Tuesday 2 January 2007

Down The Yacu...

























































































































Left Tena for the days rafting, there were 13 participants & was the only Gringo. Arrived at the river & after a safety briefing made our way down to the waterside, entered the raft and left, as you can imagine paddleing down a grade 3 river through some big water & huge troughs & peaks is not really condusive to photograghy with an electric camera. All went well and I enjoyed the scenery, stopped for lunch then set off again, we reached a particularly fierce strech of water and whilst attempting to paddle & keep the thing straight we hit a large wall of water & goddammit I fell out !!! I was too surprised to be scared but after being submerged then surfacing, then being submerged again, and being completely out of control, I do confess to being a little concerned about my welfare, I hear shouting from the raft "captain " of " ees ok only rapids, no rocks " mmm.. well what was that big hard thing I skelped my foot off then ? After bobing down for what seemed a considerable distance the safety kayaker came close enough for me to grab the rear of his kayak and hauled me to the bank, from where I re-entered the raft, the rest of the guys in the raft did not seem to understand the mortal danger I had been in & pulled me back in with accompanying laughs & Ecuadorian jokes, after that I was more interested I my own health than the direction of the raft & held on to the various ropes & ties with a little more tenacity than the rest of the crew, we exited at Porto Napa & returned to Tena. Busy place New years eve but I just have a few beers & talk to an Aussie for a while, untill I became bored and went to another bar.

KAYAKING ON NEW YEARS DAY
After my near death experience of sunday I
decided to push my luck and go Kayaking down the El Napa, starting this time where we finished yesterday at Porto Napa , Toby the instructor & I were joined by a portly american girl of 25ish, after some rudimentary instruction ( I have never been kayaking on fast-ish water but i was sure I could pick it up and make a decent fist of the buisness ) I wobbled down for the first half K then I was warned about a tricky bit with high fast water, sure enough the first hard bit & I was upside down struggling to find the handle which releases the skirt, this time panic-ing helped & I found it & released myself from the Kayak, on surfacing I discovered there was still some distance till flat water so I was not safe yet, I managed to grab the Kayak which helped to give me bouyancy, Toby the instructor made hs way to me & I swapped my kayak for the back of his, Laura the American did it fine , even going to retrieve my paddle After emptying my kayak we started off again, I turned turtle twice more before we reached out destination 17k down the river, I do not know if I am suited to this as drowning seems an ever present and very real danger.
Or mibbee I am just a woose. We had a meal afterwards were I discovered there is some sort of parasite in the river which of course you can ingest by swallowing the water, So I´m not safe yet!! then back to Tena. Not many places open today or tonight so early to bed.




























3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sam,
A very Happy New Yearto you. Pleased for you, that you have found some other way of almost killing yourself. You could have bought my motorbike and saved some money. Anyway the date of Ephinany is all over the place depending on where you are and which version of Christianity you subscribe to. Jan 6th is probably the most popular; so you still have time to prepare your celebtrations and your costume. Back at work today so would much rather be where you are. Are you done with climbing now?

orra best ian

Anonymous said...

Think you are defintely more suited to the mountains than to the water though as always you are willing to have a go and then go back for more !! In any case Sam at least in the mountains you have to keep your trousers on and we don't get sight of those milk bottle legs! I jest. I am more than happy to see your bare legs any time!!

Love you lots.
xxxxx

Anonymous said...

Happy New Year Sam. Sorry that you are not so good in water. However neither am I so gonna come back and fix ma roof!