I rafted the coldest river in the world. Someone almost died.

Wait. Don’t I need to sign a waiver?

Brent and I were living in the Balkan country of Bosnia and Herzegovina — one country with two names — and I’d come to the town of Konjic to raft the Neretva River. The man in the rafting office had just finished outfitting me.

The red helmet made me look (even more) like a dork:

But what about that waiver form? I didn’t see any papers or a clipboard. Didn’t they do that here?

Then again, this wasn’t America: it was Bosnia and Herzegovina. And if Western Europe takes a more casual attitude than the U.S. about the risk-taking of its residents, then Eastern Europe is positively cavalier.

I could probably refuse to wear the helmet and life jacket, and also juggle axes, and I’m not sure anyone would have cared.

I wondered what my husband Brent would think. He was in the middle of a writing project and had opted to stay back at the apartment.

My guide was a young man named Džan.

And when I say “young,” I mean “still in high school.”

Džan gave the group some very simple instructions on how to paddle on his commands. But unlike rafting trips I’d taken in the U.S., he didn’t say anything safety-related. He didn’t even mention what to do if you fell out of the raft.

I wasn’t planning on falling out of the raft, but who knows what would happen?

The people in my raft included a young French Canadian couple and two twentysomething male friends, one from Poland, the other from Albania — and I had a sneaking suspicion they were a couple.

There was also a Dutch woman traveling with her husband and teenage daughter. Fortunately, the older woman quickly gave everyone an impromptu lesson in raft safety: if we flip, let go and push away. If you fall overboard, keep your legs pointed downstream.

See? Even without waivers or official safety instructions, everything was going to be fine.

We set off, and Džan mentioned that at some point, we’d go under a bridge.

“Who wants to jump?” he asked. “It’s only fifteen meters.”

Which is fifty feet! I thought. I wasn’t going to jump from that height. I’m stupid but not Instagram-influencer stupid.

No one said anything.

“Well, I do,” said the Dutch woman, at last.

“No, you don’t,” said her husband.

“Yes, I do,” she said.

“No, mother,” said the teenage daughter. “You don’t.”

I thought, If she does jump, at least she’ll know which way to point her feet!

The first half of the trip passed pleasantly enough. A breeze kept us cool despite the searing sun overhead. There weren’t too many rapids, so we mostly glided.

I kept marveling at the clarity of the green water we floated on.

Earlier in the year, Brent and I visited Mostar, which is bisected by the Neretva, and learned that the river’s green color comes from oxidized copper in the rocks lining the riverbed.

Our guide had told us the Neretva is the coldest river in the world.

“I can see you don’t believe me,” that guide had said, reading the skeptical expressions on our faces. “Go ahead and Google it. I’ll wait.”

So we did, and he was right: the Neretva is the coldest river in the world!

It’s because the river’s headwaters flow from the runoff of three different glaciers, and the narrow river is very fast-moving. It’s just above freezing in winter, but even in the height of summer, the Neretva never gets any warmer than eight degrees Celsius, no matter how hot the day.

Soon we reached our first section of whitewater.

“Paddle left!” Džan shouted. “Now paddle right!”

We made it through just fine.

Maybe it doesn’t matter that our guide is still in high school, I told myself.

For another hour, we paddled along, occasionally working together to get past the tricky sections.

We did come to the bridge, which was… high. Now even the Dutch woman didn’t want to jump.

Later, we navigated another series of rapids, getting stuck a couple of times, and nearly flipping once.

Then after the roughest stretch, Džan guided the raft up onto some rocks and said, “Even though no one wanted to jump off the bridge, does anyone want to swim? You can even jump into some rapids.”

“Are you going to do it?” the Dutch woman asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Are you?”

“I think so, yes.”

So I said yes too. How cold could it be?

I launched myself into the water.

OhmyeffinggodwhatIhaveIdonethisissocoldIhonestlythinkmyheartisgoingtostop!

The cold rocketed through me as if I’d been struck by a lightning bolt of ice. I felt like I’d lost control of my arms.

Because I had! The water was that cold.

Teeth chattering and chest hurting, I finally staggered from the river’s icy grip. I was glad to be back in the full glare of the hot summer sun.

I was proud of myself. Yes, Bosnia and Herzegovina didn’t bother with silly things like “waivers” and “safety instructions.” But everything had worked out fine in the end.

I decided to document my bravery with some pictures.

But behind me, unbeknownst to me, another raft got stuck on the rocks. One man tried to climb out, but he slipped and fell into the water.

In an instant, he was pinned, face-first, against the side of the raft, the rushing river completely covering his head as he fought to get free.

I didn’t realize any of this at first, continuing to snap more photos while the drama unfolded directly behind me.

But I heard people shouting.

I turned to see three men desperately trying to drag the other man back into the raft. I stopped taking pictures and moved closer.

But later — much like in that old movie Blow-Up — I discovered I had accidentally captured the event on camera:

I would have tried to help, but I was on the wrong side of the river. Even over the loud rush of the water, I heard the men grunting as they tried to save the first man.

Something must have shifted, because the men abruptly hauled the fourth one back into the raft.

The man collapsed over the front of the boat, but the others held him tight. Somehow he was gasping for air and screaming at the same time.

Is he screaming because he’s scared?

Then he held up his right hand, and I saw his middle finger had somehow been bent almost all the way back to the top of his hand. It looked awful and incredibly painful.

Eventually, the man’s screams gave way to moans, and the other men helped him out of the raft and safely onto the shore. I never did see a first aid kit.

After things calmed down a bit, the other raft carried on.

Before long, Džan came up to us — to check in, I thought, on how we were doing after seeing what had happened.

Instead, he asked, “Did you want to jump again?”

He’d seen what had unfolded across the river, but barely took note of it — which made me wonder how often this kind of thing happened.

“No, I think I’ll pass,” I told him.

Why push my luck? After all, I hadn’t signed a waiver.