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Published: December 13th 2010
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Hola todos !
Today I went for one of the most exciting experience of my life, my first rafting tour !
I booked my tour with Rainforestur, in Banos.
Basically there are 2 good agencies in Banos, Rainforestur and Geotours. Heavily recommended. I found the guys from Geotours a bit too cool, like showing off and "well, you know, we can raft pretty good, yeah. Level is easy out there". So, I left this bunch of tatoo guys to go to Rainforestur. Only ecuadorian dudes, good spirit.
So, here we are. Deaprture at 9.00am. The dream team is as follow: Anna from Germany, very anxious about the trip, Pavel from CZR, excited about it, Karin, a super nice girl from CZR and myself. Basically only Karin practiced rafting in the past. Anna, Pavel and me are rookies. But the guide is not afraid.
On the way we stop by a "cable basket / teleferic" running over the river, at around 200m from the ground. Amazing view on waterfalls and, obviously, the river. Not very confident with the machinery, it looks like they took an engine from a car to run the cable...
After 1h of driving, we finally
reached the river. 3 other guys join us, the safety team.
We prepare the material (the raft, the wetsuit, the helmet) and get some advises from the guide. Main direction: Relax guys, dont worry. Make sure you dont loose the paddle if we flip, or you pay 40USD and try to grab the rope.
The guy explains it is level III+, almost IV (I still have to figure out what it means...) . If you guys know..
Anyway, there are 3 kayaks around to secure us in case.
Once on the river, we start by easy pool. Paddling forward to get speed until the first "rapid". Man, here you get some fun ! You keep on paddling but I have no idea if this has any effect/benefit. this 1st rapid goes easy. We are more relaxed, almost totally confident. Karin is bored, she already practiced level IV, so it is a piece of cake for her.
2nd rapid, it is indeed rapid !! We almost flip over, the guide shouts "inside !" to make sure we keep balance.
On the 3rd one, "rien ne va plus, les jeux sont faits", we flip over ! Stressing, because you dont know
where the ghell you are, the river is laundring you, you are blocked under the raft, cant breathe, hit rocks, and a the same time you have to keep the paddle and try to grab the rope.... Okay, we are all safe ! And we all have a f***ing big smile on our face !! We flip back the raft, get in, and let's do it again !!
We rafted on 17km, almost 2h. We flipped over 3 times, got washed a dozen, and we are so so happy. Anna, who was stressed a the beginning, is totally excited. She just wants to start again. Actually we all want to start again !
But unfortunately, the van is waiting for us, we have to load the raft and leave. We go for lunch, time to relate agian and again the flips over, and make connections (Karin lived in Peru and in Ireland, Anna was in Colombia and Pavel is dreaming about Paris..).
Pavel and Karin continue in the jungle, Anna and me grab a bus back to Banos. We are totally wet, exhausted, but soooooo happy.
Unfortunately I dont have much pictures, as my camera is not waterproof.
And it shakes sooo much that you dont even think about taking it !
I want to do it again !
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