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