so I am confident I will be safe. It was Saturday of April I forgot the exact date, but anyways, we are 30 all in all. There are seven people in one raft including the tour guide and we have two persons who was merged to our group and they are known attorneys in Manila.
We started at 10:00 in the morning at Tamugan River, one of the largest river in Davao City. We are all instructed on how to put on our life vests and teach us on how to paddle during the wild water rafting trip. Paddling is composed of four strokes and these are "easy paddle", "hard paddle", "forward paddle" and "backward paddle". After teaching us those strokes, we are then practiced on how to rescue a person who fell off the raft and this means that ech one of us will have to fall in the water. At first I hesitated to join,but it is really required for us to fall in the water. When it was my turn to fall, I closed my eyes coz I'm really afraid of water. The reason why I joined them is in order to face my fear in water, and I found out that life vests are really one of the incredible things we have coz through that you will be easily rescued coz you will gonna sink.
We first face the several small rapids, labeled by the tour guide as level 1 and level 2. I was nervous at first but was immune with the rest rapids. At 11:30 we have our pack lunch as a team and while eating we shared our experiences upon surviving the rapids. After lunch, the tour guide instructed and warned us that the next level of rapids is really tough. The hardest part among the levels is surpassing the so called "washing machine" rapids. Imagine what a washing machine do, so that's how the rapids will be. So as I heard the instructions I hurriedly secured my feet to the rubber strap on the raft's floor and just keep quiet although my heart beats faster. I saw the first raft ahead from us, jumping up and twisting round and round because of the big rocks. The captain was shouting instructions to our so called CRAZY TEAM (as what we call our team), Paddle hard!stop! and paddle again...We were trapped in the big rock and we cant move our raft, I keep on shouting coz we are about to capsize! but then the tour guide said "just relax maam, I can handle this". So I keep quiet and close my eyes again. As I opened it my boyfriend hug me telling me "It's part of the adventure honey, just go with the flow and don't be afraid coz i am here ok?" As I heard it I just nod and continue paddling. Our raft flowed softly and we drifted away to calmer waters. There were shout of joys and laughters as we left the big rock and as I left my fears in there. I thoroughly enjoyed the 13 kilometer river and 6 hours of paddling with the 25 different levels of rapids to surpass. It was really a great adventure so better try it, it is only found in the philippines.