Road Trip!! Siete Tazas Edition

We then stuffed ourselves back into the van and truck and drove (or rode...) off. I had the privilege of sitting in the middle in the front of the van. Trust me, you get a much better view there than among eight others in the back. It was so awesome!! I saw a wild pig! It was as ugly as an ugly wild pig...ok, it was brown, furry, and, well, ugly. But it was awesome! I hadn't seen a wild pig before...

We went over to Siete Tazas (Seven Tea-cups), which appeared to be in their form of our State or National Parks. There are seven pools within the river, and about five waterfalls connecting them. The Longs kept enforcing the idea not to run it if we had any doubts. Seeing as I had some doubts (ok, I admit, I was kinda freaked out with the idea of blindly launching myself off over a rock ledge...I had visions of Michelle getting impaled on a random rock jutting out), I chickened out on the first run. Kenneth said they would probably run it twice, so we (Mackenzie and Nico also chickened out with me) could watch the first run and join them on the second.

The total run was supposed to take about twenty minutes, but as we understood, it was virtually a vertical put-in, so we allowed time for them to deal with that. Meanwhile, we (Mackenzie and I) walk down to the bottom two waterfalls (the only ones that you can see) loaded with cameras. We get down to the view point along with many other tourists, and I realize they are jumping the fence left and right. Being a notorious rule follower, I figure the fence was placed there for a reason. But we jump it anyway. Mackenzie goes farther out than I am comfortable with, in order to get closer to the waterfalls. Michelle stays on her nice, solid, close-to-the-fence ledge.

Time passes. I gaze upon the awesome cliffs and how the sun hits them, and the foliage growing on the sides. More time passes. Mackenzie yells back "Where are they?" I respond with a shrug just as Carly and Nico jump the fence and join us.

Time passes. I gaze upon the awesome cliffs and how the sun hits them, and the foliage growing on the sides. More time passes. I give in and (terrified the whole time) climb over to where Mackenzie and Carly are sitting.

Time passes. I gaze upon the awesome cliffs and how the sun hits them, and the foliage growing on the sides. More time passes. (Sounding familiar??) And guess what? More time passes. We decide that at 1:00 we would reassess the situation and figure out what to do. (We have visions of everyone slipping in a domino effect at the put in, leaving everyone with a broken wrist, broken ankle, concussions, or worse.)

During this time, I completely convince myself to run it on the next run. I really get myself excited.

Finally, at about 1:00, we see them at the top of the first waterfall (that we can see). We set up our cameras (six between the four of us) and start hitting the button. I failed on a bunch of mine. Instead of awesome pictures of kayakers totally owning the waterfall, I have many awesome pictures of the waterfall with the kayaker in the white foam at the bottom, totally out of sight. But I did get a few that worked out really well, especially on the second waterfall after I figured out to start hitting the button when they appeared to be going over the edge at the top, so maybe the camera would register it as they reached the middle...

Seeing as we needed to leave around 1:00 to get home on time, we did not have time for another run. Apparently there had been issues on the first waterfall, leaving the vast majority of the group repelling (along with all the boats and gear) down the waterfall.

As we were leaving, we stopped by another viewpoint from which multiple awesome waterfalls (completely un-runnable) could be viewed. Then we all squished back into the van with our turkey sandwiches for the ride back to Pucon...

Road Trip!! Los Queñes Edition Vol. 2

In the morning we ran a section of the Claro.

The put in was, sketchy. Take off-roading. Add an old van stuffed to the gills with people. Then add a trailer with too short a tongue that thus makes a lot of racket. Open the windows to get air. Add blowing dust and allergy giving plants (it's spring). There. Now you have a picture of the drive there. Then, at the actual put-in, involved walking through a swarm of flying things, down a steep trail of loose gravel, and over logs placed as a bridge. WOO!!

