White Water Rafting On The Savinja River, Slovenia

Slovenia is a country that forced me to confront some of my fears. No, not that I had to learn things the hard way. On the contrary. With many forests, a mountainous landscape, valleys and rivers, I never found myself short of an opportunity to practise some outdoor activity.

During my trip to the Savinja region, I had the opportunity to go white-water rafting with a group of journalists and bloggers. As far as I knew, no one in our small group had done it before, so we were all up for a new challenge.

I remember my brother telling me of his rafting nightmare years ago, when he fell into the river and was dragged by the current for almost one kilometre. I’m not a great swimmer, so that’s not something I’d like to experience myself!

We arrived at Kamp Menina, near the small village of Rečica, in Savinja. We went for a walk around the tree-covered camp, with an area for caravans, log cabins in the best “glamping” style, lake and an adventure park. That’s where we all got changed into our wetsuits and started our drive to river Savinja.

We drove for about 15 minutes until we got to the part of the river where we’d start our little adventure. We were eight people in total and we had three rafts. After Matic, our instructor, briefed us on the dos and don’ts, we separated into small teams. I ended up in a raft for only two people, with another journalist. The river was fairly shallow, probably waist deep, so we could easily spot the rocks and boulders that would be our “friends” or our “enemies”.

WHITE WATER RAFTING ON THE SAVINJA RIVER

My rafting companion was a very funny guy who loved to tell jokes, but that wasn’t time to play. I was in very high spirits and willing to take this challenge head on. Yes, for most people rafting is just another activity, but for me, that was something huge.

The first raft went into the water, then it was our turn. It was very easy and we were paddling to go down as smoothly as possible. Well, so I thought! When I looked back, my colleague was just watching the scenery and, soon, we started veering to the right. I kept asking him to work with me, but he just started laughing. Is there anything more annoying than working hard when the other person is just watching butterflies?

After about 2km (1.5miles) rafting down river Savinja, our instructor signalled we should stop at a small beach. Next to it, there was a rock and a deeper pond. He invited us all to climb up the rock and jump. As I said, I’m not a great swimmer, but we all had our life vest on. We climbed the rock, one by one, and jumped into the river. The water was very cold, but also very clear, I could always see the riverbed.

We then continued downriver, getting stuck once in a while. In some areas the water level was about knee-deep, another reason for us to really keep rowing.

After 5km (3.1 miles) rafting, our rafting adventure came to an end. There are several points on the Savinja river where you can go rafting. The stretch we used is one of the easiest ones. Even so, I had that great feeling of achievement and wanted some more adventure.