Río Mapacho: V - Day 8

by Zak Sears
back to day 7
Elevation at camp: 847 meters

It was way hotter than it had been the whole trip when the sun hit us early in the morning. The air blowing up from downstream seemed to bring some humidity, and we all felt that we were nearing the thicker jungle the locals told us was downstream.

An hour after being on the water, we came to a large drainage on the right side of the river, and a sharp horizon line with exploding whitewater below. We scouted from the right, the most significant whitewater we had seen on the whole trip. The left side was a steep big water line with stacked powerful holes and waves that continued downstream for 500 meters. The rapid was long and solid class 5 for most of it. The tail end was fast big water class 3/4 for a few hundred meters. There was also a class 4- sneak up top in the rapid on the right.

An hour after the steep section, the whitewater started to pick up with loads of really fun class 3/4 rapids full of large waves and holes.

This lasted until we got to the small town of San Martin where we ended up camping after eddying out in the local pub. They envited us to sleep on the floor of the bar and told us it was going to rain. We already had camp set up across the river, so we took the beer and toilet paper be bought and paddled across the river. It rained hard all night long. On the water for five and a half hours.

On to day 9