A tale of tranquility.
The Little Colorado is a feeder river to the Colorado which joins at broadly the point where Marble Canyon becomes Grand Canyon proper. It's not navigable by boat, but it's easy enough to hike up it.
It's an unspoilt spot of natural beauty - the water is a wonderful clear shade of blue, there are no people around other than those from boat trips. It feels like a natural water-park, the inspiration for water-parks around the world. It has rapids, things to jump from, things to float down or places to just lie and soak up the sun. The water is also really warm, especially compared to the Colorado.
Unlike the main river, you're not supposed to wee in it.
We deboated (a word which doesn't seem to be ever used, unlike detrain and deplane. Don't get me started) and hiked a short way upriver. We'd been told to bring our lifejackets. About 10 minutes upriver we stopped near some whitewater. Our guides showed us how to wear our lifejackets like underwear (ie upside down with legs through the armholes) and then ride the rapids. That was a lot of fun. Not something I'd like to do in all rapids, but it seemed safe enough here. Once at the bottom you could swim back to the edge of the river and do it again. And again. And again. Until it was time to head up-river.
Because up-river there was a Jumping Rock. A Jumping Rock is a rock that you can safely jump off. You can jump off most rocks but you'd be ill advised to do it from some of them because of either a) no water to land in; b) shallow water to land in; c) jagged rocks to land on; d) the rock is too high that you get scared. A Jumping Rock is high enough to make jumping worthwhile, low enough so you won't break your legs and has a nice deep pool of water by it for you to jump into. An ideal Jumping Rock also has a nice easy climb up it, but this is not essential.
I climbed the jumping rock (easier said than done until I saw how other people were doing it) and was ready to jump off... but then I got a bit scared and just stood there for a while until someone came along to "hold my hand", both figuratively and literally. Then... Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhh... sppppllllassssshhh!
To get this far up river had involved a lot of careful jumping between slightly submerged rocks. The river was flowing alongside, but it was too deep to wade up. Going back, this wasn't a problem. We could simply float all the way back, just like in a lazy river. We floated all the way back to the rapids we could swim through. And then... all the way back to the boat, though being careful to get out before we reached the Colorado.
To give you the full picture, I had my hat and sunglasses on all the time whilst floating back. It felt silly. But it also felt great.
I didn't take any photos myself - I left my camera in the boat since I intended to go swimming. I have however found some photos on the interweb which I think demonstrate quite nicely how cool the place is.
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