Learning to Fall

This week has been an amazing second full week working in Pucón. I started the week teaching an advanced class in Spanish with fairly dubious weather. It was great to get out teaching on some good grade 4 sections and I really enjoyed stretching my Spanish by trying to translate all the technical jargon we use when teaching WW kayaking in English!

This week we've also had plenty of time for personal boating, getting in multiple runs of the Upper and Lower Trancura, Upper Palguin and the Liucura. There have been a few double kayak sessions this week too. The double kayak sessions are great because we go out in a two-seater whitewater boat, a guide at the back and a client in the front. It's a fun way for the clients to be able to experience bigger rapids without having to worry about making the right lines, and if we flip, we can just roll the boat back up with them in it. We've had everything from young and adventutous 20-something year-olds, to equally adventurous 70-something year-olds out in the tandem kayaks this week and it's also a fun session for us as guides to teach.

Can't complain about the office...

I suppose I should address the title of the post... Something that I've gained a bit more experience in whilst in Pucón has been kayaking larger drops and waterfalls. To be honest, it's just about learning to fall well... The Palguin has been a good playground and will continue to be a frequent playspot throughout the summer. But this week I had my first f-up of the season. We travelled about 2hrs to the River Llancahue. It's an extremely narrow but stunning river. I went with the boss Ben and another guide, Daniel. When we're paddling together we tend to go at quite a fast pace because we all know roughly what we're doing. I was told that we'd catch an eddy just above the lip of a 25ft waterfall (5ft ramp and 20ft freefall). Fine. Although when it came to catching the eddy I wasn't concentrating hard enough and missed, floating backwards towards the lip of the fall I didn't have any chance of saving it. Instead I got some speed up backwards and ran the fall backwards... I landed really nicely, much more luck than skill! The original plan was to get out and have a look, then run a line that we'd pick out from scouting it. I supposed after I fell off, the other two felt like they had to run it blind too, and they followed me down. This was the first time I've messed up in Chile and even though I laughed it off, I was pretty scared! Definitely gotta concentrate more in the future!!!

Daniel ran this one the right way round

The rest of the river involved a lot of walking, around various trees that had fallen into the river. It's hard to deny that the river was really beautiful though.

Hard to deny that this place is pretty cool. And photography skills are not bad.

There was another first for me this week too. I got out on the Stand-up Paddleboards with Daniel to have a play around before we start guiding on them. We started off on the chilled Middle Liucura and did pretty well. The rapids on the Lower Liucura involved lots of falling in, but nothing too serious. We then took the, admittedly questionable, decision to run the Lower Trancura with slightly bigger waves and holes to negotiate. Whilst we didn't do much of it standing up (mainly kneeling), we made it down fairly successfully and didn't swim any of the uglier and shallower sections, which was a relief. It was a fun afternoon overall and I got a lot more stable on the board as we went on.

Rapids on the Lower Liucura

It's clear to see that the tourists are starting to arrive here big-time. Traffic is ramping up, lots more people are walking around the streets and the place feels a lot busier. I escaped for today to come to Roberto's house in Loncoche where we went for a coffee and cooked some delicious food with his family. It's nice to have a kind-of foster family here to spend time with, even if one of Roberto's uncles speaks so fast I can't understand anything he says! I'll be spending the night here before heading back to Pucón for work in the morning. Next week I hope to be able to tell you about some new rivers I'd like to paddle and general life in and around Pucón.

A brief escape from Pucón

First full week

Due to some suspect weather, there haven't been that many trips with clients this week. COnsidering the high season hasn't started yet, this is pretty convenient for two reasons. Firstly, the rain brought up a lot of rivers that weren't runnable before. Secondly, the lack of clients meant that after a few hours of work in the shop, we got out boating quite a lot! Monday afternoon we went to see the Rio Nevado, a grade 4/5 canyon run. We arrived and everybody looked a bit nervous, there was a lot of water... For a first time run of this river we figured it'd be better to do it a bit lower, so we left with the plan of returning the next day for a slightly less chaotic first run. Luckily, the next day we had the perfect level and set off into the canyon.

