We drove back into Chile to visit a tiny town called Futaleufu which is famous for its white water rafting. It is meant to be one of the top 5 rivers in the world for rafting. It was my turn for cook group and it went terribly!!! Firstly the shop was absolutely tiny, so we decided to make a turkey pasta as they had no chicken. Then when we started one of the guys put the veg in with the water for the pasta, the other guy then added the tomato sauce to the water so we had to cook it for like 40 mins to try and get rid of the water. I had no idea what was going on, this is not how you cook pasta. Luckily our guide stepped in and put loads of stuff of the truck in it so it vaguely resembled pasta. We managed to actually get away with it it was a miracle!
That night we headed down to the river and started a fire on a tiny beach with everyone it was a really nice spot and we stayed there for a while before heading to bed for rafting in the morning!
We didn't start the rafting until 10am so had a bit of a lie in. This was the first activity I would be doing after I hurt my ankle and I didn't think I would use it that much... Which was completely wrong.
12 people took part in the rafting so we had to rafts. They asked if people wanted photos and so we separated into two boats, ones that wanted photos and ones that didn't. We were in the ones that didn't as Dan had his go pro stuck to the rafting guys helmet. It didn't end up working though so that was unfortunate.
Our raft turned out to be everyone that had never rafted before and the other boat everyone had rafted. We started off by just practising rowing and getting in and out of the boat on a calm bit of the river. It seemed easy. Our first rapid wasn't so bad but me and Dan were at the front of the raft so every few seconds we would get pelted with tidal waves a of water. Its safe to say I didn't get much rowing done I was more concerned about staying in the raft.
Our second rapid was terrifying, half way through our raft completely flipped over and I remember just flying straight into Dan and the into the water. We were still in the rapids and then when I came up to breathe I realised I was under the raft. There were small airpockets there made from where you sit down but it was tiny and me and another girl Christine couldn't get out from under the boat. Eventually I made it out and held onto the side of the boat next to Dan but I was exhausted and had swallowed a lot of water. We had to let go of the boat so they could flip it upright and Dan just kept hold of me as apparently I nearly floated back into the rapids. Once the raft was flipped the right way and in shallow calm water we were told to swim to the boat. My body would just not move and my ankle was killing so Dan had to swim and drag me across. I didn't even help the guy pull me into the boat I was just a lifeless body. Once in the raft we all calmed back down as it was scary we have two over 60year old men in our boat! Christine who I got trapped underwater with wasn't OK though, once she got back on the boat she had a little panic attack and for the entire rest of the rafting she wouldn't stop crying. I don't think she'll be doing any water activities for a long time!
The next few rapids were OK I can't really remember them but there were a lot of rapids. I wads knackered from the tidal waves of water constantly hitting my whole body! We stopped at a little cliff where some people including Dan jumped into the water. I didn't not I did enough scary things that day. Then we did even more rapids. I think we eventually got the hang of it and Dan loved it.
At one grade 3 rapid the guy said we could body raft down it which me Dan and Christine's sister Sam did. It was horrible. Basically your just in the in the rapid floating down from your lifejacket. It literally felt likely when we fell into the rapids before, kind of like half drowning. I hated it but for some reason I flee past Dan and Sam and ended up out of the rapid relatively quickly. After this we were pretty much finished and we could pay and extra $40 to raft some grade 5's.
I was very undecided, I wasn't scared but I was absolutely knackered!!! I decided not to do it and Dan decided to carry on. We got to watch though from different viewpoints with the photographer. I even managed to see Dan fall in, at one of the rapids. Just him though not the entire raft which he said was much better.
The extra part was supposed to last one hour but in reality lasted about 20 minutes so it was pretty expensive. I think everyone that did it enjoyed it though.
Back at camp our guide had cooked us French onion soup (she's French) and it was lovely. We then had a good 4 hour nap, we were exhausted!