The curse of the shoulder...

This week started really well and ended not too well... A friend invited me to go to river witha rafting trip he had going out. I went to the river Jatun Yacu for the day, a really fun class 3 big water section. I then agreed to stay here in Tena (Ecuador) to help out with the company for the rest of the week. I was selling trips in the office and safety kayaking on the rafting trips. Tena is a really cool place to work because it 's a very laid back place. The jungle is not too far and it's a very warm area. There are lots of really good quality rivers nearby and they don't tend to have problems with the water levels.

So I worked for a few days and was really content in what I was doing, the team was great to work with and I felt like I fit right in. Then we headed to the Jondachi River, a class 4 section that I was due to work on this weekend. After a really great morning of slaloming our was down the first half of the river alongside the raft we had a big lunch to get ready for the slightly bigger volume second half of the river. I'm warming up on the first few rapids and we get to a flat section with a big flat rock in the middle. I go to do a rock spin and 'POP' out comes y right shoulder again (just for the record, the rock spin went perfectly, style points for that...). Damn, not again... I grab my shoulder and shove it back into its socket, this is the fourth dislocation I've done now so I've had a bit of practice at putting them back in place. We had about another hour and a half or two hours to get to the take out so I chose the easiest lines and walked around one rapid that probably would have taken my shoulder out again.

The day started with high hopes

So Ecuador doesn't seem to be my luckiest country. Now to finish my trip and get training to get massive shoulders so it doesn't happen again. Something tells me that I´m going to have to spend a while off rivers before I venture back into whitewater. The main thing is that I'm still smiling, Ecuador is an awesome country. Lessons of the day:

1) Do a first aid course if you're kayaking in remote areas, the knowledge you gain will be invaluable
2) Surround yourself by a strong team, you have to support each other
3) Keep those elbows down...

The next time I post I might well be back home, I've got 10 days left of my year abroad. Tonight I head for Colombia to try my luck on the other side of the border!