This run was the best section I have paddled to date! Full of tight and twist corners, ducks under rocks and logs, countless waterfalls and drops and one amazing slide!!! It was great to get out paddling with the other two guides and the boss as it gave us some more time to get to know each other and everybody's paddling style. We hiked out of the river at the take-out all buzzing with adrenaline and keen to go back again to run this great section as many times as we can.

Jeremy styling the line

Setting safety can be fun too!

Scouting on the slide

On Wednesday everybody was a bit busy, but the boss offered to drop me off at the Upper Trancura and pick me up later. I've been keen to paddle this grade 4 section as it's notoriously fun, and I'll be working on that section, guiding and coaching, all summer long. I set off on my solo run with some information on the lines and where to get out for the big portage. Unfortunately my brain failed to retain all the information and I went down the wrong side of one of the islands, nothing major but it meant that I had an annoying walk back up to descend the right channel... I finished the upper section fairly quickly and paddled down the lower section too, where I got picked up in the van. It's always a bit more nervewracking paddling by yourself but overall the run was fantastic and I was glad to be able to get out on the water.

Yesterday was a busy day on the river too. In the morning, me and Daniel were out in the tandem kayaks paddling the Lower Trancura. It's fun for us because we paddle in the back of the boat, with a guest coming along for the ride in the front seat. You've got to be a bit more proactive about choosing good lines, but apart from that it's just point downstream and paddle hard. The safternoon I safety kayaked for the first SUP (stand-up paddleboard) trip of the season. Hopefully I'll be guiding the next SUP trip, starting with a few tiny rapids and then a really scenic paddle out.

Today I'll be teaching an advanced class on the Upper Trancura, it is raining, but it is a watersport I suppose... It'll be my first class in Pucón in Spanish which should be fun. I thought I'd also attach the compulsory videos of the drop and slide on the Nevado, too good an opportunity to miss :)

First few days in Pucón

I arrived in Pucón on Wednesday evening, which left me enough time to dump my stuff in my new accommodation and go out for a few drinks with my new boss.

My accommodation is a small room with two beds in a pretty rickety wooden shack-style thing, not the most luxurious accommodation I've stayed in but a bed is a bed and I'm not fussy. Thursday was my first day working in the shop, getting to know the staff, how the company works and what gear we've got. That evening I went out paddling with a friend to a local surf wave, it was great to be in a playboat again after a while. The might be pretty hot out here, but that river was absolutely freezing!

Team 2016

It's been far too long since I've been in a tiny boat!

Friday I spent a day shadowing one of the other two guides on an intro to whitewater day. I'll be running these things quite a lot this summer, spending the morning giving the clients some basic skills on the lake, then heading to an easy section of whitewater in the afternoon to give them a taste of the thrills that whitewater can offer. The river has some absolutely stunning sections, I'll be trying to get some decent photos of the work I do as the summer progresses.

View from the shop, 

Saturday was the best day so far. The head guide and I spent the morning reapairing gear at the shop and then we all headed off to my boss's house, who lives right next to the Palguin River. It's a classic Chilean waterfall run and we were told it's tradition to run it for the first time blind, after all you only get the chance to see a rapid for the first time once! The first run Daniel (the head guide) and I headed down with Ben (the boss) and I absolutely loved the river. There's a short hike in to start, a beautiful seal launch into the river followed by 3 waterfalls and quite a steep hike out. The best thing is that you can easily walk from the take-out to the put-in with your boat so me and Daniel did a total of three laps whilst the others BBQ'd the meat. We finished the trip with a delicious BBQ, beers in the sun and a bit of football.

If this is the start, just imagine how great the rest is...

What better way to do staff bonding?

I returned back to the centre where two friends from Concepción had arrived to spend the weekend. We grabbed some food together and then spent the evening chilling on the beach.

