Well, a group of us went to Elora Gorge Conservation Park for water tubing last Saturday (2011-07-16). Yes. I am back at Elora again. I was here two weeks ago. :)
At 7:15am, we (me, Wen, Sampson, Anna, Jason, Chris, Bosky) started heading to Elora. We arrived at the tubing registration place at 9am. There was a huge lineup. We were all worried that they'll run out of tubes. We felt much better when we saw there were still lots of people behind us. We were located approx. 3/4 of the lineup. Luckily, we got our equipments: helmet, safety vest, and tube... even though we had to wait in line for 1.5 hours.
We took a shuttle bus (yellow school bus) to the launch site. Never thought tubing is dangerous... Two from our group felt into water in the first little rapid. They got hurt and lost their flip flop. (We eventually found most of them them in downstream ;P )
It took us a bit more than 1 hour to go from launch site to exit site. It was fun even thought we had those injuries. The view is beautiful. Hiking is looking at the scenery top-down. Tubing is looking at scenary bottom-up. Green trees on both side.... Blue sky... White clouds... Grey/brown rocks...
At the exit site, we had to wait 45 mins to get onto the shuttle bus to go back to registration site. The shuttle bus went by twice but was full. :( While waiting for bus, one of the tube exploded. We were all surprised how easy the tube explode. Not too long ago, someone was saying that the warning sign at registration site was there to scare us. The tube shouldn't be able to explode so easily. We were worried that we had to pay for it even though we didn't think it's our fault since we had to wait so long for shuttle bus.
When we were back at registration site, we thought we had to negotiate with the staffs, but as soon as we took the broken one back, they gave us a new one. They didn't even ask what happened.
We had lunch (hot dogs, fries, pop) at the registration site.
Around 3 something, we decided to hike to launch site for our second round. This time, half of us started tubing before the first rapid. The rest started tubing after the first tube. This time, the rest of us felt down into the water at the first rapid, except for Chris. Of course, we all hurt ourselves. The rest of the ride was very smooth. :)
At the exit site, we hiked back to the registration site, returned our equipments, and headed back home.
Even though I got hurt, I do want to play tubing again. :)
Now that I have experiences, here are my advises for playing water-tubing:
- must wear running shoes or sandles while playing. I wore my running shoes.
- put lots of sunblock
- When felt into the water, just try to swim to the shore. Don't try to stand up even though the water is only knee height. The river floor is very slippery and full of stones. If you try to stand up, you'll hurt yourself.
- If you are really scared of getting hurt, put on those knee guards and arm guards for bike/roller blade.
Check out the photos!
Elora Tubing Web Site (You can check out the price.)
View Elora & Fergus in a larger map
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