点评:We went rafting as a family with our two boys, aged 9 and 11. This was our third rafting experience, but unfortunately the least enjoyable one so far.
The main issue was the organisation, which felt very chaotic. They know in advance how many people have booked and the ages of the participants, yet there seemed to be no boat allocation prepared beforehand. Everything had to be figured out on the spot once we reached the boats, which created a lot of unnecessary confusion. We were asked to meet at 2:00 pm but didn’t actually start rafting until around 3:30 pm.
We were the only family in the group who didn’t speak Portuguese, and we ended up being the last ones to be allocated a place. Eventually, we were put in a boat with 13 people, which felt quite crowded. Our guide also didn’t speak English. He was clearly a competent and experienced guide, so this is not a criticism of him personally, but it did make communication more difficult. Since the languages spoken by participants are known at the time of booking, this is another issue that could easily have been taken into account with better boat allocation beforehand.
Of course, the organisation cannot be blamed for the behaviour of individual guests, but several people in our boat thought it was great fun to continuously splash each other with their paddles throughout the entire trip. That’s fun for a while, but after some time it became rather annoying.
The rafting itself was also less exciting than we had expected. There was quite a lot of waiting around, and some rapids were repeated two or three times, seemingly to fill the time rather than continue down the river.
Photos are taken during the activity, which is a nice idea, but unfortunately there wasn’t a single clearly recognisable photo of our family.
On the positive side, our children really enjoyed themselves, which was of course the most important thing for us. However, based on our experience, next time we would definitely book a private rafting tour rather than join a large group.
翻译:我们一家四口带着9岁和11岁的两个儿子一起去漂流。这是我们第三次体验漂流,但遗憾的是,这次是最不愉快的一次。
主要问题在于组织工作,显得极其混乱。他们事先就知道有多少人报名以及参与者的年龄,但似乎并没有提前安排好船只分配。我们到达码头后,所有事宜都需要在现场临时决定,这就引发了许多不必要的混乱。我们被要求下午2点集合,但实际上直到3点半左右才开始漂流。
我们是团队中唯一不说葡萄牙语的家庭,因此最后才被分配到位置。最终,我们被安排上了一艘载有13人的船,空间相当拥挤。我们的向导也不会说英语。他显然是一位能力强且经验丰富的向导,所以这并非是对他个人的批评,只是这确实给沟通带来了困难。由于在预订时就能知晓参与者所使用的语言,这本是一个完全可以提前通过合理分配船只来加以考虑的问题。
当然,旅行社不应为个别游客的行为负责,但我们那艘船上的好几个人在整个旅程中都乐此不疲地用桨互相泼水。一开始确实挺有趣的,但没过多久就变得相当烦人了。这次漂流本身也没有我们预想的那么刺激。等待的时间相当多,有些急流段落还重复了两三次,似乎只是为了打发时间,而非真正顺流而下。
活动过程中会拍摄照片,这个主意不错,但遗憾的是,竟然没有一张能清晰辨认出我们全家的照片。
值得欣慰的是,我们的孩子们玩得非常开心,这对我们来说当然才是最重要的。不过……根据我们的经验,下次我们肯定会预订私人漂流之旅,而不会参加大型团队游。