Sungai Ayung is the longest river on the island of Bali. We spent a few hours rafting down 11km of rapids and calm waters, surrounded on all sides by jungles and waterfalls.
As we arrived at Sobek's rafting centre to get kitted up with helmets, lifejackets and paddles, the heavens opened. We were packed into a van to get to the starting point... only it stopped abruptly, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
"You walk from here," said the driver. "The bridge is broken."
For some reason none of us were especially keen to leave the van and head off into the downpour, but we figured we were going to get wet anyway - and at least it was still warm.
We crossed a small footbridge next to the road that had been swept away (not by the current rain, but by a larger flood during the heaviest part of the rainy season - but it wasn't very comforting). Below us the river was brown and fast-flowing.
Then the descent began. To get to our rafts we had a 15-20 minute trek down a massive stone staircase, with rainwater cascading down it. By the end our legs were protesting - and we hadn't even started the main event yet.
At the bottom we assembled and our guide, King Fisher, gave the assembled group instructions on paddling forwards, backwards, stopping on cue and the mystifying command "boom-boom" (heads down, paddles out). I hoped we wouldn't need that one.Then we were into our little blue inflatable and pushing out into the current. The rapids we were paddling down were classified II and III level, but King Fisher said the rain meant they were going to be a little more challenging than that.
We soon learned to follow King Fisher's rapid-fire commands almost without thinking - there just wasn't time to do otherwise. In the space of seconds we'd be told "Forward! Stop! Back! Stop! Forward forward! STOP!" It was like a bizarre game of Simon Says.
I'd never been rafting so I wasn't sure what to expect from the rapids. It was a fantastic ride. The raft bucked and bounced, we were thrown about (but never quite fell overboard), we were wedged onto rocks and pulled off again to rebound into the cliffs at the sides.
In between there was time to stare in awe at the scenery. At the start of the ride the walls of the gorge have been painstakingly carved into murals in the Balinese style. This was only completed a couple of years ago, but already the foliage and moss have moved in and the glimpses of stone monkeys, dancers and other figures look like they could have been there for centuries.
From time to time there were waterfalls (which of course King Fisher made us steer into, just for fun), spectacular stands of bamboo and other trees leaning over the river. Dotted along the sides were little shacks where locals living up above keep their firewood. We looked at the almost vertical cliffs and couldn't comprehend just how they got down.
King Fisher admitted afterwards he'd been disappointed when he was assigned a group of four women, thinking it would be a hard day's work for him to get us to the other end. But he was impressed by our strength and soon let us try some of the really fun stuff - like going through a series of rapids with one side backpaddling and the other going forwards so we spun like a top. We were the first Kiwis he'd ever met, so hopefully we've set the bar high for future travellers.
At one point we were floating along, paddles still, and rounded a bend to find an old man waist-deep in the middle of the river. He was calmly wading upstream, a pair of dress shoes and a folded umbrella held above the current. He smiled and wished us good day, and then we were gone, thrilled at our random encounter.
Not two minutes later, we came to an abrupt halt - in front of us were three or four of the other rafts, anchored to the bank while their guides dealt with a little problem: a whole stand of bamboo had fallen down and was blocking our way. They were hacking at it with their paddles and getting nowhere.King Fisher came to the rescue with a tiny knife. Painstakingly, he and the other guides created a break in the blockage for us to paddle over.
The rest of the trip passed reasonably uneventfully - the 'Ping Pong' rapids was the highlight, as we ricocheted back and forth past a series of rocks, and after two and a bit hours we arrived at the end. There was just time for a quick photo with King Fisher before we began the climb back up to the top of the gorge.
Amy Williams travelled to Bali courtesy of Club Med and Pacific Blue.
Check out the pictures from my trip to Bali on Flickr or find out more about Bali.
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