Colorado – 2x (same river)
West Virginia – 2x (different rivers)
Costa Rica – 2 days (same river)
Peru – 3 days (same river)
Dominican Republic – 2x (same river)
Japan – 1x
Colombia – 3x (2 different rivers)
Guatemala – 1x

And this current trip that I’m writing about:
Venezuela – 2 days (different rivers)

That’s 18 days of whitewater rafting on 12 different rivers, in 8 countries! Yes, I love this sport, and yes God has blessed me with lots of opportunities to travel. I owe it all to Him! 2 things before proceeding with the tour review:
- If you don’t know Jesus, you need to meet Him ASAP! Email me
- If you’ve never gone whitewater rafting, you need to go ASAP! Email me

As discussed in the last 3 posts, I’m still traveling around South America. On this trip we will be in Venezuela, Brazil, & Argentina. We left Venezuela a few days ago, and I’m writing this from the Amazon Jungle in Brazil.

PRIOR S. AMERICA TRIP POSTS:
1. Heading to South America for 1 Month – Details
2. Venezuela’s Black Market Money Exchange
3. Busses, Canyoning, & Paragliding in Venezuela – OH MY!

We stayed at the Guamanchi Posada in Merida, Venezuela, and they are also an adventure tour company. We booked the 2 day rafting trip with them for 1,500 Bolivares ($187 USD). It included everything – 5 hour transport (roundtrip) out to the area of Barinas, Venezuela area where the rafting canyons are, lodging 1 night at the adventure camp, all meals & basic drinks, a ziplining tour, and 2 days of rafting with gear & guides included.

The ride out to the rafting was the only rough part about the trip. Rough because you sit  in the back of a 4 wheel drive off-road jeep that’s been gutted in the back with 2 benches put in for seats (1 on each wall). You are sitting facing your adventure partners. 30-60 minutes in the jeep, easy… 5 hours? Or what took almost 7…… Not so easy! That’s okay, I’m young, my butt will recover!

We had an awesome travel group of people that we had met while traveling in Venezuela. It was me, Kate (my friend from Iowa), Santiago from Colombia, & 2 guys from The Netherlands (I don’t want to butcher the spelling of their names here!). Awesome group of people representing 3 continents, and lots of cool cultures.

We played a game on my iPad on the way out to the adventure camp where you name logos of companies. Without the Dutch & The Colombian, we would have NEVERRRR answered some of the foreign logos correctly. Props to them for that!

The adventure camp was pretty incredible, and I’ve stayed at a few! They had a large property in the mountains with a home-made outdoor rock climbing wall that they were adding bouldering routes to while we were there, several creative dorm buildings with private rooms for guests, a sheltered eating hall, and another separate building with a bar, pool tables, foosball, and all the buildings had hammocks hanging everywhere to relax. The property was covered in various fruit trees, so needless to say we were spoiled with DELICIOUS fruit juices from the most fresh fruit!
The food was absolutely incredible too!

Day 1 at the camp after arriving we were scheduled to do a short half day of rafting on the smaller Class III river, and we were promised that Day 2 we would raft over twice as long, on a different, bigger Class IV+ river.

For those unfamiliar with whitewater rafting gradient scales it goes from Class 1 to Class 6. Class 1 is a current with a few rocks creating a small amount of ripples in the water and bumps on your ride. As the classes get higher the water gets bigger, steeper, faster, more rocks, more technical, and more dangerous. Class 5 is the highest you can raft with a commercial company. Class 6 is generally un-raftable, or just too dangerous. Things like waterfalls or extremely dangerous obstacles are Class 6. You can sometimes kayak Class 6 portions, and you can view videos of people doing it on YouTube. Pretty incredible!
Just because Class 5 whitewater isn’t Class 6 whitewater, does NOT mean that it’s not dangerous, huge, or exciting though! In fact it’s all of the above. Do exercise caution when rafting, and do not underestimate the power of a river in rapids. Many people die each year in this sport.

I rafted the Gauley River (Class 5+) in West Virginia when they release high flow from the dam in the Fall of 2010 (they do it each Fall). That Fall High season killed 3 rafters & kayakers. In just 1 short month! My friend Brenton and I survived the trip and my face only went white a couple of times
You run over half a dozen Class 5 rapids on the first half of the river and over 40 Class 4+ rapids! Needless to say, it’s madness.

This was my raft on the Gauley River!

