Nada, nadie, tampoco

Well things have been pretty good down here. I passed the ne year and christmas here sucessfully with my friends, what a good time. One of my friends went home today and the other has a couple weeks more, unfortunatley he is bed-ridden sick right now. I myself am also taking a bit of a break, due to a little mishap I had in the river a week ago. Well we had to formulate ourself a big plan that would last us at least a week, so what we came up with after much recomendation and research was a tour into the sacred valley exploring 1st descents and the beautiful scenery. We started in Cusco with a cool entry into the sacred valley, we would make a 1st d down into the sacred valley via the Huarocondo village and river. We arrived in Huarocondo via a hired taxi and saw that the river was not exactly tolerable water quality, so we decided to drive downstream and see what we saw so we would know what was in store. We soon came to some descent whitewater and put in. The Hourocondo turned out to be a good way to enter the sacred valley offering class 4+ rapids at most, but very continous and fun. We arrived in the Urubamba and paddled 7 k´s of flat water to arrive in the town of Ollantaytambo, where I had seen another creek that looked fairly descent quality. We got ourselves a hostal and then the next day set out to hike up to some old ruins and scout the creek, all was good. The game plan was on for the next day to do this creek, we saw a couple pretty nice rapids from the road and it gave us a lot of excitement. We put on the creek which we knew contained a lot of low hanging brush, but surprisingly no real strainers. This turned out to be one of the most amazing creeks I have ever done, this is how it went down. Duck stay low through some brush, while making class 3 moves, then the brush opens up and you are faced with a technical class IV horizon line. Luckily this creek was in all pretty safe but we did end up running some pretty big drops blind like a 12 foot fading waterfall, it was fun. After this we were pumped and excited to do more, due to the level of the urubamba we were not able to further paddle it because it is riddled with class V that at this time of year is amazing just to see.

Here is a nice picture demonstrating the creek type.
After completing this creek we headed to Machu Pichu via the train with our boats on board. We passed two days in Machu Pichu, a truly terrible town due to all the torism and then headed to Santa Teresa was again via the train. Arriving at the end of the train lines we took trucks in the screaming rain to santa teresa. It turned out that the truck that took us was also the owner of a hostal, so we ended up using this truck as our shuttle driver and staying in his hostal. We spent the afternoon scouting this creek and decided we would embark early in the morning. The river was the Sacsahara and to our knowledge would be a 1st descent. This creek turned out to be one of the hardest creeks we had ever done. Unfortunatley I took a bad swin within the 1st 3 k´s and lost all my gear. This wasn´t really a creek, this is how brad described it and I agree. The creek had more of a river flow with creek moves, it was hard. The swim was long and I was all alone, during the swim I took a pretty big scare and encountered a bit of foot entrapment, I was able to get out of it, but am experinecing a lot of knee trouble now. I have gone to the doctor and got a splint and what not and they say I stretched it way out and maybe tore a little stuff in my knee, so now I am just taking it easy. My kayaking in South America might be done for this trip but I will definetley return, and I am still gonna travel to chile, where I might paddle as well. Anyways the sacsahara river turned out to be amazing and truly hard, we also found that in the afternoon the creek virtually doubles in size due to snow melt. I never found my boat and probably won´t. I am not sure what I will do with the rest of my time here but certainly have a bit of traveling left, I am taking it super easy for about fifteen days and hopefully after that my knee will feel about full strength again, we will see. At the begining of feb. I will be in Buenos Aires with my mom and brother and definteley looking forward to that. Right now I am just chilling out and getting my knee back so I can walk normal again. Well I guess that will do for now. Hope everyone is having fun and relaxed, that is one thing that I have learned down here is how to truly enjoy myself and relax.
chou, nate