Lost, Broken, and Stolen

This will be a growing list of all lost, broken or stolen on the trip. This list will hopefully stay small, but should be an interesting history for the journey. So far:


Stolen: Visa Card and $660 in Miraflores, close to Lima. I noticed my ATM card had gone missing, so I went and checked my accounts and was missing $660. Thanks to the FDIC, its all coming back to me, and Visa sent me a new card in Peru.

Stolen: Black EMS Fleece, Deja Vu bar in Arequipa. I set this down for 5 minutes at our table, turned and it was gone. Real bummer.

Lost: Backup sunglasses on Rio Colca. I always carry an extra pair in my PFD. I set these down on the rocks at the second night camp and lost them in the flurry of the fireline to get gear to camp. I bought a new pair in Arequipa for 16 soles.

Broken: Pentax Optio WPi Camera on Rio Cotahuasi. My trusty old camera gave out after taking its 5000th picture. The viewing screen was already cracked, but this hit killed the lens, cracking it in pieces. Fortunatley, Christina sold me her W10 so the pictures will keep coming!

Lost: Six Six One Elbow pads on Rio Cotahuasi. In the unwrapping scene, I set them down on a rock because swimming with them is nearly impossibble. I was going to remember them, but didn´t. I´m borrowing Brian's till I get new ones... maybe in Chile?

Lost: Food, oar, oarlocks, oar sleaves on Rio Cotahuasi.

Broken: Oar and cooler on Rio Cotahuasi.

Lost: Nalgene Bottle, in taxi coming back from Paucartambo to hostal in Cuzco.

Lost: Petzel Zipka Headlamp, somewhere between Paucartambo-Urubamba Confluence and Cuzco. Bummer.

Lost/Broken/Stolen: Wairo, Gian Marco's dog, somewhere around Cotahuasi. We took the dog for the first dog decent of the Colca, then it stole a wheel of cheese and dissapeared in Cotahuasi. Not really sure if we lost the dog, the cheese broke the dog, or he was stolen.

10/30 - Rio Chili, Arequipa

Andy, Ben, Christina, Todd and I got to run the Rio Chili into Arequipa yesterday. The river was mellow Class IV to III. Its a fun one because it goes into the center of the city, taking out at Puente Grau, in the center of town. Now we´re headed to Cuzco to begin on the Rio Paucartambo, the most classic of the multi-day Class V runs in Peru. Its 250kms through the mountains and down into the jungle of the Urubamba Valley. I can't wait. More to come, maybe around November 8th...

10/29- Camana to Arequipa, Rio Cotahuasi, Day 6

We arrived at Camana around 1am, after our other bus broke down. We slept in the ghetoest place I´ve ever seen, paying $20 for the night for 14 people and all our stuff. In the morning Roberto and I hit the street looking to rent a Kombi Bus to get us back to Arequipa. In the end, luck, word of mouth, and Gian Marco scored us this puppy:


We got hooked up, finally. Now I´m back in Arequipa...

10/28- Rio Cotahuasi, Day 5

The last day on the Cotahuasi was the 6 hour paddle out through the spike fields of the cameron fishermen. They fill the river with spikes to hold their nets, which made paddling the section interesting! Rafter's worst nightmere:


The takeout was in the middle of nowhere, but we were lucky to catch a ride to the nearby town of Icipi, the cameron capital of the world! The takeout:

Ben keepin it real in Icipi:

Andy in front of the town mascot:

Loading our POS bus that would break down in the middle of the night:

The drive out was heinous. 4 hours of spine jaring, brain sloshing dirt road in the noisiest, smelliest bus ever.... more to come later...

10/27- Rio Cotahuasi, Day 4

We rafted Marpa in the AM, and Gian Marco hit his head swimming across the river. Then we had a great line up of rapids:

Meter canyon where we had to highside the rafts to get them through the narrow slot:

Centimeter Canyon where we had a nasty big rapid above a narrow constriction where we had to portage the rafts. Kayakers ran and it was a great rapid:
Christina in Orange Juice, named after a swim Gian Marco had here where he had all the orange juice in his kayak, and it all swam out. A few big holes with great boofs. Liz had an impressive line down the right on her riverboard. Christina nailed the boof:
High side for your life which looked undoable in a raft, but both totally styled it. Great rapid with two HUGE boulders. Start left, cut right, highside for your life!:
Last big rapid everyone portaged, and one raft flipped being lined down on the right side. Baker totally styled it. It was a complex 7 foot slide with narrow margin of error:

We also got some stellar views of Inca ruins and terraces on the hills:
Long day ending with confluence and GALES of wind.


Liz´s comentary: Drew ran Marpa at the beginning of the day. Styled it. For some reason, Gian Marco decided to jump into Marpa and swim the last drop.. and I guess he hit his head in it.
All the biggest rapids were on day 4. We had Meter Canyon, which was cool, then we had Centimeter canyon, which was one of the harder rapids. An S-turn move into the center drop with a giant wieve at the botton left and a tiny slot on the right with crazy boily water at the bottom. Had to roll off the wall at the bottom of that one. It was kinda gnarly. They lined the rafts.
We had another rapid called Orange Juice with 3 flakes at the top and a HUGE flake/ pourover tombstone at the bottom in the center. We all styled it, and they lined the rafts. There was another rapid called Highside for Your Life. I went super deep in the hole and when I came up, all I heard was Scott yelling " That girl´s crazy!" It was a fun one.
There was one huge one that most people walked and they lined the rafts through, and Drew´s raft flipped while lining it. Only Jonathan, Scott, and Andy ran it. It wasn´t very fun looking.

