Canden Village, one of 75 villages in Bantul Regency, Special Region of Yogyakarta, has become a developing village because it is able to utilize a number of its local potentials to grow the local economy.
Located between the famous tourist area of Parangtritis Beach on the south side and the Mangunan Dlingo hills on the east side, Canden is a strategic village to simply pass through or visit.
The geographical condition of the villages along the Opak River basin is one of the potentials that continues to be explored. The river provides many opportunities for the emergence of various activities and cultures in this area.
The Canden Village Government and the community who care about river conservation do not make the river their backyard. They make the river the face of their village that must be maintained and cared for in order to have a positive impact on the environment.
From that spirit, then the development of area-based tourism emerged by utilizing river flows. They opened water tourism by offering adventures with packrafting, which is water tourism using rubber boats.
This tour offers a light adventure to tourists to explore the Opak River by paddling a rubber boat, alone or in pairs. The river tour managed by the Village-Owned Enterprise offers a tour of paddling a rubber boat as far as two kilometers and five kilometers with a travel time of one and a half hours to two hours.
This river tour in Canden is not white water rafting, because the contour of the river is indeed quite gentle. The sensation of paddling is what is offered in this tour.
The management provides a guarantee of the safety of the packrafting tourism activity. They have BNSP-certified water guides and work together with the White Water Rafting Federation (FAJI).
Upon arrival at Kiringan, one of the hamlets in Canden, tourists who enjoy the packrafting tour are also presented with traditional herbal medicine. They can also see the process of making herbal medicine.
There are more than 132 traditional herbal medicine craftsmen in the village. That is why Kiringan is the largest center for traditional herbal medicine production in Bantul. Making herbal medicine is a hereditary business.
The tourism managers there also offer tourists experiences about herbal medicine and health consultations, tour tours to learn about herbal plants and their benefits, as well as practice and get recipes for making herbal medicine that visitors can take home.