On a 3 day excursion in Peru on a Class 5+ river with my friend Brad, we saw a few different Class 6 rapids that we would have to pull the boats out and hike around on the side of the river. Sometimes they would just send the boats down without people and we would watch the carnage. Once we saw the guides take a boat down, and one got ejected. It took about 15 seconds for his head to surface about 50 yards downstream!
Also on that trip, our guide told us that his Dad was a guide and actually had died on one of the Class 5 rapids on the river.

All that to say that rafting is extremely exhilarating and fun, but you do need to exercise caution, learn all the safety positions, and do what your guide tells you to do.

On to the Venezuelan rivers…

They said we would raft the Class 3 river the first day, and raft the Class 3 river we did! I wasn’t expecting much really, b/c I have a lot of experience on Class 5 whitewater, but man, was I wrong! We left pretty late in the day after the long drive and it was definitely getting a little dark by the time we finished.

This short Class 3 run of only maybe 90 minutes, was packed with lots of really fun wave train rapids and small drops. The river was pretty small so there were a few tight squeezes. The craziest part to me was how many times we fell in! I think I fell in 3 times!! I remember it took me like 6 whitewater rafting trips to fall in once, and here I go falling out in this Class 3 river every 20 minutes it seemed haha! We had lots of swimmers, which helped us practice our rescuing for the bigger river the next day.
The safety boaters were rafting in inflatable kayaks, which was a first for me to see, but the river isn’t too big, and with class 3 rapids, safety kayakers aren’t totally necessary.

That night we enjoyed some delicious dinner and kept ourselves entertained with games of pool & cards before bed.

Day 2 at the Adventure Camp we had breakfast and then went on a short ziplining tour that was included in the package price. There was only 4 or 5 cables, but we didn’t have to pay extra so I can’t complain! A couple of the cables you swung over the bigger Class 4 river that we were rafting that afternoon, which was exciting. A nice way to start off a day of adventure.

We left for the rafting trip and everybody was excited. It was a couple of the guys first weekend rafting, so they felt that they had graduated after yesterdays trip to bigger whitewater on this day. Bigger whitewater we received!

This river was much more of a whitewater river, in a canyon with massive rocks, some the size of houses, waterfalls pouring into the river, streams feeding the river, and beautiful scenery and hanging bridges here and there. About an hour into the trip we reached a hanging walking bridge where we pulled out. There were 2 waterfalls on the side, and the bridge was straight out of Indiana Jones with boards of the floor missing, made from real rope, and looking rickety as possible! A true jungle bridge. See for yourself:

What should we do?!

Obviously we couldn’t just stand on it, we had to jump! Here’s a video of one of my jumps:

Later we did a group jump off of this bridge. I think bridge jumping is a great time! We didn’t touch bottom, so I felt pretty safe about it.

We finished the rafting trip with a couple bigger Class IV rapids, and we found a big surfing hole to surf. We ended up surfing it for probably an entire minute or two before I fell out and got rescued! Weeee!

Canyon gets narrower!

A few more Class IV rapids, and then this river actually runs into the same river that we ran the day before. So we re-ran that section of whitewater again, which was a lot of fun. The ironic part is we had more swimmers (again) on the smaller Class III section than the Class IV section.

I had a blast!

After the rafting for the day, we packed up our stuff at the camp, and they took us all to the bus station in Barinas, Venezuela, where we all had tickets to different locations in Venezuela to continue our travels.

Kate and I were taking a 15 hour overnight bus to Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela where our next trip will begin. That trip is a 3 day excursion into Canaima National Park to see Angel Falls, the tallest waterfall in the world!

(Disclaimer: I was not compensated anything for reviewing this trip or company, and all opinions are strictly my own)

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Here I am, on my way to another airport to fly from JFK (New York City) to Bogota, Colombia down in South America! It would be an understatement to say I’m VERY excited!!! I suppose I couldn’t have a website called “Travel and Credit” if I didn’t travel a lot and use a lot of credit wisely!

“David, how much were the flights? Isn’t it expensive to fly to South America?”
- Flights? Expensive? You should know by now that my flights are usually free!  Read on…

I’m going with my good friend Brenton, who I have a lot of history with. He has been doing jobs for the band on tour with us for a few years from driving to selling merch, or both, and his old band actually toured with my band yearssss ago before we even had a recording contract! We also share the love of absolutely INSANE CRAZY adventure travel!! We have had countless adventures together in the US, Canada, & Mexico on tour with the band, and more non-touring adventures in Puerto Rico and West Virginia!

