03/11/2019 – Pucon, Chile

Had some breakfast in the lounge with some other volunteers. Last minute Josh and I were told we could tag along with some guests and go hydrospeeding! Quickly put our swimming stuff on and ran down to the minibus. A group of about 8 German, French and Scottish guests were already there. We got driven to the tour agency where we signed our lives away and the guests paid. Josh and I get it for free, perks of volunteering in the hostel. The idea is that if the volunteers go, enjoy it and then talk about it enough to the guests then it helps get more people signed up. We got back in the bus and drove for about 20 minutes. When we got out we were in the middle of nowhere, all I could see was green foliage and a wooden hut for us to get changed in. We got handed wetsuits, wetsuit socks, gloves, flippers and helmets and then piled back into the minibus and drove for a further 10 minutes. We got out the van and then were handed big hand held floats and then shown how to put safety straps over our flippers to make sure they don’t fall off in the rapids. We got into the water (gaspingly cold) and were given some basic instructions about how to right ourselves if we fall off, what to do if we lose our float etc. A photographer came along in a raft – they were apparently our safety boat, and white water rafted alongside us. The ten of us went down the river for about an hour. It was so much fun bumping down the rapids at crazy speeds! We did bump into a few boulders, but apparently it’s the best time of the year to do this as it’s fairly warm (was it?!) and there is more water than in summer so there is less chance of bumping into rocks! Josh capsized and had to be flipped back round in one of the stronger rapids. I laughed the whole way down so must have swallowed litres of the fresh water! It was so much fun, I have never even heard of this activity before now. A few of us suggested it is a made up sport, but apparently you can do it in New Zealand amongst a few other places. It was physically quite challenging at times and I said to Josh at one point I felt like I was at a military camp, the amount we were being shouted at! It would definitely not be a sport for a non strong swimmer! We were getting out the water before we knew it, the time had gone so fast! We took all our gear off and helped get the raft onto the trailer before changing back to our clothes in another basic bunker. We got back in the van and were driven back to the hostel. Josh and I walked into town and picked up some food from the supermarket. Josh opened the bar up for the evening and I made us some coconut rice to have with curry leftovers from last night.