Rio Cotahuasi

The Cotahuasi was EPIC!!!! It started out epic... and continued to be epic.. until it had an epic ending..... this one´s gunna be a long one...

We started out in the town of Cotahuasi and went on a day trip to the Upper Cotahuasi. We went to go to some hot springs while the kayakers went to go yakin. It was pretty big sievy class 5 stuff, so we dropped them off and watched from the road like 2,000 feet above the river. The first rapid, Brian swam and ended up hiking out this pretty agro hike to the bus again. We ended up watching them run the entire section from the road and not going to the hot springs because they wanted to overcharge us because we were gringos. We got pissed off and left.

We left Cotahuasi for the Cotahuasi river on the 22nd, I think. We hiked in with mules again, but this hike was much mellower than the Colca hike, and way less scenic. It was 16 km, I think. We did go by Sipia Falls though, which is a 400 ft. waterfall. That was pretty scenic. It was very desert-y and cactus-y. We got to the river and then ferried all our gear acrossed and spent the night.

We decided to have a layover day there so that the kayakers could run another section of the Cotahuasi that day.. and we hiked into the town nearby. It was really cool. We went to the school and hung out with the kids and Brian (Dos Metros) picked papayas out of tall trees for this dude. Good stuff. We also hiked up this cool flash flood run out that went straight up. There was a dead rattlesnake up there.. .kinda creepy.

Day 1.... crazy day number 1.
In one of the first rapids... Hootie lost an oar. Gone. We tried to get it out from some rocks but we couldn´t see it.. and then eventually gave up because we had to keep moving. So they paddle rafted from then on. In one of the next rapids, Hootie´s raft (Hootie, Sara, Emily) flipped and we lost some food. Gian Marco got all pissed and decided he should guide the raft, so he hopped in. They got through one rapid and then flipped. Gear was floating everywhere, people too. I was the gear fetching riverboarder for a bit.

After that, we got our shit together. The river was really low. It was steep, technical, and continuous. It was a challenge for sure. There are 2 rafts, one raft with 4 people, gear, and a kayak strapped on it, one gear raft, one ducky, one riverboarder, and 8 kayakers. It´s a lot of boats on a technical river. So we sent out 5 kayakers, and me riverboarding out front to scout and give signals, then 2 kayakers, 2 rafts and the ducky in the back all running together.
Drew was killing it on the oars. I ´can´t tell you how impressed we all were with his rowing ability. He´s styling everything.

We camped the first night at an inca ruin. It was sick. Took some cool photos I´ll put up on the blog when I can. There´s a lot of inca ruins on the Cotahuasi. There´s also some civilization unlike the Colca. It´s cool.

Day 2.... The wall.... not as agro as the 1st day....
We got a later start in the morning. Ben threw up and I had poop urgency. We got on the water and had some bigger rapids right away. We scouted probably 7 times today.
Around noon we hit the biggest and longest one, " The Wall". It was, long, technical, narrow, and BIG... and it was all against the left wall. Everyone styled it. We went down half way and set safety for the rafts, then ran the rest. No prob.All the rapids had some pretty fun moves to make in them... with big consequences. Lots of undercuts.. lots of sieves. We had a portage after lunch. They lined the rafts, the ducky and I walked it. It was gnarly.

DAY 3... one word... MARPA.
We left camp a little earlier in the morning. We didn´t make it to the camp we wanted to get to the night before, so we were trying to make up time and catch up a bit to where we should be...
There was some steep read and run stuff until we got to Marpa. This was the big one. We all got out and scouted it and it was longer and stouter with big hydraulics. There were moves you HAD to make.

The paddle raft went first and made it look easy. All the kayakers were placed along shore with throwropes near all the big hydraulics. Then Christina and Roberto went through. Next up was me. It went so well. Hit all the lines I wanted to and caught the eddy I needed to catch. Plan A.. sweet!

Next up was Drew in the oar rig. He dropped in and all I heard was whistles and people running upstream. He had pinned his boat in the top drop right above the rapid between a rock and the undercut wall. UNDER WATER. All the gear. This was around 10 am.

Then all the gear started slowly washing downstream... a barrell... a cooler.. a dry bag.... lots of gear and food running the gnar. All the kayakers ferried acrossed to river right and set up a z-drag. The boat didn´t budge. We snapped ropes, we snapped D-rings.. boat didn´t move. Around 2 pm we gave up... we decided to camp on shore next to the pinned boat.

They unloaded all that we hadn´t lost from the gear raft, while we unloaded all the stuff from the paddle raft and hiked around and up the rapid. While we were hiking, the boat came off. Amazingly, the boat was fine!

We were all run down and tired and had lost a lot of gear. We lost quite a bit of food, some of Gian Marco´s gear, Emily´s water filter, my spare flippers, the stern frame, raft repair kits, ah geez. It wasn´t looking so good for us.