The top picture is a picture of Brenton and I whitewater rafting the Gauley River in West Virginia during their fall high-flow release scheduling. The Gauley River is controlled by a dam, and for 8 weekends in the Fall every year they release a very high flow of water that turns the Class V river, into a RAGING Class V river as you can see from the picture!

 Other adventures together…

We took a 10 day willldddd and crazy adventure trip to Puerto Rico in September of 2011. This was one of the calmest days:

Luquillo Beach - Puerto Rico Sept 2011

We used to always play this small town called Roseburg, Oregon, and every time we did, we always went cliff jumping!

Roseburg, OR cliff jumping with friends

On our way to whitewater raft the Lower New River (Class V) in West Virginia – exciting!

nervous, happy, and excited to raft.. and maybe tired!

People have a very negative stigma on traveling in Colombia due to past serious issues with the drug trade. For Today toured Colombia in June of 2010, and we didn’t have any issues with safety or security and we were in several different cities wandering around both day and night.
“Who is this band For Today you keep speaking of?” – You need to read the ABOUT ME page, and catch up.

If you are looking for adventure tourism, Colombia is one of the cheapest countries in the whole world to do it in!!  Here’s some prices of activities we are doing:

- Bodyboard Whitewater Rafting – $25
- Caving in Cueva Del Indio – 200ft rappel in! – $17
- Paragliding – $40 – $100
- Canyoning  – $25
- Hike to 500ft waterfall – $10
- Whitewater Rafting Rio Fonce – $40
- Whitewater Rafting San Juan, Antioquia – $60

If you have ever gone Caving, Canyoning, Bodyboard Rafting, or Hiking you KNOW that it doesn’t really get much cheaper than that! The rafting is slightly cheaper than most places, especially considering the pristine places you get to do it in. I’m excited

…….PLANS:

Brenton and I are landing in Bogota tonight and will be staying with a friend overnight that I made when the band toured there. The next morning we will be heading to the bus station to brush up on our Spanish skills and negotiate an 8 hour bus ride to San Gil, Colombia which is called the “Adventure Capital of Colombia”!
In San Gil, there aren’t really any major hotel chains that I can use hotel points at, but that’s not a problem, because we are paying just $8 a night to stay at a hostel in the center of the small town, and it has a pool! I’ve stayed at hostels in several countries, but never with a pool!
I’ll save the names of the adventure companies and hostel name until we return from the trip and I can do a proper trip review. Ya never know!
We will spend 11 nights in the small remote town of San Gil where our days will consist of taking extreme adventure trips Whitewater Rafting 4 different rivers that reach up to Class IV & Class V rapids, Paragliding off of mountains, Canyoning down 500 foot waterfalls, inter-tubing down the neighboring city’s waterfalls/rapids, trying body board Whitewater Rafting for the first time (what?!), Caving through crevices, rappelling down mountains, & hiking remote forests!  In the evenings we will explore around, crash in the pool, try as much local food fare as possible, and I will of course be writing more content for all of you!

“Sounds like an excerpt from a dream life”  — It Is

…….FREE FLIGHTS:

The flights were booked with Trueblue points, which is JetBlue’s frequent flyer mile program. The flights cost 31,200 TrueBlue points and $63.50 in taxes each. In early 2011 I applied for and was approved for both the JetBlue American Express personal credit card, and the business credit card. Instead of the 40,000 point signup bonus for the 2 cards total, I ended up earning 50,000 points through a round-a-bout mistake, that I will write about later b/c it’s quite the story. Both cards had a $40 annual fee due right away, but I canceled one early and was refunded $13.33 for the rest of the year. Unfortunately the current offer for both of those cards is only 10,000 points from American Express, but we’ll chalk one on the board for hoping that offer revives itself soon!
Through spending on the credit card and the mistake, I had around 51,000 some odd TrueBlue points, not quite enough. I transferred 12,000 some odd American Express Membership Rewards points to top-off my Jetblue TrueBlue account for the final amount needed, which cost $9 in transfer fees.

The True Cost:
51,000 TrueBlue points
12,000 Membership Rewards
$66.67 – Card Fees
$9 – Transfer Fees
$127 – Flight Taxes
——————————-
= 63,000 points & $202.67
for 2 round-trip flights from New York City to Bogota, Colombia worth $1,100 – $1,300 if bought outright with cash.

This isn’t the highest value I’ve ever received from my miles, as the CPM (Cent Per Mile) of the award flights only breaks down to $.014 – $.017.  However, getting the 2 credit cards, and the points that I had earned in the AMEX Membership Rewards program saved Brenton & I $900 – $1,100, and THAT is good value to ME, which is what’s important!

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