in the ongoing effort to try everything at least once (well, almost everything), we did a rafting trip in my home province tirol (austria), a few weeks back.
one of the operators of rafting trips in the upper inn valley (and the one we chose) is area 47. the name apparently stems from the location being close to 47 degrees northern latitude. a 47 euro ticket per person (pricing coincidence?) includes free entry to the area 47 water park.
after the busride from area 47 (oetztal bahnhof) to imst and a short introduction, we carried our raft towards the riverbank and were treated to an insanely chilly (7 °C) dip into the inn river.
between the rapids (fun!), there were quite a few opportunities to jump into the river and “cool down”. the tour covered about 15 km of river between imst and haiming (approximate map), and took about 90 minutes (3 hours including equipment handout, transport, etc.).
i’d say it was a good first rafting experience (difficulty level 3), which created appetite for the more demanding oetztaler ache (4+; who’s in?).
area 47’s water area park drastically exceeded my expectations: i hadn’t heard a lot about it before, and expected a lake and some slides. what we found in addition to that, was just about everything fun you can do with freshwater – including a waterfront rock climbing wall (accessible only by swimming there), water blob, ski- and “zipfelbob” jump, an extra slide for body surf boards and a water cannon for humans. in the drier parts of the area, there were also some slack lines, trampolines etc.
great fun!
