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Published: April 17th 2009
After a few quiet beers in the hostel last night we endured a horrendous nights sleep. The RA RA's were on a big night spending Daddy's money on drink and drugs and were making an almighty racket until 6am! We were clearly not amused.
The day however, starting brilliantly. Unfortunately we failed to make the 3 night rafting trip due the river being too high and dangerous so we just did one full day, joined by Brian the barman and 2 girls from the hostel Sam and Laura we headed down to the square to be collected for the 2 hour drive to the Urubamba river.
When we arrived at the base camp we were all kitted out in the Peru's best shark attacked wetsuits and life vests!
Then another 15 minutes drive to the top before getting the safety talk from the head guide. He asked us how many were in our group and sent us all off together with our guide, Neil. What a legend! The first thing that he told us was that if any other boats came near us attack them with the paddles and drench them!!
The rapids were pretty strong even in the easy grade 2 rapids and we were all thoroughly drenched by the time we hit the hard stuff! We were then introduced to one of Neil's favourite rules, to watch him jump when we hit huge rapids, back flip into the water and basically fanny around like a kid, legend!!
When we got to the best rapids Neil asked us if we wanted to try to flip the boat, hell yeah!!! We hit the hard stuff and he told us all to jump to the front forcing the nose into the water and flipping us all everywhere! We failed in the 1st attempt but the 2nd I grabbed Brian and pulled him over the top of boat forcing it over, chaos ensued!
None of realised just how strong the rapids actually were! I land on top of Craig and we both ended up coming up under the boat! I pulled myself under and out but Craig was stuck, bless! I floated down river for a few hundred metres whilst the rescue Kayaks came to me and then I held on to the Kayak for the rocky rapids before jumping on the 6 man rescue Kayak.
Craig was still stuck under the boat with our guide Neil and they managed to flip it back over and get in to the boat just before hitting the rocks! We all caught up with each other and laughed the whole way down apart from Craig who has a great war wound on his shin from smashing against a rock!
In the evening we went out for some local food before hitting Mystry club to watch the DVD of the days antics and drink lots of free Kuba Libres!
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Laura
non-member comment
THE best rafting trip ever!! Neil was a legend!