White River Rafting at Earth Adventures

Earth Adventures is a great place to have fun with your family. I recently went there with my family on my birthday and had a great time.

There were however some unfortunate hiccups that made the experience regrettable as well.

We were instructed to arrive early in the morning at 9 AM sharp. We entered the building and tried to redeem the Hyperli vouchers that we had bought for the experience, but the owner Jaco refused ours because according to him he had other customers that want to claim vouchers and if he was to accept ours he would lose too much money. This to me is quite unacceptable, if you are selling vouchers on a third-party site it is your obligation to accept them regardless of your financial setup for the day or it should be specified before purchasing the vouchers that special arrangements should be made.

Regardless we made the trip to Parys and were set on the activity for the day so we paid full price and followed their instructions.

The equipment and transport to the riverbank were in fair condition the truck that they take you with is quite the adventure in itself. Some of the helmets floatation vests and boats could use some TLC and even replacement.

When we got to the river we asked to help carry the boats from the Truck to the river bank and asked to have a seat to receive safety instructions. There we were properly introduced to the staff or "Guides" that would be with us on our adventure. Jaco the owner was also going to be a guide for one of the boats that we were using for the day. During his safety presentation, we got to see his true colors and in my opinion, Jaco is a very entitled and rude person with little respect for others that including his CLIENTS that were paying for this experience. We were told that he and his staff are actually nice people and if we were according to him not listening to their instructions while on the water he wouldn't hesitate to yell, scream and curse at us to start doing what he wanted. This to me is very unprofessional.

After the big presentation, we were placed by our Guides on the 2 boats that were available. It was however very apparent to us all that Jaco had seen the dollar signs for there were too many people and too few paddles. which meant some people had paid to come and have this adventure but would ultimately just sit and watch. everything from inside of the boat and wouldn't participate at all.

My family was lucky enough to have a boat of our own and was asked to man the boat that could seat 6 people in total which was perfect for us and our guide would sit at the back and instruct us while on the water. The other 2 groups wat also a family of 6 and the other a family of 5. The other boat could however only seat 8 and because of Jaco's bad planning, they were also missing a paddle. Effectively leaving 4 peole unable to enjoy the day to the fullest.

Finally, we were on the water paddling away and having a blast. Our Guide, JJ, was VERY nice and made the whole event much more fun than we initially expected, and after having been told we would be yelled and cursed at we were pleasantly surprised to have him only raise his voice when we were in very rough water and would have otherwise struggled to hear his instructions is he hadn't done so.

The adventure on the water was really fun and I enjoyed every minute of it. As a family outing, it is definitely one for the memory books.

But even on the water, there were some unfortunate goings-on, after our first patch of rough water, Jaco realized that the boat was too hard to handle with the extra four passengers that wouldn't be paddling and opted that we take 2 of them on our boat to split the load. This was fine and we weren't bothered by the tagalongs, we switched with them now and then to give them the feel of paddling together as well. After a short paddle down the river, we got to our first rapid, and man what a rush, to me it was an amazing feeling and rush of adrenaline.

We continued down the river and after a while we remembered that the trip included rest and a small picnic halfway for everyone to catch a breath and relax next to the water. This however never happened and we were instructed to continue paddling which after a while can start to become quite straining on your arms and body if you're not used to it. We realized Jaco was in hurry passing our boat at one point and continuously calling our Guide to catch up. We asked JJ how often he does this trip and he said it could be 2 to 4 times a day, which made sense why Jaco was moving so fast and not stopping for our rest.

We paddled on for what felt like hours until we got to our next Big rapid and after going through it, it was just a short push to the river bank where we disembarked, helped load the boats back on the truck, and headed back to the building. Afterward, Jaco told us that he has a next group to take and he was going to lock the building so we only had a maximum of 15 min to dry ourselves off, get dressed, and put the equipment back where we got it. Which is an absurdly short time to get that all done.

My final thoughts on Earth Adventures are:

The owner Jaco has to start treating his clients with more respect stop chasing money and try to make the experience as fun as possible for EVERYONE, not rush it and not deny vouchers when it is not the customer's problem that you are going to lose money (make your policies clearer if this is something that you have to take into account don't just deny them the chance that's bad business).

I wouldn't say my entire day was bad I enjoyed every moment with my family and the other staff members were excellent, polite, and supportive. I will definitely do White River Rafting again in the future, but I would, however, rethink supporting Earth Adventures when that day comes.