Cuevas Vulcanicas y Hydrospeed

Hydrospeeding

Entrance to the Cave

Chocolate room in cave

New born calf

Yesterday I went Hydrospeeding with my friend Dermot. It was super extrema. Dermots parents are visiting and he came down to Pucon with them and they wanted us to do something cool. So we went into Aguaventura to see about Rafting or something and they said that Hydrospeed is way more fun and extreme. It is like Rafting without the raft. So after they told us a little about it we were like funk yeah. So I skip my afternoon classes yesterday and we get to the adventure place, get into the van and head off to another place to get all the gear. The guys are sizing us up and literally just throwing us stuff not really checking the sizing so one guy asks, "like shouldn't we try these on, can I switch and get a larger one" or something, so the head guy hears this and said who said that, goes over to the guy asks him if he speaks spanish, he doesn't (went with a bunch of french people), said he speaks english, so the head guide says "the first thing you have to do is trust me, if you don't then you are fucked." That was the last time anyone asked that guy a question. We get to the side of the river, getting very pumped, put on the wet suits, wet suit socks, helmets, flippers, then jump into the water on these boey things that the front half of your body goes on and your hands go inside, this is how you stay afloat. You use your flippers and kicking to steer and the boey to stay on level with the water. So off we go and we hit some small rapids and get tossed around a little bit the head guide is yelling at us to stay closer and it is so much fun. We get to the last big bunch and he is like alright now you have to wake up these are like three times the size of the others, stay close and follow me. We hit these and it is like going off a huge ski jump in a tube, waters going in your face, your yelling, laughing, going up crashing back down into the water, going under, and you right in the water the whole time, just floating down the river with the rapids. It was insane. Got out and was freezing, such a sweet experience, I would definitely do it again.

On Sunday when Dermots parents first got here they wanted to go to the Cuevas Vulcanicas, the Volcanic Caves. It was another thing that I had been wanted to do and they invited me so I went along. When we got there to the top near the base of the volcano it started to snow, crazy because of how warm it is hear now but it still snows on top of the volcano. We got a little tutorial and stuff about Plate tectonics and rocks and when the volcano last erupted and types of eruptions, I think that is my favorite kind of science and junk. We go into the caves and it is wet and the ceiling is dripping and it looks so cool. They have small lights and different colored lights for trying to grow moss. There are also places where they have been doing research very cool. We go further into the caves and they have different caverns, where tunnels have been made from hundreds of years ago. One room is called the chocolate room because it literally looks like chocolate was dripping from the walls and ceilings. We get to the furthest cave and the guide turns off all the lights, seriously it was kind of scary it was the darkest place i have ever been like weird, makes you think about how the miners felt. Also in the last cave there is a rock formation that they call the Panther but really it looks like a Buffalo but the Spanish didn't have a word for what it looked like so they called it the Panther, very interesting stuff.

Also last week my host Uncle Coco called Genaro up and asked him if I wanted to come up because some more calves were being born. So we went up and went out with Coco saw a Cow about to give birth right away and I literally saw everything, was so gross haha. But the calf was pretty cute minus all the gross fluid and bloods and shiz. Coco also took me over to the stream and pulled up this root/plant from the side called Nalca, split it open and chomped it. It is pretty good, kind of like a dry appley taste, its weird but good. I had like 2 whole plants, which is a lot.

The weather has been getting really warm here and its great. Thinking about spending a day at the beach this weekend, swimming in the lake. Only 2 weeks left!!!

He was big and bent and grey and old and I looked at him and my blood ran cold,

And I said MY NAME IS SUE HOW DO YOU DO? NOW YOU GANNA DIE!!

Love,

Franke