Where is Wahab?

Where's Wahab...? What a great question. Currently I am in a Starbucks in Santiago writing this post. The past few days have been nuts. I arrived back in concepcion two days ago as forest fires began to spread across the central region of Chile. My plan was to take a bus to Santiago today to catch my flight to Ecuador, the promptly shut the roads in and out of conce due to the fires. I had to pack my stuff asap and book a plane ticket to fly here otherwise I would have missed my flight to Ecuador!

The worst thing about the fires is that they were started, or at least some of them, intentionally!!! Pine and eucalyptus plantations have long been a source of political debate since they were mostly planted during the dictatorship and are non native species. For that reason, even as the fireman are racing to put out one fire there are people starting new ones. Friends of mine have had to evacuate their houses in areas close to concepcion, several people have died and gone missing.

I was actually in concepcion watching a huge ash cloud engulf the city and ash falling everywhere, I will upload photos when I am back from my trip.

Being stuck in Santiago for a few days, I decided to take advantage and do some research or my year abroad project. I went to the museo de la memoria which aims to keep the memories of the dictatorship and the atrocities that happened during it alive so it may never happen again. There is a lot of powerful stuff in that museum, and it wasn't always easy to face some of the exhibitions and video material but I really recommend a visit if you're here. The Bellavista area that I'm in is a very cool place, on a Friday night there are all sorts of things going on. I went on a pub crawl with some guys and girls from the hostel I stayed in to visit some of the local bars and clubs, just walking down the street there are all kinds of bands, dancers, food. It's a nice part to escape the really urban and greyer sector of Stgo.

I'm off to the airport soon to fly to Peru and then Ecuador. I may update my blog whilst I am there but well have to see. Hopefully ill be too busy paddling all day everyday!!

Training ramps up

Here in Pucón everything is going really well. I 've been on the water every day, teaching and guiding all sorts of outings. I've been guiding rafts, doing ducky trips, Stand-Up Paddleboarding, teaching kayaking and rescue to the work experience guys and personal paddling. One of the highlights of this week was relaxing on the beach of a really nice hotel running trips from their private beach, could be worse!

Chilling in the shade

To be fair, it was a nice relaxing break after having watched Trump's inauguration live from the shop. Depressing to say the least.

A sombre mood in the office

The infamous Marimán

One of the main things I've been focussed on this week is making sure that I'm on the best paddling Pucón there is a section called the Trancura Alto, it's a grade 4 run with one grade 5 rapid that is mostly portaged. I've been eyeing it up since I've been here, but the landing is quite shallow, the entrance is complicated and you have to be really confident you're going to nail the moves. Yesterday I felt I was paddling at the top of my game and decided to go and take a serious look. A few minutes of inspection later and I was ready to do my first descent of Marimán. I felt sure I could pull it off, and surely enough I hit exactly the line I had planned on. These past few months in Pucon have been key for improving my boating and I hope to keep pushing myself for the rest of my time here.
form I can be, ready to head out for my trip to Ecuador. Part of that process has involved doing some solo laps on the Palguin, a grade 4 waterfall run, making sure my technique is improving and polishing some key moves. Another side of that has been trying to push the level that I'm paddling at. Close to

Not me... But it is the same rapid!

These coming few days I'll be preparing more practical things for Ecuador, ready to fly out on Saturday. I've got a few outings with clients booked this week on the river before I head back to Conce to fly North. I'll update you all soon with how the preparation is going!

Getting inf/jected

First thing's first, I'm writing this post having just come back from Unimarc, a Chilean supermarket,  to get lunch. Unimarc has now started imported the Waitrose essentials range, what the hell? It did make me laugh though, a little piece of home away from home. Still just as overpriced as in the UK though.

Surprise of the week over. 

This week I've been doing a lot of work with duckies, a kind of inflatable kayak. It's a really easy and safe way to get people down bigger grade 3 rapids that they would never be able to run on their first day in a normal kayak. We also use them a lot with families on what we call a 'Family Float' trip. We take families out in the duckies down a very calm grade 1/2 section to enjoy the scenery and as a little bit of an adventure for the children. A few days ago I took out a Brazilian family to enjoy the river, from the smiles on their faces I guess they enjoyed it.

I also took out a few trips on the Trancura, a bigger grade 3 rapid. We guide the duckies down from our kayaks, pushing and pulling them out of the way of any danger if we need to. I also had some incredible weather for a few of those outings.

Just look at that sky!