Today we went for a quick paddle on the lake, the cool thing about living here is even if I don't have transport to a river I can walk to the lake with my boat on my shoulder and let off some steam. The strong wind and heavy rain made it a bit more challenging on the lake. We then headed back to Loncoche to Roberto's house where we'll spend the night before I return to Pucón for work in the morning. It's been great to catch up with these guys who are taking a brief break from exam revision and I can't wait to start another week of paddling in the sun!

6 things Chile does well!

It hasn't been the most interesting week since I last wrote, in fact it's probably the first time I've struggled to think of something interesting I've done or somewhere interesting I've been to write about! With classes winding right down (I think I taught about 4 hours last week...) all my student friends here right in the middle of exam season, I've been at home a lot, trying to get some work done on my year abroad project. The house population is also down one now, my English housemate Lauren left today to go back home for good. Best of luck Lauren, and I hope everything goes well! Now the only foreigner in my house, pretty good for language practice anyway. In the absence of anything interesting to write about, I decided I would write the first part of a two-part article for you. This post will be about 6 things that Chile does really well. And... yes, the second one will be about 6 things that Chile doesn't do so well (I'll save that one for another week when I don't have much going on). So here goes:

1) Slang - Chile is world famous for being a country that uses a hell of a lot of slang. When I was looking into year abroad destinations, I wanted to pick one that would really challenge my Spanish skills. Once you get over the different accent and the fact that all Chileans speak incredibly fast, you get the chance to try and figure out what on earth the words they use actually mean! Chileans will often form entire sentences using only slang and idioms without using even one word of standard Spanish. This has been great for me because I've had fun learning all the slang. At first I really tried hard not to use any of it, I was trying to keep my Spanish as 'clean' as possible, but about 2 months into my trip I found myself accidentally using all these slang words. I suppose when you live with young Chileans, work with Chileans and socialise with Chileans that all use those words it was bound to happen. 4 months in, I now have no problems understanding what the slang means and am always being ridiculed for using it too.

2) Transport (sometimes) - I say sometimes here because traffic in Concepción can sometimes get bad, particularly around 6-8pm, and the buses can be quite erratic with their schedule. However on the whole, the transport system here in Chile is pretty awesome. Since the country is so long and thin, it only really needs one main motorway going right the way down. You'd think that with one main route for travelling up and down the country there would be lots of congestion, but actually I've never been delayed travelling around from city to city. The best way to get around is by coach (confusingly called "buses" in Chilean Spanish...), they're really quick and efficient, leave regularly and at all hours and very comfortable. The main differences with the UK coaches being that the seats recline into half-beds or full-beds and are really comfy, and that they are insanely cheap compared to the UK (think going the equivalent of London to Newcastle for a fiver, but in a seat that turns into a bed!). 

3) Food and drink (with exceptions...) - Again, there are definitely exceptions to this rule (ones to include in the second part to this post), but in general the food in Chile is great. Chile is pretty well-known for having really good seafood, meat and wine, all of which I can confirm to be completely true. Chile also has a spirit which you're very unlikely to find in Europe, it's called "pisco". Pisco is a type of brandy that's used to make some popular cocktails and other drinks, but never ask a Chilean person where pisco comes from... The home of pisco is fiercely contested between Peru and Chile and each will tell you that their country is the home of pisco, to be honest it doesn't matter that much, but if you do come out here it'll save you getting into the middle of a spirit war. Another good thing about Chilean food is the traditional side of things, traditional Chilean food is great!Worth mentioning though that the average student diet is just as bad as in the UK.

