As a fierce winter storm battered Cape Town causing snow to settle on Table Mountain and driving a massive container ship ashore in Table Bay, an idea started to form in my mind. Surely all this rain, hail and snow could be put to better use? Instead of cowering indoors and stoking the fire there must be a silver lining on the storm clouds?

But I got a few suspicious looks when I told friends and colleagues that I was going white-water rafting the day after some of Cape Town's worst weather in seven years. Was I joking or in serious need of some mental help. My fiancee in particular developed a curious habit of staring at me incredulously while twirling her index finger in circles next to her head.

White water in Cape Town?
Gravity Adventures run rafting trips down the Palmiet River near Betty?s Bay, just 75 minutes from Cape Town. The Palmiet flows for over 20kms through the Kogelberg nature reserve, which is considered to be the very heart of the Cape Floral Kingdom because of the exceptional quality and variety of its fynbos. Rafting trips are run all year round, but it is at the end of a winter storm when the river really comes alive.

With my fiancee?s warnings of broken limbs still ringing in my ears, and my colleagues at iafrica.com all making a point of saying goodbye to me when I left the office, I was still not entirely convinced of the wisdom of running a river in flood. But hey, I?d driven all this way and I wasn?t going to chicken out now.

Not so for the other people who were meant to join me on my trip ? I discovered then that they had postponed their trip to let the flood waters go down! Was this someone trying to send me a sign? I tend to ignore signs (and road maps), so I brushed this omen aside and went to chat to some of kayakers who were training on the Palmiet.

Safety on the water
  • Try and stay as low in the boat as possible. This will reduce the risk of capsizing.
  • If you do fall out of the boat, try to keep a hold on the boat.
  • If you get washed away from the boat, try and get into the "cocktail" position: facing downstream with your head and feet out of the water. In this way you can at least see where you are going, and with your feet in the air you are more likely to bump over any rocks than get trapped against them by the force of the river.
  • If there are other rafters downstream, they may try and throw you a rope. Listen out for someone shouting "rope" and try and pinpoint where they are on the bank so you know where the rope will be coming from.
    • A cup of coffee and a quick breakfast bolstered my courage a bit as Neil Tyres, who runs the Palmiet operation, explained to me the system for grading rapids and white water. Running from grade one (flat, slow moving water) to grade six, which is water with a high risk of serious injury, the scale is based roughly according to the amount of water in the river and the complexity of the rapids. River guides have also created an unofficial grade seven, which they simply call ?Heaven?.

    The Palmiet, in full flood, hovers somewhere between a grade three and four, with strong currents and large waves which can swamp an open boat.

    Bubble & Squeak?
    Probably as a result of many too days spent in thought drifting down rivers, guides have developed a curious habit of naming rapids with the most obscure names. While I suppose it makes it more interesting than naming them in numerical order, one does have to wonder how water falling over rocks can evoke names such as ?Bubble & Squeak? or ?Itchy & Scratchy?.

    Perhaps it was exactly because I was a bit dismissive of its name, that ?Squeak? decided to teach me a lesson. As the first real rapid of the bottom section of the Palmiet we scooted through the ?Bubble? part without mishap, but it was the larger standing waves of ?Squeak? that threw our boat up in the air. When it came down, I stayed behind and ended up tumbling over the side into the churning water. Before I knew it though, my guide Yango had me by the scruff of my neck and hauled me back into the boat. A sobering experience, being sent for a swim on my first rapid!

    The Palmiet is called a pool-drop river as it is formed by a succession of pools and drops. While not as constantly exciting as an alpine river (which has a steady gradient), the pool-drop allows you to catch your breath between rapids and admire the scenery around you. As we floated in the pool after ?Bubble and Squeak? (so named, in case you were wondering, by the bubbly water and the need to squeak past a large rock), we kicked back, put our feet up on the side of the canoe and watched a black eagle soaring on the cliffs above us. Sitting on the raft and dragging our hands in the water stained brown by the tannins leached from the rich soil, I could hardly believe I was just over an hour from Cape Town and had been sitting at my desk earlier that morning.

    Waterfall

    Scouting the rapid with Yango
    After negotiating a few rapids of a similar size to ?Bubble & Squeak?, we pulled ashore to scout out the second biggest rapid on the river ? ?Waterfall?. Standing on shore, Yango pointed out the line we needed to take. The general rule in running white water is to follow the line of clear water where the water is flowing fastest. This will (in theory) take you straight over the peaks, into the troughs and spit you out the other side. As an extra precaution, some of the kayakers would go through first and set up below the rapid to throw a rope if one of us were to fall out.

    Back in the raft, our line into ?Waterfall? was on the far side of the river, so we paddled hard upstream and let the current carry us sideways across the river (this is called a ferry glide). Swinging the nose across the current, the raft quickly spun around until we were heading straight for ?Waterfall?. I can?t really repeat what I was screaming as the front of our raft (where I just happened to be sitting) picked up speed and plunged at a 45? angle down the face of the rapid. Ramping over the standing wave at the bottom, we flew out the other side just as my heart started beating again.

    ?You can dance with the river, but you have to know the steps?
    But we didn?t get away that easily?
    The exit to the Palmiet River is guarded by two large boulders at the end of a 50m stretch of rapids that curve gently from right to left. When the water runs at its normal level, these rocks form a narrow gate that you have to paddle through to make it into the estuary below. Hence the guides have named the rapid ?Judgement Day?

    Rapids
    The rapids in white water are formed when the fast flowing water pushes against a rock, causing the water to rise up and fall back on itself. With a constant rush of water, these standing waves form the deep troughs and high peaks and provide the thrills that river rafters are after. While it was certainly no Zambezi, the swollen Palmiet provided standing waves that towered above our small two-man canoe.
    As we dropped in at the top of the rapid we were quickly caught up in the churning mass of water as it boiled up, over and around the boulders beneath us. We somehow managed to keep the raft going in a straight line throughout the whole rapid until we got to the gates. The problem now though was not steering through the gap ? with the river in flood the gates had been completely submerged and had instead formed massive standing waves.

    It was the left hand gate that finished us off ? we hit the left hand side of the wave and I was thrown in the air and never quite managed to find the boat. Being swept along underwater bumping against rocks, even though just for a few seconds, was quite humbling as I realised that I was completely at the mercy of the river. Once again it was up to Yango to haul me back into the boat as we drifted into the estuary at the bottom of the rapid.

    Although I would hardly now call myself a seasoned river rafter, I was quite impressed that where others had chickened out I?d braved the floodwaters of the Palmiet and made it. Whether getting dumped by one of the gates of Judgement Day has some karmic significance I guess I?ll have to wait to find out, but I suppose I should be grateful that at least it didn?t end up with me in grade seven!

    Gravity Adventure Group

    Apart from the Palmiet River, Gravity also run river tours on the Orange, Doring and Breede rivers. Their guides are all highly experienced and are trained in swift-water rescue.

    In addition to river tours Gravity also offer a range of innovative adventure products including abseiling, canyoning, hiking and mountain biking.

    For more information, visit their website or call them on +27 21 683 3698.

    If you want to find out more about white water kayaking, you can also contact the Cape White Water Club.