It's not all river time out here, there are also the standard guide jobs to be done, for example washing the wetsuits. All 30, smelly, disgusting wetsuits one by one. Daniel and I headed up to Palguin tpo the boss's house to wash and dry all the wetsuits. Of course, part of the plan of doing it up there was because we knew we'd cook a good meal, have a BBQ and paddle a few laps of the waterfalls in the morning!

You don't wanna see what the water looked like afterwards!

Compulsory bonfire, only missing marshmallows

On these laps I was trying to nail something called a freewheel, spinning the boat in the air as you launch off a waterfall. Not quite got it dialled yet, but a few more laps and I'm sure I'll get the hand of it!

BBQ's are of course a very common occurrence in Chile. And the next day (yesterday), we were invited by Valerie (the shop manager) to go to her new house she is building and have a BBQ. She has a really cool plot of land, with her house nestled right in the woods. We spent the night eating good meat, drinking good beer and enjoying the company. Thanks to Valerie and Diego for inviting us!

Not quite finished yet, but an enchanting spot

Could get used to this

  

Today I headed back to dreaded Temuco to get my Yellow Fever vaccination. I've been trying to get this vaccine for over a month and finally managed to get it done, even though it meant I spent over three hours in the hospital to get a 2 second injection. You'll be pleased to know that the Yellow Fever virus is currently raging around my body and hopefully means I won't get at least one of the nasty diseases that Ecuador boasts...

Got left in the kids waiting room...

A happy, fever-resistant Shahid

Weally Wet Week.

It has rained this week. Non-stop. Normally it means that business slows down a bit, for some reason nobody seems to understand that the rain is the perfect weather to go whitewater kayaking because you get drenched anyway! With the rain some more interesting rivers come up, and with the dip in work we normally get out to play on a few really fun rivers. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we were very busy this week, with kayak classes, double kayak trips and ducky trips.This means that we didn't get so much time to do personal paddling, but one group of clients an interesting experience with me when we got on a river that was rising rapidly and had risen around 80cm whilst we were on it!


The New Year actually started off pretty sunny to be fair. I had a day long kayak school, one-to-one with a Chilean guy who wanted to become a kayaking instructor. For the kayak school days we spend the morning teaching basic skills on the lake and then run a grade 1/2 section in the afternoon (sometimes with some grade 2/3 rapids tagged on the end).


We also took advantage of the good weather to take the boss's son, 6yrs old, out on the river for his first whitewater experience. It took us a while to outfit the boat so that he wouldn't just fall out in the rapids, and he absolutely loved it. But after a promising start, the weather soon turned bad.

      

Heavy wind and sideways rain. Joy.

The rubbish weather led me inside to do some video editing, the first time I've edited a kayaking video, a promo for the double kayaking trips. It's a very dull process.

I also had to travel around two hours to Temuco to get a yellow fever vaccination. They didn't have it anywhere in the country it turns out... Damn. Guess I'll have to figure out another way of getting that vaccination before I head off on my next paddling adventure to Ecuador. It ended up being a day long trip in which I achieved absolutely nothing, the only silver lining was that raspberries are really cheap in Temuco, so the journey back was good at least.

Before I found raspberries...

Three exciting things have happened in the last few days. I will list them in order of excitingness (according to me anyway).

1) We finally sorted out a drying system for wet kit, no more wearing wet kit!!!

2) Went out with some of the staff for drinks a few days ago and we went back to somebody's house to chill. She has a pet hedgehog, yes, the little spiky things! To be honest, I felt sorry for the poor thing, it's not an ideal pet at all. However, it was cool to see one up close (Daniel might not agree with me).

3) Paddled a new section of river!!! This was obviously going to be my most exciting news. We took advantage of the sudden rise in the river levels and I went to paddle the Upper Liucura with Ben. It's not a hard section but the first rapid is over a kilometre long without any let-up, absolutely awesome.

Always a pleasure to explore a new section

I'm starting a new section of this blog too, a section relevant to the shop-life here. We have a manikin to sell volcano trips, he's called Manny. When we close the shop, Manny gets left in all sorts of compromising positions. I will be chronicling the 'Tales Of Manny' and what he gets up to with some photos. Here are the first two:

Shameless.

Vogue.

This week is due to be crazy busy and I'll be spending a lot of hours coaching and guiding on the local rivers in preparation for my trip to Ecuador. Can't wait!!!

Here I Come 2017

The last week of 2016 has been an incredibly varied one for me. Part of why I love working here in Pucon is that I get to work on a huge variety of sessions, everything from teaching stand-up paddleboarding on grade 1/2 to one-to-one kayak lessons on some the harder rivers in the area. This week was no exception.