4) Nature - This was bound to come up. Chile extends from the driest desert in the world up in the North, to glaciers in the South whilst passing through more temperate and jungle zones in the centre. The country is full of the most beautiful lakes, mountains, volcanoes and glaciers. Volcanoes are not something that I'm that used to as an Englishman. Two special experiences stand out in my mind to do with volcanoes. The first is when I went to Villarica in the south to spend the weekend there, I slept in the house of a friend of a friend who has an insane view of the volcano there (which erupted last year). At night I went out onto the decking to see the volcano in the pitch black and saw the glowing red haze above it, it only happens with some very active volcanoes and it was breathtaking. The other experience is less to do with volcanoes, but it did take place on a volcano. I was learning to ski on the Antuco volcano, I spent the night sleeping on the back of a pickup truck parked on the side of the volcano and I can say that I've never seen so many stars before, the sky was amazing. I was also told that since I'm in the Southern Hemisphere, they're not the same stars that any of you readers from the Northern Hemisphere will be seeing. I've only explored a small part of the country so far, and intend to take full advantage of the amazing place I'm in over the next 7 months.

5) Outdoor sports - You've already heard a lot from me about kayaking, and I've also mentioned time I've spent skiing, hiking, swimming and climbing. However, these aren't the only sports that Chile has to offer. Some would say that Chile is the best country in the world for outdoor sports enthusiasts. You've got skiing about two-thirds of the year, all year round surfing, world-class rivers, very technical glaciers, big big climbing routes, the list goes on. More so than in England, getting out in the fresh air and enjoying the outdoors seems to be a thing that families, couples and friends love to do together.

6) People - Ending on a bit of a soppy note here. Chilean people (apart from some pretty unfriendly commuters in Santiago) are extremely friendly and welcoming. You'll always be invited to go out and do things, to peoples houses, to go drinking or partying, to cook together, all sorts. A lot of English people have a kind of built-in suspicion of anybody who tries to do something nice for them, especially Londoners, but here in Chile it's completely normal. The main thing I would say with regards to thing is that you have to be a 'yes man' to make the most of this. I think that's probably just general year abroad advice really, you have to say yes to as much as you can, and you'll find yourself with loads of new mates and things to do right away.

So that's it, 6 things that Chile does really well. Wednesday I'll be moving South and hope to write another post on the weekend to let you all know how I'm settling into Pucón!

Summer plans :D

Classes are starting to wind down at INACAP now. The students are starting to have their tests and exams which I obviously don't have to go to, so my workload has been steadily easing off over the past week or so. In fact, next Monday will be my last day this term! I can't wait to finish this term, not that I haven't enjoyed teaching, it just means that I'll be able to enjoy the summer and make the most of not having to teach English every day.

This week gave me a few interesting opportunities to get out and about. The first was on Thursday when I was invited to go to yet another INACAP campus to judge a singing competition. Some of you may have read a previous blog post in which I spoke about 'INACAP's Got Talent', a singing competition in English that took place on the campus that I work at and I was one of the judges, helping judge accent and pronunciation. This competition was in Chillán, about an hour and a half to the north and was called 'I Rock'. It was the same kind of set up, kids from local colleges as well as INACAP students had to sing a rock song in English and we judged them.

This time there were four of us on the judging panel: a local radio DJ, a jazz singer. a guitarist and me. It was funny to see that yet again, the younger college kids sung way better than the INACAP students, and there was a good range of different songs. It seemed to be a bit more of a whole day event that the competition in Concepción, there were guest performers, costume competitions, English quizzes among other things. Overall it was pretty fun and it was nice to meet the English department from another campus. As a thank you gift (which I don't really feel like I deserved, having just written numbers on a sheet of paper for a few hours), I was given a bottle of Chilean wine. But I've got to say that it's possibly the strangest (good strange) bottle I've ever seen, being in the shape of a Chilean man...

On Friday I finally managed to get Roberto to come to the Laguna Chica with me where I taught him to kayak. He'd had one bad experience with kayaking before so he was a little bit nervous, but he took to it really quickly and now that the summer is here, it'll be great to have somebody to go paddling with.

Couldn't have picked a nicer day!

The company wasn't bad either...

