Rafting down the Grand Canyon for nine days is an almost indescribably profound experience.  The Canyon is, with good reason, one of the natural wonders of the world, and seeing it at that level — “from the inside out”, if you will — is truly a “do before you die” class of experience.  And if you want to do it, I cannot highly enough recommend to go with Canyon Explorations and Expeditions.

“CanEx”, as they call themselves in causal conversations, are amazing folk and they combine the best of high adventure whitewater, rugged backcountry exploration, and an almost spiritually laid-back kind of approach to the canyon.  Our travel book described them as “new age”, but that’s not quite right — at least not when we went with them.  They’re just a group of folks who believe in really seeing the canyon up close and experiencing it as deeply as possible.

As of 2008, when we traveled with them, they offered exclusively human-powered craft — oar and paddle boats.  None of the big multi-pontoon motor boats.  Which was exactly our speed.  The big motors did zoom past us a couple of times, but the engine noise just seemed entirely out of place in the canyon.

There’s a lot to say — I could sing their praises some length.  Suffice it to say that all of the CanEx folk we dealt with were truly excellent people.  They were great river guides, with something like 100 years of combined experience in the group, and they knew all of the whitewater intimately.  They worked tirelessly through the day, poling us down the river, leading hikes, and so on.  And then at the end of the day, they somehow mustered energy to produce fantasic dinners, great evening discussion or canyon stories, and keep the whole camp running smoothly.  They knew astonishing amouts about the canyon — geology, history, archaeology, biology, etc etc.  And they were all genuinely good and friendly people.