True to its name, it was beautiful. The sky was clear, the water was clear (hence, claro) and the scenery was amazing. The challenge here was not being pushed into the cliff walls that surrounded the turns (and also where the rapids happened to be). Unfortunately I do not have a waterproof camera I wouldn't be scared to death about actually taking on the river, so I don’t have any pictures. L It was also surprisingly easy. I was prepared to be pushed around a little after being used to the ocean rather than a river. Kenneth looked at us and said "You're finding this easy aren't you?" We responded to the idea of "Yeah, it is!" and he just laughed…so we are apparently just getting that much better…which is a weird thought, because it doesn't feel like it…yet we didn't have any issues.

So that afternoon when we were given the opportunity to either run the Claro again, or join the others on the bigger, pushier, shallower, more continuous Teno, we decided to try the Teno. Kenneth warned us that we didn't want to flip, and we definitely didn't want to swim (due to rocks and lack of eddies). Compared to the Claro, the Teno is U-G-L-Y!! The water is murky and winds its way through random piles of loose, grey rocks, next to a bare brown mountain side on one side and the highway on the other. But what it lacks in looks it gains in awesomeness.

It did not begin well. I put in, following Kenneth, and instead of making the easy eddy I should have, I got spun around ultimately making a lower eddy, but not smoothly. Mackenzie, who was following me, flipped, missed her roll, and swam. Ok, we eventually got everything sorted out, Mackenzie back in her boat and continued on down.

The rapids were bigger than on the Claro…the waves were bigger, the rapids longer, but we still had places of relatively flat water to clear the mind. Then Nico flipped and swam, leaving Kenneth yelling at Mackenzie, Min, and I to get an eddy (by now very small and turbulent) and to stay were we are. So we are now hanging on to rocks with both hands as we get pulled downstream, while trying to keep our paddles from drifting away, and kinda scared of what's below us, having been given such strict orders to stay where we are. Jakub (one of our instructors) ends up walking up to us telling us to get out of our boats that we are portaging and walking down to where the rest of the group is.

The rest of the run went relatively smoothly, excepting Michelle's flip, which she rolled up on. J We got used to the water and the current and re-figured out how to get the boat where we wanted it to go and stay stable in the process.

Profound thought: Kayaking, in a way, teaches us how we should live life. Instead of dwelling on the past and what we did wrong, you learn the lesson (don't free-float into a hole) and move on, and face the next wave, the next obstacle. Ok. I admit, that's really funny coming from a history geek, but yet it's true. Because it's when you're beating yourself up for messing up on the last wave/hole/missed eddy, that's when you mess up again…

Road Trip!! Los Queñes Edition Vol. 1

After a brunch of many many crabs (yours truly went for the chicken sandwich, along with other members of the trip...as mom said: the chickens ate the chicken), we packed the trailer again and piled into the van and truck again and headed off.

We stopped at Los Queñes in the foothills of the Andes close to the confluence of the Teno and Claro (0ne of many Claros) Rivers. We met one of the Cascade Raft and Kayak legends, Todd Erickson, and one of the guides from a couple of years ago who still remembered my name and that I was the monkey who cleaned the kitchen... Some of the guys ran the Teno, and the rest of us went to town!!

Town consists of a couple shops, a road construction site in front of the fortress-like bakery (reputedly the center of the resistance against Argentina during their war over the border), a few houses, and a pizzeria. We decided to get a couple of pizzas...we ordered the basic pepperoni and basic cheese. Let's just say that behind Flying Pie Pizza in Boise, ID (nothing can beat Flying Pie), this random pizzeria in a remote town in the foothills of the Andes in Chile is in a close third place for best pizza ever. Admittedly, it may have something to do with being starving, but I think it was more than that. The cheese pizza was surprisingly really good (it takes a lot to make cheese pizza exceptional), and the "basic" pepperoni…yeah. It had toppings galore (miniature pickles too!) with local sausage slices rather than just classic pepperoni, and it was really good too!

Later there was a pretty awesome ping-pong tournament. Some were really good (Nico & Coleman), others were really quite good (Teague), and yet others provided plain good entertainment to watch (me).

