Río Mapacho: V - Day 9

by Zak Sears
back to day 8
Elevation at camp: 684 meters

The river had come up a lot from the rain, and was flowing muddy with lots of driftwood comming down. When we started on the water, we estimated we were on about 3000 cfs. Shortly after camp we came to a section of lots of class 3/4 whitewater before a stretch about 5-7 km of calm swiftwater. After this, the river started to pick up more gradient that created super fun class 3+/4 whitewater for about 8 km.

We stoped at the bridge at the bottom of this continuous stretch, and found a small medical clinic for people in the area. They asked if we needed medicine which was perfect because Dan had been feeling sick for the past few days. They gave him some drugs for a total of 5o cents that made him feel better by the following morning. A few members of the group had also been sick in Cusco before the trip, so in anticipation of the sickness spreading through everyone we stocked up on Diaren, a non-perscription medication used to fight stomoch bacteria.

The whitewater stayed the same with continuous big water until the next bridge called puente penetracion, where a road runs close to the river and is a possible take out. We stopped here looking for a few supplies, and returned to the boats again with more goods from the locals. Some guys we ran into gave us a huge pinnapple, a bag full of oranges, and bananas. We had a lot of chocolate so we made some postre by putting the chocolate inside a sliced banana and roasting them on the fire with a little rum on top.

On to day 10