Rafting on the Apurimac River (& Mike's parasites)

Signing up for 3 days and 2 night on the Apurimac river we took one of the scariest yet amazing bus trips of our lives, with winding roads one lane wide and constant drops of 200-500 meters, we caught glimpses of the river down below at the bottom of the valley.


After the long dusty journey we arrived at a bridge to unload all the gear and get our wetsuits on. After talking to a friend in Cusco who took the same Pampas trip in Bolivia as us and discovered she had a small parasite in her foot, Mike took this inopportune moment to examine his feet and discovered to his dismay 2 black spots under his feet, one of which was huge!

As the group prepared for lunch, Mike decided to remedy the larger lump with the aid of his leatherman pliers... after some wrestling and pulling a rather large group of little white eggs found their way out of his foot - luckly just in time for lunch! The guides suggested waiting until after the first days rafting before attacking the second black lump (nice).

The first days rafting was mainly training, "forward", "back", "left back", "right back", "jump to the frount/left/right", "jump in the boat". With class 1 to 3 rapids and no real soakings we made or way down the river to the first campsite. Here we set up tents, and became mosquito food until our dinner was ready. During this time the camp's entertainment was the sight of 3 Peruvian rafting guides (with some basic medical training) using Mikes leatherman, head lamps and rum to try and extract the second offending parasite from under his big toe nail (not entirely successfully)!

The second day kicked off at 6am with fruit, porridge and musli for us and human flesh for the mosquitos. Getting into our boat we were now getting to operate as a team and managed to get some excellent rafting in over class 2 to 4+ rapids including some body rafting (get out of the boat and float over the rocks with your life jacket) which lead to bruised backsides all around.



We also manged to get the raft to surf and then flip which gave us our first real taste of the power of a river when you are not in a massive raft, wet yet fun. After some more extreme rafting and the odd jump off a 5 meter ledge we made camp again to enjoy another excellent feast (cooked by the guides!) and let the mosquitos and other flying beasts chow down on any exposed flesh we left exposed for more than 2 seconds.

Our final day was the day of the class 5 rapid (we walked around some class 6 rapids on the second day as people tended to die there) and everyone was slightly nervous. The apprehension turned to fear after 4 out of 6 of our team managed to fall out of the boat in the middle of a class 4+ rapid after hitting a rock, and Mike and Chris jumping forward instead of inside the boat! After 5 to 10 heart stopping seconds of being churned under the water we all broke the surface to quickly swim to the boat where Lisa and the guide pulled us all in to recover before hitting some more massive rapids.

After getting our confidence back we kept going over some pretty harsh rapids and finally got to the class 5, "Boom Bam ba bram ba". Unfortunately we had to help the equipment raft that had become wedged between some rocks, in doing so we managed to get ourselves stuck at the entrance to the rapid! Luckily we had an excellent guide/great team and managed to get ourselves to safety through some amazing rapids!

Some more edge jumping, swimming and gentle rapids and we made it to the end of the river for cold beers, lunch and the odd bit of scratching of bites, slightly tired but all having had the time of our lives. (Muchas Gracias to Elsy for this amazing trip)