An Outdoorsy Week

I was lucky enough to spend the majority of this week in my favourite place to be, outdoors. Tuesday is my day off work and I was invited to the nearby town of Hualqui to offer some training. A few people from Hualqui that I know are trying to set up a rescue organisation to respond to emergencies in the mountains and rivers that are found in this region. A few of them are adventure tourism teachers here in Concepción so already have a very high level of knowledge of mountain rescue, advanced wilderness first aid and search and rescue operations, however the area that they want to improve is their in water rescue skills. They invited me to Hualqui to share some flatwater and whitewater rescue techniques. This was really good fun since I was able to combine my work as a swimming teacher and WW kayaking coach to give them the skills that they wanted to learn. In fact, it turns out that the river they took me to, a bit of a trek into the nearby jungle, was absolutely perfect to practise those kind of skills in a fairly remote environment and I'll definitely be going back to run more workshops and training. That river also has some waterfalls and canyons that would be perfecto to do some canyoneering or perhaps with a hell of a lot more water, to do some first descent park-and-huck kayaking runs.

Great session in Hualqui!

Wednesday I was in the local park once again teaching a ropework workshop to a group of 14 raft guides, kaakers, mountaineers and climbers to share and practise some of the techniques we use on rivers. It was good to be able to collaborate with the tourism teachers from DuoC (a local uni) this time because watching them teach sections of the workshop really helped me improve my Spanish teaching style. It's pretty difficult teaching such a niche area in Spanish since almost all of the vocabulary is new to me and a lot of it is vocabulary that doesn't translate so well!

Thursday I also spent some time outdoors, but not in such a conventional way. Me and a friend went out at about 10pm to drop off another friend at the bus stop. It turns out there was a protest scheduled which we hadn't realised and we managed to end up right in the middle of it when the riot police arrived... The unfortunate thing about the situation was that they arrived with the water-cannon truck and proceeded to try and soak everyone. After spending a while trying to find a dry way through the blocked off streets to the bus stop we managed to drop off our friend and returned to find that there were more fires and protests at the end of our street. This is now a pretty normal event to me since it happens quite a lot, and my general philosophy out here is that if it doesn't worry the locals, there isn't generally that much cause for concern.

Robbie and I with our 'neighbours'...

If you ever see this water-truck in Chile, get out of its way!

Saturday I took two buses to reach the town of Coliumo, which is known for having some great sea cliff climbing. I went with two friends, one of who is a really great climber from France, and we had a really entertaining day doing lots of top-rope and traditional climbing in a really beautiful place. Definitely have to get back there to make better use of my climbing equipment and improve my technique!

Tonight I ended my week by cooking pancakes with friends. Lemon and sugar would be my go-to filling back home, which I've already learnt is laughed at here. The Chileans don't seem to think that it constitutes a 'filling', strange creatures. Today we filled our pancakes with 'manjar' (also known as 'dulce de leche'), a creamy caramel made by heating condensed milk (think of the toffee part of a banoffee pie). I'm not sure if it's available in the UK, but if it's not it definitely should do. We ate the pancakes whilst watching the film "Gladiator", I still haven't quite got used to watching films dubbed in Spanish! A great end to the week. Next week I'll be attending an advanced wilderness first aid course in Pucón, where I'll be learning how to do all sorts of interesting things like deal with spinal injuries, relocate dislocations and give oxygen to patients all in a remote setting in the mountains and on the rivers. I'll be updating you all soon with how it went and hopefully some interesting photos!

P.S: For those of you wondering about the photos, yes I do now have a "moustache", and no it's not going anywhere for a while... (I wrote moustache in quotation marks because I'm still not convinced it constitutes a moustache, still kind of lip fluff if you ask me)

Mexican look here we come