Let's Review

This is going to be hard, but here is the rundown of the last few weeks, and four countries. We left Mexico and headed into Guatemala with little river beta and a desire to see as much of the country as we could in a limited time. We first cruised into Lake Atitlan which is a beautiful lake in the northern part of the country.

The Lake


We left the lake in search of some rivers. It had been 6 days since we had last been on the water and Uldis was going through withdrawls. We knew the names of some rivers in Guatemala, but we didn't really have any info on putins or takeouts. Some creative discussions with a rafting company gave us an idea of the putin for the Cahabon river which according to all of the rafting ads was a class IV river. We made our way to Lanquin, found a river, and naturally assumed that this was like the map and the rafting company said the Cahabon river. As it turns out it was the Lanquin River, which is generally class III-IV except for a 200 yard section of serious class V. Luckily a local warned us of some big rapids below, and we didn't float into the big one, but it could have been ugly. With the exception of the big rapid which we walked the run was a great III-IV play run. We ended up also running the Cahabon which at the time was flowing with huge water. It consists of 3 long big water class IV rapids, and not much else, but it was definately worth floating. Unfortunately we didn't have the camera for this run.

The bus getting into some river running on a ferry in Peten Guatemala


We stopped for a day at the amazing Tikal ruins before making our way to Honduras. The border crossing for Honduras was an interesting two day affair with an interesting layover in the town of Entre Rios, Guatemala. Its a long story, but the lesson we learned is not to make any travel plans to Entre Rios, which is the currently in the lead in the running for sketchiest town in central america.

Tikal


We had planned to run a few rivers in Honduras, but when we arrived at the Cangrejal river we found that the El Nino weather pattern had created one of the worst rainy seasons any of the river guides we talked to had ever seen. We put on the river which was a great steep run, and immediately felt at home. Low water. We were finnaly back in our element. The run was enjoyable, and would have been excellent with 200-300 more cfs, but it wasn't worth sticking around for, so we hightailed it down to Nicaragua.

Maybe there is whitewater in Nicaragua, but we hadn't heard of any so we made it to the Pacific side for some surf. We had never surfed ocean waves in kayaks, but we had surfed in rivers how different could it be. After a steep day long learning curve we were finally surfing some quality waves. Some Pics.






This is what it looks like when someone is about to get trashed. You can barely see the kayak, but its there.







After a week in Nicaragua, it was time for Costa Rica. It was great to be in a place with a whitewater guidebook and people we knew. Turrialba looks like the Trailhead with Poudre guides everywhere, and luckily they don't hold it against us that we work for A-1.

Arenal Volcano


Kristen, Matt, and Lucas have shown us around taking the crew down the Peijibaye, Lower Pacuare, Pascua section of the Reventazone, and Upper Pacuare in our first week in Costa Rica. Costa is great, and I can't wait to see what comes next.

Rafts in Lower Pacuare



Matt above Blood Hole on The Upper Pacuare. It lived up to its name drawing a little blood out of Uldis' nose.


Matt hopefully taking a breath before getting his world turned upside down


Poca showing off. This kid is sick, enough said.


I am going to end every post with a gigantic waterfall from the last post on out. This one is up the hill from Turrialba.