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Safety Position!

By Dan Wallace - 2009-06-05

After another few days of riding through chilling rain, and a very exciting vomit by Chris outside of Villarica (try not to down a liter of strawberry milk before riding), we arrived in the famous adventure town of Pucon. First off, the town has some of the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen on the trip, when clouds aren’t dominating the sky line. We rented our first hostel on the trip, another big moment for us. After everyone had their turn washing off the last three days of road grim in the warm shower, we set our plans for the next few days.

Among our plans were climbing a volcano, eating dinners with friends we’ve made, visiting hot springs, sleeping in beds, and white water rafting. This last plan tickled my ears the most, since I had never been white water rafting before and was especially excited to do it in such an exotic place like Pucon, Chile!

The day we set out for the river was rainy and very cloudy. All the surrounding rivers were swollen from the downpours, a fact that only heightened my anticipation. After a fun van ride to the river, we were soon in our wet suits, helmets, and life jackets, punching each other to make sure everything was working correctly (which is, by the way, is the best way to test such things). After a sufficient amount of punching and play karate, we jumped into the raft and had our first official meeting with our captain. Immediately we knew we had a good man at the helm, and how could we not with a guy named Jaco? Captain Jaco taught us the strokes, commands and positions, the most important one being the “safety position”: feet straight out, pointed downstream. This is what you should do if you happen to fall out of the raft, something I was secretly hoping would happen to one of us.

The crash course ended, and off we went into the waters that splashed up into our faces from below and fell down on our heads from above. Jaco was in the back, shouting commands that Mike and Chris couldn’t hear in the front, and we were all having a great time practicing our moves on the water. The river was pretty calm considering all the rain. We hit a few class 3 or 4 rapids, which were lots of fun, but we soon came to discover that Jaco had a surprise in store for us. After our last and biggest rapid, Jaco steered us into a fast moving current near the middle of the river. We could all see that the current led right into a large well in front of huge bolder that rose out of the swollen river about fifteen feet. I figured that since we were nearing the end of the ride, Jaco wanted to test our skills by having us quickly avoid “Death Rock”, as he referred to it, then show our strength by paddling out of the well. I was wrong.

As we picked up speed, and the boulder loomed over us, I realized that we weren’t just trying to get close. Jaco wanted us to hit “Death Rock”, and boy, did we ever! Immediately before impact I saw Mike and Chris screaming as the front of the raft dipped way down. The next thing I felt was a huge jolt forward. Then, as if the water had hands, I was ripped backwards out of the raft and into the river‘s swirling blue waters. The first thing I thought was, “Wow! I can’t believe my foot anchor didn’t hold me in!” Then, as I was being tossed and turned by the power of the river below the surface, I got a neat sense of how deep and wide the river was. It made me feel so small! I couldn’t see anything, but I knew that if I tried to swim down, I would never find the bottom.

Soon, my lungs reminded me that I am not a fish, and can’t stay down forever. My first attempt to surface was rejected by the bottom of the raft which had floated overtop of me. In the dark waters, a tiny sense of panic developed, as I realized I was blocked from the thing I needed to stay alive. But I was still having too much fun to freak out. As if to help me along, a strong current pushed me down again, then up from underneath the raft to the surface. I popped up, thanks to my punch approved life jacket, and was all smiles as I assumed the “safety position”. I saw Daniel poised to jump in and save me, but he relaxed when he saw the huge smile across my face. Capitan Jaco steered the boat around, and then extended me his oar. After being dragged back into the boat, all I could say was, “That was freakin’ awesome!” White water rafting: check.