One minute I was tranquilly admiring the meticulously terraced, hillside rice paddies and the huge, green trees that lined the riverbank as I rafted down Bali's Telaga Waja River, but in the next I was on my back and rocketing, feet first, down river. The life vest kept me afloat but when I tried to right myself I couldn't--the current was pulling me along too fast for me to get a grip on anything. It had happened in a high-speed blur. The guide had yelled, "bump," which told the four adventurers in the raft that we were about to hit something hard, and we immediately thumped into the riverbank. We'd had other collisions--with the riverbank and the many boulders that dot the river--but always before the raft had ricocheted back into the current and we had proceeded downstream.

Rafters Overboard
Not this time. A large Australian woman who was sitting next to me was jostled out of her seat by the impact and she fell hard into my lap. That force had been plenty to set the raft aflutter and, promptly, we were overboard and rushing down the boulder-strewn river. And, struggle as I did, I just could not stop my forward motion until I felt a powerful tug on my life jacket and heard the guide yelling, "Stand up." With his help, I scrambled up and, with some embarrassment, saw that the fast-moving water barely made it to my knees.

The three other rafters had already been corralled by the guide, so once I'd spit out the several gallons of river water that I'd swallowed, we all climbed into our raft and resumed our voyage downstream. Splash! A torrent of water slapped into my face and I looked around in confusion. Where had it come from? Splash, more water hit me and this time I saw a guide in the raft in front of us, laughing. He once more mischievously dipped his paddle in the river, gave it a clever twist, and still more water drenched me. But now I was laughing, too, because with those well-timed water shots he had changed my mood from a first-time rafter's tense fear of this rapid river into one of levity. This white-water rafting was proving to be fun--sort of a wet version of a roller coaster ride. But I couldn't let the guide's splash go without a response. I dipped my paddle in the water and gave him a good splashing, too. And now we were both laughing as the rafts speeded downstream.

Eyes Wide Open
I started enjoying where I was--our route took us by many tiny farming villages and, every so often, we saw naked villagers unselfconsciously bathing in little pools along the river's edge. While much of Bali has surrendered to the bustle of tourism, here in remote east Bali--in the valley of Mt. Agung, Bali's highest peak--a traditional, easy way of life persists. I had come on this rafting trip precisely to get a different look at Balinese life, away from the resort hotels and the market towns filled with batik, carvings and the rest of the crafts coveted by tourists. Riding along the Telaga Waja, I was getting a close-up look at a Bali little touched by tourism, and I was savoring it.

Falling Straight Down
Until, that is, we neared the Telaga Waja's waterfall, where the river abruptly makes a 90-degree, 10-foot drop-off. Back at the launch site, I had seen pictures of the falls and the ecstatic faces of rafters going over. Until this moment it had not occurred to me that we were going over, too. Surely the photos were from trips on another river--but, no, explained the guide, our trip was almost at an end, except we first had to head over the fallsÉand straight down. "Hang on tight," he urged, but I didn't need that urging. I tightly gripped the safety ropes as our raft came to the drop off, hung in the air for a few seconds, then violently plunged down. We landed with a giant splash, but we had landed, and I had stayed onboard. I do not know if I had an ecstatic look when we went over the falls--my hunch is that it was nearer a look of terror--but once we'd safely landed I know I felt nothing but ecstasy.

About the Adventure
Trips down the Telaga Waja, Bali's wildest river (class 4 on the standard 1 to 6 rating scale), are daily conducted by Bali Safari Rafting; (62-361) 221315. For a 14 km, two-hour excursion, the price is $65, including roundtrip transportation from most hotels to the launch site in east Bali and a buffet lunch..