Dinner (the actual dinner) had an awesome twist too. Take the basic hamburger (the first we'd had since we were in the States) and add guacamole. Apparently there are guacamole burgers here, I just hadn't had one before. It was really good. Yet another addition to the creation of my perfect hamburger…bacon-cheese-burger-with-guacamole…

Road Trip!! Pichilemu Edition

We left on a road trip across Chile...a van (11 people in a 12 person van) and a truck (4 people in a 5 person truck) with 20 boats (A white-water kayak for all plus 5 or so play boats).



The first stretch was to Pichilemu, an awesome Chilean beach town. After close to a full day drive which was fairly uncomfortable after the first 2 hours, we got there and found our hotel (the same place the Longs have been staying at for years...). We changed in their general changing area, skipped moving into our rooms, grabbed our boats, and headed to the beach.

I learned how to surf. I understood the basic principle from miniature waves on the Main Payette and watching people at the Gutter and on videos, but I never quite had the nerve to do it. But as Tren (one of our instructors put it), in the ocean, you have the fun of the hole, the fun of getting slightly trashed, then you get to roll up in flat water. We were on the San Antonio Beach or the Main Beach (yay for Wikipedia!). So I got to learn how to surf by experience. I was generally with Nico (our Chilean friend on this adventure) and Christan (our Chilean instructor). The goal is to get on top of the white pile of water on the wave, and ride it. As you get better, you go bigger and actually do tricks. I just worked on catching the wave and not flipping. The first time I flipped, the first thing I noticed was the salt. I rolled back up (apparently with this completely comical face), spluttering "La sal! La sal!" (The salt! The salt!), and got laughed at.

I kept thinking back to my Spanish teacher's assignment to blog on if we preferred the beach or the mountains. I originally always put the mountains because mountains have rivers and rivers can be kayaked. But then I was drawn--because frankly surfing is pretty awesome when it works. But then I got trashed, and driven into the beach/sand one to many times, and made one too many mile treks up the beach (due to the current taking us down) with blisters, a heavy boat, and a wind. Oh. And the continuous salt, which stung the eyes eventually. But surfing remains awesome. So now in response to the blog, I would still respond mountains, but for a different reason...fresh water.

The next day we went surfing again (I got better) and I got power driven upside down into the beach (the wave left me upside down, with my boat on top of me, in the middle of the beach, totally unable to move with a mouth, nose, and two ears filled with sand and salt water). So although the surfing was awesome, by then I was exhausted, and decided to go with Carly (our horse-back-riding teacher) and Mackenzie and ride horses on the beach.

Now I ride horses a lot as those who know me, know quite well. Aka: Once around the corall on my Mom's and Dad's friend's horse. Six years ago. Like I said: I ride horses a lot. So Carly (in Spanish) communicates her desire for a fast horse, Mackenzie's for a medium horse, and mine for a slow horse. Carly's horse didn't stop, mine didn't go, and Mackenzie's was just right. Yet, the few times our guide did get my horse to run, left (I imagine) huge bruises. Here is an apology to the horse for needing to deal with a random rider who had no idea what she was doing!! And here's a thank you to the guide for being patient as I searched through the file cabinet in my brain of Spanish and attempted to communicate. I think it generally worked. Yet despite having no idea what I was doing, and not getting the horse to do what I wanted it do do (walk a little faster), it was pretty cool to ride a horse on the beach.

Later, we went to La Barracuda Disco Theque (completely sanctioned by the Longs...with Tren there as one of our chaperones). Basically a night club for 16yrs+. The thing is, you have to look it to get in...so actually being 17 does me no good...but we all got in!! The rules were: No drinking, No smoking, and no grouping. It was dark, and loud, with pulsating lights. Yet, I managed not to get a headache until 3(am)...it opened at midnight. We mostly stayed in our lovely gringo group (AMERICANS). But it was interesting...I couldn't get the smell of smoke out of my shirt for days... It was interesting...it was better than homecoming was, and people kinda legitimately danced (not just vertical jumping)...