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11th - 12th September 2008 Early start leaving the wonderful jungle lodge to start our journey to the thermal springs town of Banos. We use almost every form of transport except for a train! After canoes, planes and buses we arrive in Banos, which is a small and pretty town surrounded by huge dramatic mountains. We pass Cotopaxi on the way and stop for a quick picture. Very impressive. Six of use decide to go ratfing tomorrow and Team Chachalaca plus one is reformed!
We leave for rafting early and before we even get to the river we have established that our guides Edwin, Fernando and Vladimir are all a bit insane. From my experience of having a canoeist as a boyfriend this doesn't really surpise me, I think you have to be slightly crazy to willingly throw yourselves down white water rapids and enjoy yourself in the process. That said, we place ourselves in the hands of our guides and the first thing they have us do is jump off a rock into the freeeeezing cold river, before some energetic aerobics, riverside style. Fernando is our guide and takes us through what we will have to do, namely paddle a bit and throw ourselves into the middle of the boat every now and again. The first few rapids are easy enough, although there is quite alot of screming and whooping coming from the Chachalaca boat. The safety kayaker Edwin takes our photos and we decide to build up some healthy rivalry between boats and splash the others whenever we can. Whenever we're floating down a calm pieve of river there's time to appreciate the amazing scenery, before we whoosh down into another rapid. Fernando declares us the best boat, naturally. We all jump in the river at one point and float down until Fernando decides we had better get back in. We whizz down one last rapid which is apparently a Class 4 before we get to our stop off point. After such as adrenalin filled day the only way to finish it off in style is to take a rejuvinating visit to the thermal springs before dancing the night away. Naledi and I find our guides in the pub and practise our merengue moves into the small hours...
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