Hola all,
This is about our final week of the water phase. I mentioned last blog about the kayaking phase in the Rio San Juan. The kayaking was a bit repetitive but the photos that we got and Hill upload soon are really pretty and tell the store a whole lot better than I can right now. What I did gloss over was the time we spent in Nicaragua. On our second last day of paddling we headed down the river to where it meets the Caribbean sea. I had built the Caribbean up in my mind to be better than it was, but where we were it was a debris strewn beach with black sand that was super hot and kind of murky green water. The temperature was awesome though. The river which was separated by a sand bar was at least 10 degrees cooler than the temperature of the Caribbean. We stopped off at a hostel in San Juan Del Norte and spent a couple of days there. The place was fairly non discript except for the fact that there were no streets and all footpaths were raised because when it rained, the whole place would flood. On the second day there we jumped into a blue lagoon and had a lot of fun in the water. It was everyones favorite activity especially because there was this floating contraption with tires chained to the outside of the floating thing. In and other (western) country this would never be allowed because of the fact that it would not pass any safety checks, but it was so much fun. You basically tried to climb up the tires to get to the top of the floating thing. If your foot got stuck, you were kind of screwed but it was fun all the same.
The next day we headed for a nine hour boat ride deeper into Nicaragua and went to an old Spanish Castillo or fort. This was the prettiest landscape that i have seen on this trip. Everything was old and kind of quaint as a riverside town. The best was to check it out is through the photos that we hill get on line. The last day after the Castillo was paddling 42 kms to a Nicaraguan visa checkpoint (complete with AK47s) and head on back to base.
The next day we had half a day to wash everything and get ready for the whitewater kayaking.
The first thing we did was try to get comfortable being upside down in the river and wait for rescue. It is a really easy concept but when you cant breath and you are in a kayak that is fitted to your body like a condom, and your nose is filling up with water that is going slowly into your sinuses and then into your brain, it is difficult to remain calm. On the first day we did not have nose plugs which make all the difference. Needless to say i did not fair to good on that day cos the water gave me a massive sinus headache. The next day armed with makeshift nose plugs, we all tried to learn how to roll. Rolling is a difficult action because everything is counterintuitive. For example you need to keep you head face down into the water so that you can utilise your hips when flipping the boat. That is hard to do when all you can think is I want to breath now... please... oh shit, no one will save me...HELP ME I DO NOT WANT TO DIE. We had three days of practice of rolling before they sent us down the rapids. By that stage, I had not perfected the roll totally but I was calm enough under the water to get rescued by the other Kayaks or to pull my skirt.
Going down the rapids was a totally different experience than calm water. Again everything was counterintuitive, if you are going to hit a wall, lean towards the wall so you don{t flip. If you are going to hit a rock, lean towards it, calm water is not safe because it will tip you if you do not enter it with the corrects angle, etc etc etc.
Needless to say, we all tipped a bunch of times and everyone said that this was one of the scariest experiences of their lives. I have to agree, I was scared shittless most of the time. However, like all things, with practice it became less and less scary for me. I was the only one who felt this way though. The group could not get the fear out of their heads and this included Mitch. He is our rock when it comes to physicality. Nothing phases him physically but he was stressed out by kayaking in a huge way. He could do all the movements but it scared him to the point where he got a cold sore.
On the first day we also got to jump off a cliff that was at least 15 foot high, in our kayaks. It was the best feeling to do something so scary and hard core and land perfectly. We have some photos doing this on a smaller cliff that we will upload later.
The rest of the week was essentially doing bigger and bigger rapids. I got the roll down to the point where I flipped and righted my self without rescue. That was an amazing experience. Sandra hit her chin on a rock and needed stitches, she was the most hard core.
Speaking of Sandra, she was amazing in the water, she could roll herself almost every time and was braver than all when it came to attacking the river. There are moments when you look at your wife and get truly amazed at how fucking cool she really is.
Anyway, that is pretty much the month of October.
I am missing all my friends and family back home and i really want to try to give my parents a call. It hase been difficult but i am sure that i will succeed this weekend. Fingers crossed.
Love you all
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