Day 7

The next morning was overcast and raining, but we were in good spirits from a restful day yesterday. We drove to Santo Amaro to raft with Apuama Rafting. This was perhaps the most fun day we had on the trip. The bus dropped us off at the rafting center and we changed into wet suits since it was so cold. We then squished into an old VW van and drove to the river through the muddy dirt streets. Be got a safety debrief and were assigned 6 to a raft plus a guide. Our guide barely spoke English, except the commands needed. After getting used to paddling in unison with everyone else, we headed down river. We went over 4 meter waterfalls, raging rapids, and white water, all the time barely staying in the raft. Nobody on our raft  fell out but other rafts  had people fall out. The sites were amazing: foggy and rainy in the middle of the jungle. Joe had his waterproof GoPro set to take a photo every 30 seconds so hopefully he got some good shots. We stopped twice to jump off a rock into the river and also to take some photos by a waterfall on a beautiful hillside. Our guide was crazy and fun, having us lift our paddles and shout "lepo lepo!" which we have no idea what it means. After we ended our rafting adventure, we took the vans to our hotel. It was a hot springs resort called Aguas Mornas. Xin was my roommate tonight. After a hot shower to recover from the cold weather and rain, we had a wonderful buffet style lunch then decided to check out the hot springs and sauna. The hot springs were a bit of a disappointment: they were essentially like a lukewarm indoor pool, but that didn't bother us. It was nice to relax and swim. There were also two saunas: one dry heat and one wet/citronella, steamy sauna. Both were nice to be in but we alternated going into the sauna and going to the pool. Later that evening we had dinner which had live Brazilian music then we went to the game room to play pool, ping pong, dominoes, and Foosball.