The Group
There were 18 of us on the trip, and although it seemed hard to believe that we had gone over 2 weeks of travel in South America without much interraction with Israelis, this was obviously not to last and 11 of the 18 were those wonderfully responsible, friendly and interractive nationals - note the subtle sarcasm. For those of you that have not encountered Israelis on your travels then maybe I should take a moment to explain, before you think I am the ultimate racist: I have never been to Israel or encountered an Israeli in their home land and therefore have no idea what the ´true´Israeli is like, however whilst travelling they have a distinctly... ´unique´shall we say, reputation. Israelis, unlike most other travellers who are generally quite keen to stear clear of people from their home nation (hence why they are travelling), appear to have a particular need to meet and travel only with other Israelis. It is therfore not possible to encounter just one or two israelis in any one place, there must always be in a group of a dozen or more, and whilst I appreciate that when many people from any one nation meet with one another, they will talk in the common language - hebrew in this case - it must be said that Hebrew is not exactly the most INclusive of languages, and therfore one can feel somewhat EXcluded when amongst such a large group. Oh, and whilst I am complaining about them, they smoke too much. Is it really necessary to have a cigarette between rapids whilst on the raft? I don´t think so. OK, enough complaining. Anyway, unfortunately the 11 Israelis on this trip were no different and so it was that we had one raft of 6 ´extranjeros´(german, suiss, french, dutch and english) and 2 rafts of isrealis during our three day trip.
The ´extranjero´ raft
After a hair raising 5 hour bus journey along unpaved, narrow, hairpin roads (class V roads), the first day consisted of practising all the commands, as well as plenty of raft flipping and swimming, and some low grade rapids, in order for prepare us for day 2. Just as well, as on day 2 we spent 7 hours on the water and it was A LOT of fun but very very tiring. We rafted rapids upto class 4 and managed to avoid flipping, although Matt chose to swim or ´body raft´ most of the rest of the river and quickly became known as ´la sirena´(the mermaid!). Once we got to our camp site the guides set up a zip wire from the opposite side of the river to the campsite, where we climbed up some very slippery rocks and then slid down and dropped into the river. After almost an hour of setting the zip wire up and a lot of shouting at each other across the river, I tentatively asked one of the guides if it was the first time that they had done this, to which I received a very half hearted and mumbled ´no´, which I instinctively took as a ýes´, however despite Matt´s risk assessment coming out as red (how do you spell L.O.S.E.R?), we safely dropped into the river and it was brilliant fun. Definitely one to try at home (just joking mum). Finally we dried off and had an amazing dinner infront of a camp fire. Extranjeros on one side, Israelis on the other. Much like a school dance .
Zip wire
The Calm Before the Storm
So far everything was going smoothly. That night Matt and I romantically decided we wanted to sleep under the stars (cue: ahhhhhh), and decided not to bother with the outer of our tent - I mean what the worst that can happen? A thunderstorm? An avalanche? (I am aware that the outer of the tent would not have been great protection in this case!), Yup! Turns out both! I was having one of my first bouts of ´travel belly´ (first of many no doubt) and so was awake as I heard the first droplets of rain coming and so begrudgling (and ´accidentally´kicking matt on the way out but he didn´t get the hint) I got up and put the outer on and crawled back into the tent. The rain grew steadily heavier as I contemplated the joys of voming and diarreah in the rain, before the most ENORMOUS crack of thunder came - I´ve honestly never heard anything like it! Fair enough, I though to myself, even if lightning strikes, didn´t Matt say something about it hitting the high places? So I am sure being in a canyon is the safest place we could be. These were my somewhat naive contemplations as I fought another wave of nausea. Very soon after an equally loud sound came which sounded remarkably like stones falling... yup it was an avalanche. As numerous heads popped out of tents wondering if it was on our side of the valley, our rafting guide exploded out of his tent so quickly that he broke the tent door, only to find that the avalanche, which repeated itself a few hours later was fortunately on the other side of the valley.
The rain continued on well into the next morning and so the ´rafting games´which were to be played that morning were abandoned for a few more hours sleep, or in many cases, to ring out sleeping bags and clother which had become drenched (turns out we weren´t the only ones with romantic notions of sleeping without an outer!). Feeling somewhat worse for wear we navigated throught the hardest of our rapids - class 4+. However, the stuning surroundings, as well as spotting otters, condors and seeing the first locals we had seen in 3 days - 2 guys who had walked 5 hours from the nearest village and were panning for gold at the river side - made it easy to forget about the previous night, and enjoy an amazing end to a fantastic trip.
Back in Cusco now and we have decided that if we leave for Bolivia tomorrow night we may just have time for one last trecking or biking adventure in La Paz before heading to the park.
Lots of love to all, sarah & matt xxx
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