And I never thought I would ever say this, but I may have found a place that rivals Tahoe. No seriously, as hard as that is to believe. I think it comes up short, but man does this place rock! I have been in the township of Pucon and around in the mountains for about two weeks now, and it has been sweeeeeeeet. Climbing volcanoes, trekking around the
m, chilling on the lake's beach, mountain biking have been my entertainment, and it is all so close together. Now I have one more to add to the list: white water rafting. Oh yeah baby, life is good.So the Upper Trancura River is rated class IV, with a two IV's and a IV+ being the main attractions. The bus trip was a quick 15 minutes up the road, and after the typical entertaining orientation about how not to die while river rafting, we pushed up for practice on the water.
We received the usual commands of "forward," "back," "left/right back," "stop," "jump left/rigt (usually highside in the States)," etc. The new kicker was the "get down" command for when you go over waterfalls and things of that nature. Yeah, there were some wide eyes on the raft, hehehe, especially from the 4 Ausies who had never been befo
re. Personally, having been on a class IV river before, and having fallen into the water mid-rapid and surviving, I was all smiles. Ok, ok, I was a little wide-eyed too, but totally amped on the adventure.Our trip down was interspersed with the smaller rapids, but the big ones were Hellstar, El Feo (The Ugly), and Smiley. We also got to jump off about a 15 foot cliff back into the water after having to walk around an enormous class VI rapid, which was also sweet. It was a fun day with a good group, and we were able to run some more difficult lines I think because of it, and even the swimming breaks turned into pushing wars and water fights. Back in town I chilled out on the beach, now wanting to add river kayaking onto my list of sports to learn.
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