I've now got a pretty good plan of what my summer is going to look like. I've got the whole of December, January and February off, so definitely have to make the most of it. Last weekend, I met up with Ben May, the owner of Kayak Chile who run kayak classes and trips in Pucón. He offered me work with them on a kind of internship basis for the whole of December and January. This means that in about 10 days I'll be packing up and moving to Pucón for two months, where I'll hopefully be paddling every day, whether it be messing around with friends on my days off, or teaching clients on flatwater and whitewater. I'm really excited to be able to work with a well-known company that I should be able to learn loads from. It'll also be a great chance for me to improve my technical Spanish vocab, since I'll probably be teaching about half of the courses in Spanish. After my time in Pucón I will be heading off to Ecuador with 3 paddling friends from the UK. I knew I wanted to do some kind of longer paddling trip whilst I'm out in South America, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to explore another country too. After a few weeks in Ecuador, I'll head back to Concepción for about a week before heading down South to Torres del Paine with my housemate Roberto to go trekking for 10 days. It's going to be a very busy, but hopefully amazing summer!!!

EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!!

Ok, so this is a slight exaggeration. Last Friday I experienced my first tremors in Concepción. The epicentre of that earthquake was in Curicó, and had a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale. Curicó is about 300km from Conce, so we only felt a tiny shake here. It was a weird sensation, where the ground rumbles a little below your feet, but it only lasted about 10 seconds and was very weak. Little did I know that I'd experience a slightly more scary version a few days later. The tremors came up in conversation a few times that weekend since it had been a while since the Chileans here in Conce had felt any. Nobody could really come to a consensus about the right action in case of an earthquake, they all seem to have their own plans! I decided if I was ever in the house, I'd just follow my friend... At 1:50am on Monday I woke up kind of confused, the bed was shaking quite a lot, a lot more than Friday. I stood up and the ground was moving side to side beneath me. Being very tired I got back in my bed and decided to wait and see if it stopped, which after about 2 minutes it did. This was a slightly weaker 5.9 on the scale, but only 50km away this time so we felt it very strongly. Supposedly there were 6 aftershocks about every 45mins after the initial tremors, I managed to stay sound asleep through those! It's safe to say that it was a new experience and not one I'm too keen to repeat. It is strange just having to wait to see if everything stops and although neither experience was particularly scary, there is no way I'd want to be any closer to the epicenter! After a shaky start to the week (couldn't resist), I headed off to the capital of Chile, Santiago.

A world away from Conce

On my way to the hotel, the long long way.

As I mentioned in my last post, this week I was required to go to Santiago to provide support to the English debate team which I have been helping train this semester. It turned out to be a bit more faff than planned. My team flew to Santiago along with the main teacher and arrived the Tuesday night to have a restful night's sleep before the big competition. Meanwhile the lowly English assistant had to travel by nightbus, not the most enriching experience. I arrived in the captial at around 6:30am and made my way to the INACAP campus in Santiago. INACAP has lots of campuses around the country and this comptetion would see 6 teams from around the country come together to compete. When it got to 8:30am and there was still no sign of my team I got in touch.

"Where are you guys? I've been waiting in the auditorium for ages"
"We're in the auditorium, which campus are you on?"
"Ummmm, THE campus!?"
"No Shahid, there are about 5 campuses in Santiago"

Right... So turns out the campus of the competition was 11km from the campus I was at, great. It did give me a chance to try out Santiago's admittedly efficient metro system though! The day of debating went well and my team won 2 out of 2 debates. Then I looked up the address of my hotel, the guys organising my trip decided to try to reserve  hotel for me the day before my trip. They did a good job in the sense that my hotel was opposite INACAP, they didn't realise that it was yet another campus. This meant I spent an hour after the competition walking to my hotel, whilst my students got driven the short 10 minute trip to their hotel! Good job to whoever made that screw-up :)

