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his hands, and he fell once again into the water, but this time he didn’t return so quickly. I was left whirling with the raft, fear churning in my stomach. What if Kevin had drowned? What would become of me? I sat on the raft, craning my neck, trying desperately to catch a glimpse of him. When I saw his straw hat carried downstream, I froze.

Kevin returned about fifteen minutes later, bleeding from a deep wound on his knee.

‘The undertow here is incredible,’ he said. ‘I thought I was drowning. My air was gone, but just in time the current threw me to the surface, and I made it to shore.’

‘What about your leg?’

‘Oh, I didn’t even notice. I guess I must have hit it against a rock. Shit, I lost my straw hat.’

Instead of attempting to navigate out of the whirlpool, we moored the raft to the riverbank. It was a great relief to have solid ground under my feet.

The next time we tried something else. We pulled the raft upriver, jumped aboard, and rowing with all our strength, tried to get past the whirlpool and back into the middle of the river. We succeeded on the third try. After our cries of joy had died down, Kevin remarked thoughtfully, ‘Maybe we should have just stayed back there. It wouldn’t have been such a bad place to camp.’

‘But we’ve still got a while before dark,’ I said. ‘Anyway, it’s better that we should get all the way to the mouth of the cajón and camp on the bank