- Joined
- May 3, 2001
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Just checking in from Chile. I am on a two week kayaking vacation in the small city of Pucon, Chile where we will day trip to several local rivers in the class III to IV+ range. If you have no interest in kayaking stories then time to pate down. Today was my first full day in country, as we arrived yesterday afternoon and did a lake session and hit the rack early...
Today was awesome. Up fully refreshed at about 5
Oh and just for the record my t-shirt for dinner last night has a guy on a stump talking and the caption is, "If a man talks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?" (Come on guys, you know he is!)
After breakfast a half hour of stretching then we broke into groups according to our ability and went for our first river trip of the trip. We did a couple of miles of class III-IV white water ending up at a nice big class IV rapid called El Piscador. (The fisherman.)
Tom, our cheif instructor tells us it is because of all the fisherman who come out on a warm afternoon, but I think it is because I always seem to spend a lot of time counting fish after getting knocked over in one of it´s huge waves.
I successfully did a great combat role and finished, tired but exhuberant.
Then it´s lunch and a richly deserved nap, then back on the river, starting a little higher, past Piscador by another four or five miles and through some tremendous class IV+ rapids. I did "800 Yard" rapid without any problem, then got knocked over by a small rock when I let down with relief that i had successfully navigated this very difficult rapid and ended up swimming. Poop!
Empty out the boat and back in the water for the last mile or so to the take out, a few nice easy class III rapids and a few practice rolls later it is off to the house, dry clothes and a wonderful bbq pork dinner with mountains of fresh canteloupe, green beans, beer and wine. Man I LOVE this place. A little friendly talk at dinner then walk the mile or so into town.
One of the young racers has a digital camera, I will see if I can get her to put some pictures on disk for me to share with you. She got some on the plane of me making balloon animals for some of the stewardesses and kids on the plane, but I don´t know if she took any of us on the river or not. My water resistant camera is film, so I may not get to send any until long after I GET HOME. Oops, the caps lock key is too close to the shift key, sorry.
Tomorrow we go to the schoolhouse rapid, a hundred yard long rapid that we will go to, watch the Instructors run three different ways, easy, not so easy and difficult. Last year i was feeling really good about running the difficult line until we came back another day and the difficult line that I took was about equal to the easy line that day. I did manage the not so easy line after about three days, but never did get the hard line all the way.
This year I will not get too cocky about running the hard line on day one, I know what is coming the next time we go back...
The "WORST" part is that you have to pick up your boat,, carry it back to the top and run it ten to twenty times, until you can hardly walk you are so tired. George, our 70 year old geezer has one of the kids carry his boat for him, but at 58 I am not yet accorded geezer statis and get to carry my own boat. I am telling you about it tonight, because I know how tired I WILL be tomorrow night.
Well that is the report for tonight. I am going to read the boards, then grab a collectivo back to the house. A collectivo is a taxi with a set fee of 300 pesos to ride and it goes in a set route. Anyone can get in or out at any point on the route and each pays the $300 pesos. @550 pesos to the dollar that is about $0.55 to get in and ride.
Last night I discovered that there is more than one route as I got into the wrong one and ended up going for a ride up in the mountains. Oops. Now I know, I take route #1, which makes perfect sense, I am a #1 kind of a guy after all...
Buenos noches.
El Wink
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