Down the Upper Navua

We’re standing at the edge of the chocolaty Navua River with about twenty other people, half-listening as one of the Fijian guides drones on and on about the do’s and don’ts of river rafting. If you fall out, don’t try to swim, you’ll drown. Do exactly what the guide says. Don’t take your helmet off.

“My helmet smells funky,” says Marguarite, holding it a foot or so from her face and wrinkling her nose. “Here,” she says, holding it up to me, “smell it.”

No, thank you. Really.

I love Marguarite. Last year we went to Vanuatu together. We paddled canoes to a Blue Hole and Marguarite was right behind me when some idiot woman tipped our canoe and my camera sunk to the bottom of the river. Marguarite was the one who told everyone else on the canoe trip to not say a word to me after this happened. Which I appreciated.

Marguarite goes over to our guide, David, and tells him her helmet smells funny. “Like something died in it,” she says. David shrugs and gives her a new helmet. Marguarite comes back over to our group. “Well?” I say. “This one smells too,” says Marguarite, “but not as bad.”

I tell Marguarite not to worry about it. We’ll just take them off once we get going. “They’re kind of useless anyway.” And they are. Just cheap plastic that would shatter into a thousand pieces if our noggins ever hit a rock or submerged tree.

Meanwhile, the lead guide is still giving instructions. “Come on,” mumbles Marguarite. “Let’s just get in the boats and get going. It’s hot out here.”

And it is. Hot and steamy. Made more so by the ridiculous kiddie helmets and suffocating PFDs we have to wear.

There are five of us in our group. The lead guide wants one of us to join another boat. Marguarite won’t hear of it. “Uh-uh,” she sternly tells him. “We’re staying together.”

The lead guide smiles, shrugs, walks away. We climb into the inflatable—Christopher, the manager of the resort where we’re staying; Cindy, who is from San Francisco and whose real name is Jennie (but for some reason I keep calling her Cindy); Katie, a perky, sweet journalist from Idaho who is constantly uttering observations that either demonstrate her naiveté or deadpan sense of irony, I haven’t quite figured out which; and Marguarite and myself.

The other boats pulls away from shore. There is a modest rapid right at the beginning of the trip and first one and then another of the inflatables gets turned around, their paddlers tossed and thrown around the inflatable. Everyone gets drenched. Obviously the guides have done this on purpose. Marguarite gives our guide a steely look as he pushed us away from the shore: “Do not do that to us,” she scolds him. David smiles, lifts his oars, and the boat spins backwards. Cindy, who is sitting in the front, is thrown violently backwards. Katie half falls out of the boat. The rest of us all get soaked. The journey has begun.