This fall, I came down to Peru to do some riverboarding and rafting.
We planned to do 3 multi-day rivers, the Colca, the Cotahuasi, and
the Apurimac.
I ended up rafting the Colca for logistical reasons. It was a
beautiful canyon, arguably the deepest in the world, next to the
Cotahuasi river. It was technical class 5 rafting. It was awesome!
We did the Colca in 5 days. 2 days later, we put on the Cotahuasi.
I riverboarded the Cotahuasi, which had pretty low water, the lowest
our friend Gian Marco had ever seen it. It was steep, technical, and
continuous for 5 days, the 6th day being very flat and meandering.
It was definately a challenging run for riverboarding. The only way
of stopping was catching micro-eddies and scouting was pretty
difficult a lot of the time. We had a lot of raft carnage. We
flipped our paddle raft twice and lost a bunch of food. Then we
pinned our gear raft, losing more food and quite a bit of gear. It
was an epic trip to say the least.
I found out when we got off the river that I was the first
riverboarded to run the Cotahuasi. That´s pretty cool. I´m stoked.
We´re working on getting it in the Peru river registry thing right
now.
The Cotahuasi is an amazingly beautiful river. It is logistically
hard to get to, on, and out of the river, but it is a run of a
lifetime. If you ever head to Peru, be sure to get on the Cotahuasi.
Check out my blog about the trip.
http://findingconsciousness.blogspot.com/2007/11/rio-de-
cotahuasi.html

After the Cotahuasi, we took some time off the river to hike around
the jungle and go to Machu Picchu. After 10 days off, we headed to
the Apurimac river. We put in a little higher and ran the Black
Canyon section before getting to the commercial section. The entire
river was so beautiful we didn´t want to leave.
This trip was smaller than the Colca and Cotahuasi. There were only
7 of us, which made the group dynamic a little different and great.
The first 3 days were pretty flat, with little rapids in between the
long pools. Day 4 was when it got big. We ran a pretty beefy rapid,
we later found out was the Portage rapid, and that was literally the
name. Ha ha. I have a video of it on my blog. I´m underwater a lot.
The rapids were very steep and there was a lot of water. I found one
of the hardest things I had to deal with on my riverboard was the
swirly eddy lines and boils in the middle of rapids, pulling me one
way, while I was trying to go another way. The volume of water kept
increasing every day, every tributary. It was some big water in a
tight canyon.
I think the Apurimac was my favorite of the3 rivers we did in Peru.
Just the beautiful scenery, and the contrast of the white granite
boulders was amazing. The whitewater wasn´t so bad either.
Check out the blog on that one too....
http://findingconsciousness.blogspot.com/2007/11/rio-de-apurimac.html