Rafting on the Rio Congrejal

River Swim

Class III section

Our Honduras adventure is over but we’re still going through the pictures! We made it back to Florida in time to spend Christmas with Ryan’s grandmother. Our last big adventure before we left Honduras was whitewater rafting on the Rio Congrejal along the border of Pico Bonito National Park.

We signed up for a guided rafting trip with Jungle River Lodge based on some great recommendations from other travelers we had met. They hire all local guides and they take safety very seriously and have new equipment. The trip started off with a swim in the river and some cliff jumping. Some of the guides took videos of us jumping. I’ll upload the videos when we get back to Seattle and have faster internet. The highest cliff we jumped off of was 7 meters (23 ft) – by far the highest thing I’ve ever jumped off of!

The water is pretty low this time of year but there were still some solid class III sections including some serious little drops. It was a fun river to raft because it is full of huge boulders, so even where there aren’t rapids, you have to navigate around all the rocks. The river was pretty different from anything either of us has rafted before. We’ve pretty much just been on wide rivers with sections of rapids. The boulders in this river made it interesting even in flat water sections.

All the rafting trips at the Jungle River Lodge include a night in their hostel right on the river. It was a relaxing place to hang out for a day and a half.