Upon descending from the main Street of El Naranjo village, a community of less than a thousand inhabitants located on the southern department of Escuintla, a region known for its warm climate and its proximity to the ocean, you could hear the mumbling of the Coyolate River, which passes next to this place.
According to Wikipedia, The Coyolate is a river that is almost 100 miles in length and located on the southwest of the country, flows from the mountaintops of the Sierra Madre in the north all the way down to the Pacific Ocean. It is also ideal for practicing the sport of rafting.
After arriving to the riverbank, one detail caught my eye: The crews of local men, members of the Naranjo community, inflating the boats were doing so in a way that demonstrated they knew the Know-hows of the process and that they had experience in this kind of thing before.
“Welcome to El Naranjo and the Coyolate River, this is rafting and if you do not attend to the instructions, it can be very dangerous” said Roberto Rodas, one of our guides who was standing next to the gear we will be using.
Rafting, as you may know, is a recreational and sporting activity that consists on traveling the causeway of the river on a boat downstream. Although is considered an extreme sport, nowadays it is also use as a tool to help preserve and look out for the rivers and their ecosystem, promote this preservation, and to help in the development of the communities established next to these bodies of water and last but not least, attract and stimulate all sorts of tourism.
Rafting, as you may know, is a recreational and sporting activity that consists on traveling the causeway of the river on a boat downstream. Although is considered an extreme sport, nowadays it is also use as a tool to help preserve and look out for the rivers and their ecosystem, promote this preservation, and to help in the development of the communities established next to these bodies of water and last but not least, attract and stimulate all sorts of tourism.
Ready, set… Let's paddle
After the security talk (where our guides tell us the do´s and don’ts of rafting), and a few paddling practice, we were ready to embark on this adventure. Aided by the strong current of the river it
wasn´t long, not even after two minutes, that we encountered a first rapid. Rapids are sections of a river where the riverbed has a relatively steep gradient, causing an increase in water velocity and turbulence.
The strength of the rapid caused the raft to be thrown in the air, only to fall back hard over the water. Julio, one of my companions fell on the water, and immediately implemented the emergency procedures taught by our guides: Adopt a fetal position, grab the paddle strongly and let the current take you a safe area of the river where you can swim to the shore. I myself was amazed that I didn't fell off the boat due to the strong fall. It was my first time doing this.
Julio swam to shore, got up on the raft again and confessed between laughter this was the first time he had ever fell off the boat doing rafting. After a small celebration by crashing the paddles over head, we headed back out to the river. The current stood still for a little while, and then it got really strong carrying us at a tremendous speed down the river.
After turning a delta on the river, an ominous sight appeared in front of our raft: A giant boulder standing still and strong in the middle of the river, a rock that had withstand the force of the current from maybe years, centuries or millennia ago without moving. It stood there, daring us to try and cross the portion of the river where it was from a long time ago.
Our guide, Roberto Rodas, shouted instructions while he maneuvered to try and pass the rock. The raft came dangerously closed to the boulder, not crashing into it but more like being shoved aside, as if the boulder said “okay, I'll let you pass just because I want to”. As the boat passed next to the giant rock, we discovered that it was as big as a car.
Sometimes our guide, Roberto, will shout instructions that we had to paddle backwards to rectify the course of the raft, so it could pass between rocks, head in the right way, or take a little shortcut. Other times, we would paddle backwards to avoid a tree trunk stuck in the riverbed or other obstacles.
I was astounded by the nature and life that surrounded us and existed because and in the river. Sometimes you would see shoals of flying fish jumping out of the water here or there, other times you would see a stork or a bird flying over the water trying to get a prey.
This sport is really exciting and full of adrenaline, and the effort put into rowing or paddling will strain every muscle in your body. Is a team sport too, because you depend on your teammates or companions in the raft, as well as they depend on you whether it is to save your life, help you if you're injured, get lost and so that the same doesn't happen to them.
Consciousness for the river´s ecosystem
Roberto Rodas is a former agricultural engineer that traded a life in an office for a life in the outdoors as an extreme sportsman and rafting guide. He currently works for an organization called R.I.O.S. Guatemala; an acronym that forms the Spanish word for rivers and that in this language stands for Recreación (Recreation), Investigación (Investigation), Observación (Observation) and Sostenibilidad (Sustainability). This Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) is an initiative dedicated to the preservation of the rivers and their ecosystem, the teaching of the importance of the bodies of water and why they should be preserved, especially to communities and enterprises located nearby or that may use the river´s causeways in some sort of way, and to attract investment on infrastructure and tourism to develop programs of community tourism.
Basically, by means of rafting and other water extreme sports, the organization hopes to develop self-aware and self-sustainable communities that benefit from exploiting the resource of the river on this kind of tourism.
By the international standards of Rafting, The Coyolate is a category 3 river although some portions of it are considered category 4. In Guatemala there are several rivers that are navigable and with potential to develop all kind of extreme sports and these are: The Cahabón, The Nahualate, The Coyolate and Los Esclavos (The Slaves), this last one considered as the most dangerous of the country, since it has a classification of a 4 plus category.