How I almost died
Friday, March 31st, 2006The rafting trip was fun but I actually almost died, I’m not exaggerating that much…OK maybe a little, I’m sure people fall out of rafts all the time but it was scary…anyway Ill get to that part.
Going to the river that night was myself, a French Canadian guy who working at Machu Pichu for the year and an American couple. It was about 2 hours to get to the lodge and we went straight to bed once we got there. The lodge had tents for sleeping, this house bit with tables and kitchen, an outdoor eating part, a sauna and showers etc. There were a group already there on the 2nd half of the trip, you do the easier part of the river then the harder part the next day. After the hugest breakfast ever we headed off to the different parts of the river. It was just me and this French guy and the guide for the first day.It was pretty relaxed, about class 2 and 3 rapids ( they go up to class 6 I think) it was nice being on the river though and going through all these amazing hills and villages. It was great to come back to the sauna and another huge meal. The others all left that night so it was just me and Patrick and the guides. Had a walk through the closest village and tried some of this stuff which is like the national drink, made of fermented corn, it is pretty awful stuff! Spend the evening just hanging out and reading and eating more food.
The next day about 40 Israelis turned up for that days rafting, there were 3 boats full of us for the upper section, plus 2 safety kayaks and another safety boat.The guides are all really great and very on to it. This part of the river was class 3,4 and 5. It started off fine enough, it was really fun, big waves and stuff.The we headed into the big long class 4/5 rapids and they tell you all this stuff about it the boat flips but we were like, we’ll be fine…anyway our boat hit this huge wave right at the beginning of these rapids and completely flipped over.
So we all go thrown away from the boat into these giant rapids! I manages to hang onto the side of the boat but we were chucked around and smashed against all these rocks, the water was so cold and you kind of go into panic mode and I could breath properly and kept getting sucked under the water. I couldn’t see any one else but just kept holding on to the boat.At one point I got completely crushed between this huge rock and the boat. It was totally crazy! Our guide managed to get on top of the boat and pulled 3 of us up onto it, we could hardly move and were still in these huge rapids. We jumped over into one of the safety boats and pulled over to the side to make sure we were ok. We were all freezing and then we had to get back in the boat and go meet all the other rafts. Everyone was ok, the other boats were fine.We were just a bit cold and freaked out! The past thing I wanted to do was go back in the raft but we still had 15 mins of class 3 rapid to go to gt back to camp. Somehow we managed to pull ourselves together and get though them, luckily not falling out. Felt better after a sauna, tea and lunch and am in one piece, other than quite a few bruises and a giant lump on my foot.It was a very crazy experience, luckily the guides were amazing and we were all ok. I’m sure stuff like that happens all the time but i actually thought I was going to die, I know I’m very dramatic but it was scary! I’m back in Cusco now, the others went off on the Inca trail today so I’m just hanging out for a few days, will go see some ruins etc.
So yep that is how I almost died…but didn’t 🙂
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