Long weekend in Pucón

There are two good things about long weekends in Chile. The first is specific to me. I don't work on Tuesdays (I know, it's a weird day to have off), on Fridays I work the morning and Wednesdays in the afternoon , so if we have the Monday off then I get a really long weekend starting Friday afternoon and ending Wednesday morning! The second is that holidays in Chile include 'sandwich days', this means if a public holiday falls on a Tuesday, we get the Monday off too.

This weekend the stars aligned and I got the elusive super long weekend. I spent the Friday afternoon coaching some freestyle at the local lake, Saturday morning I working on my Year Abroad Project and the afternoon I planned a last minute trip to Pucón. For those of you that don't know, Pucón is known around the world amongst kayakers for being a kayaking mecca. I've been dying to get down there to paddle and was lucky enough to be invited down by the owner of a big rafting company there. He was teaching a month long raft guide course and asked me if I'd like to accompany them on the Monday and Tuesday. Everything didn't go quite to plan, a lot of the students were ill on Monday so he postponed the classes. Instead he dropped me off at a local rafting company and I spent the down paddling on the Lower Trancura helping out with the photography and safety boating. Considering that sections is only a grade 3 section, it was really really entertaining. There were plenty of big waves to play on and lots of interesting lines to experiment with. Any river that starts with an amazing view of a snow-capped volcano is a win in my book.

Group of Argentinian clients enjoying the ride

What an entertaining section

Villarica volcano looking over the river

I felt like I was back at home on the Tuesday when it started to hammer it down with rain... Rather than accompany the course I decided to spend the day walking around the town in the rain trying to make contact with local companies and paddlers to try and sort out some kind of opportunity to paddle as much as I can in December-February. I went to all the largest companies, shops and hostels and made lots of new contacts who all invited me back to paddle. The return journey took around 9hrs, I have no idea why what should be a 6hr journey took so long but that's life. I returned to classes today absolutely shattered but pleased with how productive and fun my weekend had been. I'm planning to go back as soon as possible to tick off some more rivers!!!