Early in the week, I took a Chilean family down the Middle Liucura in Duckys. The Duckys are great fun because they're really safe and we can take out little kids with their parents, it's also, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful sections of river in the region.

This week I've tried my hand at raft guiding, ish. On Friday we took a big family group of 20 out on the Río Tolten. This involved taking three big rafts, 5 Duckys and 3 Stand-up Paddleboards. It wasn't the first time I've guided a raft, but it's still pretty new to me. Since this was a whole day trip, the rafts were kitted pout with frames to mount oars so that we could row them down the river when the guests didn't want to paddle. It was a really fun day out, which included a huge BBQ at lunchtime. I got the raft with all the kids and we spent the day jumping off the raft, playing loads of wet games and generally having a great time.

This was about a third of the meat that got cooked that day!

This was my office for the day.

The last day of the year was also a busy one. I spent the morning with a family of 10 Argentinians, also rafting, this time on the Middle Liucura. I took the kids boat again, it was absolutely freezing but we still played plenty of games. My Spanish is improving loads, since when you're stuck for 2 hours in a boat with Spanish-speaker that you have to keep entertained, you don't really have a choice.

In the afternoon, I went to the river with Valerie, the shop manager, to show her what our double kayak trip is like. I threw poor Valerie into every single wave and hole on the river, but we're still talking which is a good sign.

She's smiling, but inside she doesn't mean it...

 The whole day Pucón had been filling up with hundreds of people, it turns out that Pucón is the place to be for New Year's Eve. The whole evening and morning was one of the best New Year's celebrations that I've had. At midnight we went to watch the fireworks on the beach, the display was really cool and the shot fireworks which landed on the lake and exploded on the surface. The beach was absolutely packed with people and had a really cool vibe.

The streets filled up really quickly and the whole town turned
into a kind of street party.

All the nightclubs in Pucon were charging loads to get in, so most people in the town just partied in the streets. We wandered around for hours, stopping on various streets, drinking, dancing, eating, getting to know new people and generally having a good time. At about 5:30am we made it back to my room and slept for a few hours before coming to Loncoche. That's where I currently am writing this post, after walking off quite a vicious hangover... Tomorrow I'll be back to work with a full day of kayak lessons, but so far, 2017 is shaping up to be an amazing year. Happy new year to everybody reading this, I hope it's all you want it to be!

CHRISTMAS!!!!

The last two weeks have been really full on, hence why I'm pretty late in writing this post. I'm going to split this into two posts, one for the week of Christmas and one for New Years. In the lead up to Christmas we had a staff BBQ to kick off the peak season in a good way. We all met up and spent the night eating, drinking, chatting and playing pool.

   

We knew that the coming week we had a big family float trip on the Río Tolten, a big river starting in Villarrica. Considering none of us that were going to guide knew the river, me and Daniel headed off in a tandem kayak to sprint down the river, look out for any tree hazards and learn the put-in, take-out and lunch spots. It's a beautiful section of river, 20km long and crystal clear the whole way down.

Not a bad day in the office.

I was invited to spend the Christmas weekend with Roberto's family. Here in Chile, the big day is the 24th. Everybody meets up as a family on Christmas Eve, and they open presents here at midnight of the same day. To celebrate, we had a BBQ (common theme as you may have noticed). It was a really fun and kind of weird day, which included: a goat getting killed and skinned to put on the grill, having to walk two cows back to their field and fetching the volleyball we lost from the pigsty...

Here there was once a goat.

Here there was once a volleyball.

Here is a cow.

Here is said goat.

Christmas day was nice and chilled, we got a good lie in and then spent the day enjoying the sun (yup, Christmas in summer is definitely as good as it sounds) and watching films. Of course the film choice included "Mi pobre angelito" ("Home alone") dubbed in Spanish, an interesting experience... As we sat down to Christmas lunch (not that similar to the English affair if you're wondering) the table started moving. Yes, that's right, there was an earthquake on Christmas day. It was further south and so we only felt the tremors, but it was the strongest one of the year.

"Home Alone" seems to be an xmas tradition even here.

Poor Roberto had an exam on the 26th so I also spent a little bit of time studying with him, what kind of evil teacher schedules an exam for Boxing Day?!?! I'm eternally grateful to Roberto's family for taking me in as one of their own and sharing their Chilean Christmas with me!

This is what happens when people have exams on boxing day!