We ate soggy pasta for dinner because that was all we had. It was a quiet night at camp. Drew kept apologizing even though he didn´t need to. Wasn´t his fault. Shit happens. The Cotahuasi was laying the smack down on us again. We have to get outta here in 2 days or else we run out of food.

Did I mention that Gian Marco had never seen it this low? So we didn´t know how long it would take to get out. Yee haw! Day 3.. Marpa... wha´d I tell ya.

DAY 4.... More big stuff... Less Drama...

Drew finally ran Marpa at the beginning of the day. Styled it. For some reason, Gian Marco decided to jump into Marpa and swim the last drop.. and I guess he hit his head in it.
All the biggest rapids were on day 4. We had Meter Canyon, a steep drop into a slot smaller than a raft, followed by a steep left to right drop. Then we had Centimeter canyon, which was one of the harder rapids. An S-turn move into the center drop with a giant wieve at the botton left and a tiny slot on the right with crazy boily water at the bottom. Had to roll off the wall at the bottom of that one. It was kinda gnarly. They lined the rafts.

We had another rapid called Orange Juice with 3 flakes at the top and a HUGE flake/ pourover tombstone at the bottom in the center. We all styled it, and they lined the rafts. There was another rapid called Highside for Your Life. There was a GIANT S-turn move with a giant hole above a big boulder. I went super deep in the hole and when I came up, all I heard was Scott yelling " That girl´s crazy!" It was a fun one.

There was one huge one that most people walked and they lined the rafts through, and Drew´s raft flipped while lining it. Only Jonathan, Scott, and Andy ran it. It wasn´t very fun looking.
The river changed character after that one and it widened out and got very shallow. Not fun for riverboarding.

DAY 5... The longest day yet....

We got up at 5:30 and were on the river by 6. I was pretty sick in the morning so I got into the gear raft and hung out with Drew for a bit. It was really shallow Class 2-3 stuff. The wind kicked in at 10:30 and life started to suck. The rapids got so shallow that we had to walk the rafts and we blew upstream all the time. They had these fish traps... without the traps in them so there were just large sticks blocking the channels. Good times avoiding those.

We ended up being on the river for 6 hours before we got to the takeout. When we got there Gian Marco hopped a ride into town to arrange a van to pick us up. The van came pretty quickly and we loaded up and went into town. We ate a real meal. Ahhhhhh. So good.. and Coca Cola too. Ahhh so good! The town was really cool. The town centro had a giant statue of a Camarone. They´re the shrimp you get out of the river and they´re gooooood. Everyone was drinking beer and hanging out in the town square and we were there chillin with them and all our gear.

We unloaded the van and loaded onto a bus. We drove for like 6 hours or so till 9 or so and got to the town of Camana. We were supposed to switch out busses and drive all the way to Arequipa... but there was no bus there to meet us. So we convinced our driver to drive us all the way.
Once we were out of Camana, the driver asked Gian Marco if he could drive because he was tired. He was having trouble figuring out the gear shifting and I guess it was hard to drive. About 20 minutes into it, it started making this horrible noise and Gian Marco alerted us that the accelerator was stuck and he couldn´t stop accelerating. Sweet. Isn´t that what you want to hear. There was lots of yelling and swerving.. and finally they opened up the floor and did something to the engine to stall it out.

Now we were stuck on the side of the road. Sweet. An hour or so went by of them trying to fix it... finally they jerry rigged it to make it work with string or something, and we turned around and drove back to Camana. Now it was 1:30 am. We got into town and found a hostal that would take all 14 of us and all our shit for 60 soles. That´s cheap. So we crammed 7 of us into a tiny room with 4 beds, and the rest slept on the roof with the roosters and goats. Good times. We got probably a solid 3 hours of sleep.

Day 6.... still technically day 5?....
We got up and had some awesome smoothies, cafe, and empenadas, and then Gian Marco found us a huge ass tour bus that would take us. So we loaded up all our shit into the huge ass bus and off we went to Arequipa. We got here around noon. We´ll be here for a day or two and then it´s off to Cusco for Halloween. Woo hoo.

The Cotahuasi adventure was a long, epic one. I´m kinda glad it´s over now... but it was awesome times!!!

I got a first descent of the Cotahuasi on my riverboard! That´s pretty sick! I´m stoked about that one. I think it definately was a difficult river to riverboard too. I feel like I gained a lot of respect for riverboarding on this trip. People didn´t think a riverboarder could run the lines I did and that´s awesome. I also feel like I didn´t run that gnarly of lines and I never went out of my comfort zone. I pushed it, but not too far. That´s exactly what I wanted to do on this trip. Hell yeah!