Float my boat

After the excitement of our anniversary we decided to chill out at our hotel on Saturday making use of the lovely outdoor pool and drink the lovely bottle of bubbly that Stuart & Carole had arranged for the hotel to put in our room the day before:

In the evening we had a meal with Benny & Margaret, Australian friends we met in El Bolson, our haven.

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Sunday Funday!!

Whilst we were in Bariloche we really wanted to go white water rafting but, as it was expensive and we'd run out of money, we decided to leave it, especially as we'd heard you could go in Mendoza.

Well, when we arrived in Mendoza we looked into it and found out it was about a half the price of Bariloche so we booked it up straight away.

Sunday was our day to run the rapids and after catching up with family on FaceTime we were collected and headed off to the river, deep in the mountains.

When we arrived it was BOILING HOT and we were advised to layer on lots of suncream as we were 1500 metres above sea level and much more susceptible to sunburn.

Around midday we donned our fetching wet suits (note the irony!) and headed 13k upstream to launch our boats into the fast flowing river.

There were 36 people and 6 boats. We were ushered into a group with 4 Dutch people (who spoke great English) as we all needed an English speaking guide. We were really pleased that were allocated Nick, a young Canadian guide who had been really friendly and very outgoing.

Our crew were made up of:

Michiel & Daphne, a couple from Utrecht and Marlies & Marieke, 2 girl friends, also from Holland who met at Uni years ago. We got on really well and alongside Lauren and I we were determined to make light work of this river!

During our briefing Nick told us that he was just as excited as we were about getting on the river as we were, for 2 reasons. 1) The river was 'pumping' and was the best it had been all season. The rapids were awesome and we were going to have a 'blast'. 2) They were trialling a new starting point which gave us an extra kilometer in the water!

As we headed to the water, our preconceptions of "white" water rafting were soon dealt with.

Before us was, what can only be described as a scene from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory! A huge, bubbling, chocolate coloured river thundering through the mountain valley! All that was missing was Augustus Gloop bobbing by and 30 orange dwarfs singing their creepy Oompa Loompa songs!

We were chosen one by one to enter the boat and I was chosen, alongside Michiel, to sit at the front. I was fairly sure that Nick had noticed my leadership skills and level head in case of an emergency but the others were very quick to advise me that we were picked in weight order and Gareth Fattybank needed to be at the front... (Note to self: Lay off the steak and red wine.... YEAH RIGHT!)

Once we were all on-board we started on our 13k journey down the fast flowing & freezing chocolate torrent listening carefully for Nick's 3 instructions; "Forward", "Back" and "Get Down" which, if you didn't 'get down' on your knees on the bottom of the boat immediately, you would very likely end up swimming alongside greedy Augustus Gloop and have to be rescued by one of our newly trained sailors!

The first 1k section was level 2 but the rest of the river was around level 4.  Rivers are rated from level 1 to 6. Level 1 is like paddling in your bath at home and level 6 would be Niagra Falls.

Every time we hit a big rapid, Michiel and I pretty much went THROUGH the wave, getting soaked from head to toe in freezing, brown water. The rest of the crew did get wet but for sure, we took a number of hits for the team!

It was exhilarating and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. 

In the last section Nick asked the two girls sat at the back (including Lauren) to come and sit on the floor in between myself and Michiel. We all assumed it was because we were going to hit a rough bit of water and we needed more weight at the front. However it was more because they had stayed mainly dry up till that point and as we hit the next 2 rapids, they may as well have been sat under the boat rather than in it as tidal wave after tidal wave of freezing water entered the boat directly over their heads! Their screams didn't start until afterwards (in case they swallowed half the wave) but scream they did as Michiel and I exchanged a knowing and rather satisfied grin!

We pulled up the boat at base camp, had a quick shower and sat down as a group to have some lunch, a few beers and exchange stories from the river.

We weren't allowed any technology on the boat (for obvious reasons) so all photos had to wait until afterwards:

Selfie stick shot of the group with an additional Austrian member we included for lunch on the right.

We sensibly moved to the shade to continue our chats to avoid high altitude burns!

At the end of the day we were sold a DVD of the experience which included professional photos of the day and a video taken from a 'Go Pro' on board. We all chipped in making it about £2 each and the video guy was fine with us copying it for each other so we swapped email addresses and left it with Michiel who will be the first person to a computer in 2 week's time! Standby for added action photos then!

As we'd all got on so well we decided to have dinner together and met up later in town.

From left to right: Marieke, me, Marlies, Lauren, Daphne, Michiel.

Over the last few weeks we've noticed that if a local sports team wins, hundreds of cars take to the streets beeping their horns with people hanging out of windows and sunroofs, waving flags and shouting!

This night was no different, in fact it was even bigger as the Argentinean women's hockey team had won a huge championship that had been going all week.

As we sat in the restaurant (actually, on the edge of the road as you can see in the picture above) the team bus came by with cars beeping, people shouting and restaurant owners running into the road to congratulate them! It was a fantastic sight of national pride & celebration.

This picture is not great as the bus was moving fast but you can just about make out the girls I the bus standings and jumping up and down on their seats!

The evening finished with obligatory mojitos (we love to share a good thing!) and as we finished our latest night so far on this adventure (2am) Dr Doolittle (AKA Lauren) adopted 2 more dogs who followed her home, nearly a mile, to our hotel! 

They promptly lay down outside our hotel door waiting for her to come out again!

A great day, a great night and some great new friends.