piggyback ride~

Inktober Day 25:  Lachesism (New English, John Koenig)- The desire to be struck by disaster.

From Banos we travelled further east into the Amazon basin and towards the jungle. Our next stop was the town of Tena which as well as being a good jumping off point for heading into the jungle is also a really good white water rafting spot.

Before we went rafting we decided to have a look around the town. We'd heard about the Parque Amazonico on an island in the middle of the river running through the town centre so we went to check it out. Turned out that the bridge connecting the two banks of the river had been destroyed and replaced by this fella and his boat (note how the boat is nearly as wide as the river!).

We'd just reached the other side when this wild pig showed up, followed by a lady who worked at the park. She started yelling at the boatman to take us back to the other side because the pig was super dangerous (?! slight overreaction me thinks...).

What ensued could have been straight out of a comedy sketch. As we reached the other side and disembarked the boat, the pig swam acoss the river to reach us! What would have made sense would have been to get back in the boat and go back across, but we were blocked by the dangerous pig! After terrorising us all for about 5 minutes, he decided that he'd had enough and promptly headed off into town to go and eat some children or something....

Once we reached the Parque Amazonico we stumbled upon some animal enclosures. Laura got excited when she found one with some cute bunnies in it, until we spotted the boa constrictor lurking in the pond *sad face*.

We wandered around for a while looking at the other cool animals and plant life, including this huge and impressive tree.

Back across the river there was no sign of danger pig. Safe in the knowledge that we had avoided a pig attack we booked our white water rafting trip for the next day.

It turned out it was just the two of us for rafting so we saddled up in a pickup truck with a boat on the roof and headed for the river not really knowing how it would work. We've only ever seen pictures of white water rafting with six people in the boat!

Ignoring our concerns we kitted up and headed for the river. Apparently you can raft with only three in the boat (Sam, Lau and the guide) so after a quick saftey briefing (including the totally unnecessary information on what to do if the boat flips) we set off on the relativly mild class 3 river. Sam had his GoPro strapped to his helmet and set on photo mode as without the iPad we had no way to edit videos...

The top part of the river was quite easy going and we soon settled into the paddling rhythm under the instruction of our guide. We quickly realised that he was steering us into all biggest rapids as opposed to avoiding them which is what we thought he would be doing.

After about an hour we paddled to the side of the river and stopped at a lunch spot. Here our guide introduced us to some insects and plants and their various uses.

After lunch we jumped back in the boat and this is when the real fun began! Crossing many larger rapids we soon paddled down to a small whirl pool where with our "powerful paddling" for assistence our guide span us round so each side of the boat got wedged under the lip of the rapid completely soaking the person on that side of the boat and on a number of occasions filling it to the top with water!

Next, in a quieter part of the river, we were instructed to jump off the raft and into the river. We quickly floated along crossing under a road bridge before jumping back in before the next rapids.

Our guide was obviously having fun with us and now decided we should take turns to sit on the very front of the boat whilst navigating through a set of rapids. Laura soon fell back into the boat whilst Sam hung on a little longer before falling out the boat in the middle of some rapids and being saved by the saftey kayak.

With all our dicking about we had now been caught up by another raft full of French people. Cue splash fest!

On the next set of rapids it all went wrong! We headed into an especially big wave and the corner of the boat Sam was in dug in causing the boat to flip! Sam was tossed into the water coming up under the boat whilst Laura was flung through the air out of the high side of the boat! After the intital shock we remembered the safety advice and floated through the remaining rapids hanging onto the boat for dear life.

This is the last photo the Go Pro took as we crashed! I'm not sure what's going on but there is a lot of water involved.

We sailed along briefly on the bottom of the boat before flipping it back over to continue.

Flipping the boat didn't seem to discourage our guy and after hitting a few rapids normally he challenged us to do the next set standing up.