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Published: February 15th 2007
Rafting
Setting offSo after an immense last session in El Calafate, that involved a street party, a bar b que, a beauty pagent, Graham on stage with the Spanish band and a trip to bed at about 7am for myself and Gary, we made our way to the Airport for our flight to Barriloche.
Severly hung over we manage to get on the plane and survive the 2 hour flight to Barriloche, whilst swigging large volumes of water.
Arrive in Barriloche and begin to look for a hostel, easier said than done, thwarted in our attempts to ring ahead and book a hostel from the ariport we decide to chance our arm and head into the city in search of a hostel. Still dying, and this is 5pm by now, we set up camp in the Wilkenny Irish pub and the lads head off in search of hostels. All myself and Graham are fit for is to sit in the pub and wollow in our own self pity.
Eventually Gary finds a hotel that is reasonably priced and we set of there for the night. Next morning we find space in a the very cool MARCO POLO INN hostel that
Rafting
Studying has free breakfast and dinner, result. Head out on a session that night with Bianca and Julie-Ann , two German girls that we had met the night before, many cocktails later (at 2euro a pop it would have been rude not to drink them) we stumble back to the hostel and crash.
Sleep most of the next day and the some total of our work was to organise a White Water Rafting trìp for the next day.......well that and go on a session with the German girls and some Irish girls we had met in the hostel.
Some advice to those of you who might go rafting in the future.......it is NOT and good idea to have numerous cocktails and stay out until 4am the night before you go.
So we set off the next morning for a 1.5 hr trip up into the Andes to rafting base camp, the raods were not too bad but they began to feel like a trip through the 7th circle of hell with the head on myself and Gerry.
A bit of grub though and we were ready to set sail. 8 in each raft i was joined by;
Rafting
Studying Gary, Gerry(Irish), Tara (Irish), Laura(Irish), Ceela(Irish) Hannah (English) and Paul(English) as well as our Guide Mendo.
So we set off down the river and Mendo had us 'practising his commands for the first ten minutes. Thr first rapid was fairly tame, but eased us in nicely. The second was fairly easy too....well for most of us. I heard a yelp looked around and all i saw was Gary´s feet head high as he plunged backwards into the drink........hillariously funny.
Down the river we went getting more and more sure of ourselves, then came rapid number 5. Mendo said that it was a grade four and it was possible for the raft to flip or for some of us to go ´swimming´. So as you would expect we thundered in and the boat went to one side, only it happend to be my side, so 3 of the four of us on that side went swimming. All i remember is being upside down in the water, trying to get to the surface and then bouncing back down off the bottom of the raft as it sped by above me.........looking death in the eye.......ha ha.
Anyway, once myself Tara
and Paul were all back on board we continued down stream bouncing off rock here and there and having the craic.
Towards the end we all hopped in for a swim, heading down through a couple of rapids ourselves.....muy bueno.
Great day out, and a definate to be repeated.
So, we are off to El Bolson tomorrow to freak out some hippies.
Until next time, you keep it sexy San Diego.
Al
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michelle
non-member comment
Haha would of been sooo funny to see!