INACAP Concepción on the left, hard at work

The finals took place on day 2, and despite their best efforts, the team lost both the debates and ended up in 3rd place. I'm very proud of them all and saw a big improvement throughout the competition, well done to Macarena, Fernanda, Jorge and Sara for a solid performance and giving it all you've got. One thing that surprised me was how petty some people can be. I'm not talking about the students here, the vast majority took the competition in good spirits and had a great time. The teachers however, from various campuses, got slightly too competitive and there was a lot of bitching and snide comments going on. We finished quite early and I headed off as soon as I could, to escape the now souring atmosphere, back into the centre of town to meet up with a friend. Another Cambridge languages student I know is working for this year doing a similar job to me but in Santiago. We went to a nice little cafe in an almost Parisian part of the city and had lunch and coffee. It was lovely to see somebody from back home. Hopefully we'll be able to meet up again, either in Conce or Santiago to show each other around our new hometowns!

Thanks for showing me around Claudia!

What to do with a long weekend

Having spent 9am-9pm on the WAFA course for three days, and one day finishing at midnight I was pretty shattered. As I explained before, this Tuesday was a public holiday so everybody got Monday off too. With a four day weekend to look forward to I headed off to my friend Roberto's family home, about 2hrs from Pucón, to relax for a while. We didn't really have a solid plan for the weekend, my only plan was to get a good night's sleep! Sunday morning we woke up around midday and headed off with our rucksacks full of overnight trekking and camping gear. Ironically, the plan was to head back to Pucón and get a local bus to somewhere to go exploring. As many of my journeys in Chile, this one also began by hitchhiking, or at least trying to. We spent over an hour walking along the side of the road waiting for someone to pick us up and finally someone offered to take us, he even gave us drinks and snacks in the car!

What a nice guy, saved us a loooong walk!

Arriving in Pucón, my two friends decided that we'd go to a place called Caburgua, about an hour from Pucón. Caburgua has two beaches, 'La playa negra' and 'La playa blanca', that border a really beautiful lake. We arrived at the beach at about 6pm when everybody was starting to leave, I was told that in the summer it's crazy busy but this day it wasn't too bad. We went and had a chat with the campsite owner, who had a small space for tents at the side of the lake, unfortunately for some reason he was trying to charge ridiculously expensive prices per person.I suggested we walk a bit further down the beach and try to find a discreet place to put up the tent. After quickly putting up the tent, we started a campfire and went swimming in the freezing lake, having the campfire ready to warm us up after the chilly swim was definitely a good shout.

Who wouldn't have enjoyed this?

It turned out to be a perfect couple of days on the beach, chilled beers from the lake, countless stars in a clear sky. food cooked over the fire and great company. Even the driving rain that soaked us on Sunday didn't put us off. Our friend Conzu headed home on Monday evening and Roberto and I spent Tuesday finishing off some studying before we took a night bus home. I always enjoy spending time away from home, meeting new people and exploring new places, so I was pretty happy with how I spent this long weekend.

Battered and bruised, but a good start

Returning back to normality at work this week was a bit of a drag, work is never as much fun as traveling. However, two things have made this week a little more interesting. Firstly, Roberto gave be various parts from old skateboards of his and we got round to putting them all together this week, so now he's been teaching me to skate which has been a laugh. Secondly, there was an earthquake that measured 6.5 on the Richter scale about 300km north of Conce. This meant that we felt the tremors in Concepción, the first that I've felt whilst I have been here. It's a weird feeling, the ground moving beneath your feet! The tremors felt in Concepción were pretty small and only lasted around 10 seconds, and given that all the buildings here are designed with earthquakes in mind, you can forget the traditional image of things falling off shelves and bridges collapsing, at least this time... This coming week I'll be heading to the capital city, Santiago, to accompany the English debate team that I have been training to an INACAP debate competition. They will be spending two days debating against students from other INACAP campuses in English, the topic being social media and its influence in society. The team is flying there, but poor me has to take yet another night bus of 6hrs to get there and a second one to get back. Hopefully I'll be able to update you all when we return with the trophy!