10/26- Rio Cotahuasi, Day 3

Day 3 on the Cotahuasi began stout. There was some steep read and run rapids until we got to Marpa, the said biggest rapid on the trip. We all got out and scouted it and it was longer and bigger than anything we had seen on the Cotahuasi:

The paddle raft went first and made it look easy, which was great cause we were all like, 'Sweet, so now Drew is going to style it like he does everything else.' All the kayakers were placed along shore with throwropes near all the big hydraulics. Christina near the bottom of Marpa:


Ben stylin the bottom of Marpa:



As the signal went up that Drew was running the rapid, I saw Todd blow his whistle three times signaling a problem or emergency and we took off running upstream. Drew had pinned the gear boat in the top drop of the rapid, right above the gnar between a rock and the undercut wall. This was around 10 am.

Drew had done a stellar job rigging the boat, so most of the gear stayed in, even though the boat was fully underwater. The kayakers ferried across to river right to help get the boat off. After unloading a bit of the gear, we set up a zdrag and started hauling. The boat didn´t budge and we broke a few polypro and spectra lines hauling. Around 2 pm we decided to camp there with the pinned boat, hoping the river would take care of it for us. I swam over with Andy and we started unloading more gear. It was intense being out there on the boat because the water would surge and the boat would go further under water. It was also right above a big rapid, so if I got washed out or fell into the river, my only safety was Ben downstream in his kayak. I was greatful to have such a strong team with Andy upstream and Ben downstream. As I loosened the straps and took off the oars and gear, the boat began to move and buckle a bit more. The more I took off, the more it moved. I started to jump up and down on the bow, pushing off the rocks. The boat was moving! A few minutes later it came off and I jumped into the eddy upstream of the wrap! As Gian Marco put it best, 'Now! We are a lot less fucked than we were 5 hours ago!'


We were all tired and had lost a lot of gear and food. The coolers were empty and most of the pasta and tortillas were soggy at best. As Todd added, 'Its not really an expedition until you run out of food!' We were getting close.

We ate soggy pasta for dinner because that was all we had. It was a quiet night at camp. We camped there beside the largest rapid on the river. It was a long day.

10/25 - Rio Cotahuasi, Day 2

Day 2 on the Cotahuasi River was a day of nervous energy and tension. After the flips the day before, losing food, and not making it as far downstream as we had hoped, it was clear we needed a change of plan. We got on the water and had some bigger rapids right away. We scouted probably 7 times through the day, including a HUGE scout at 'The Wall'. The rapid was long, technical, narrow, and BIG... and it was all against the left wall. Although there was a lot of nervous energy at the top, everyone had great lines, and it gave the group a much needed boost over our perviously stressful day.



After The Wall, we stopped and ate snack in the boulder garden below the rapid. We were feeling pretty good!



The river continued after the wall with lots more long, steep, continuos boulder gardens and great rapids. With a bit more water than we had, it would have been a nonstop rollercoaster the whole way down.


There was a rapid that we linded for the rafts that had a sweet move for the kayaks to the right, next to a big boulder.

10/24 - Rio Cotahuasi, Day 1

The first day on the Rio Cotahuasi was crazy. In one of the first rapids Hootie lost an oar. Gone. Baker and I saw it go under a rock and pin, so we tried to get it out but we couldn´t see it... eventually gave up because we had to keep moving downstream.

The river was really low. It was steep, technical, and continuous. There were 2 rafts, one raft with 4 people, gear, and a kayak strapped on it, one gear raft, one ducky, one riverboarder, and 8 kayakers. It was a lot of boats to have on such a steep, technical river at low water. We decided that the best plan was to have 5 kayakers, the riverboarder and the ducky out front to scout and give signals, then 2 kayakers and 2 rafts in the back all running together. Drew Parker was killing it on the oars all day, every day. His rowing ability through the rapids was astonishing. He ended up styling almost everything.

After we changed the Hootie, Sara, Emily raft to a paddle rig, they flipped off the stuck gear boat in a big rapid and we lost some food. Gian Marco was intense in the momment and decided it would be best if he guided the raft, so he hopped in and took over. They got through one rapid and then flipped again!

The river karma was unreal. Gear was floating everywhere, people too. We decided to call it an early day and camp before we crashed any more. Everyone was pretty tired, but it was apparent it was time to pull it all together. We lined a rapid for the rafts that had a sketchy line for the kayaks:


As the sun set over the canyon walls, the red glow of the canyon was impressive. The photos don´t really capture it, but here´s the 'Mars Wall':

The campsite we stayed at had awesome inca ruins and terraces. We dried gear on the terraces and hiked up to the ruins, finding skulls, bones and pottery.

10/23 - Flatwater Canyon, Cotahuasi River, Second Known Decent

The Flatwater Canyon of the Cotahuasi River gets its name from the first decent, done by Gian Marco and 4 paddlers in 2003. They asked around to all of the local people in the Cotahuasi Canyon if there was whitewater deep in that part of the canyon. The walls are too steep to see down into the canyon, but the farmers and fisherman assured them that it was all flat. They found a sketchy mule trail into the canyon and 5 Class V rapids later, decided it should be named 'Flatwater Canyon'.

The trek began with the hike in. We had left our boats with the burros who were bringing them in that morning to the put in at Belinga. We decided that if we started hiking early, we could meet the burros with out kayaks about halfway, at the put in for the flatwater canyon. The only problem was that Todd wanted to come, and hadn´t paddled with us the day before, so the group carried his kayak aprox 7km to the put in. Our directions to the putin from Gian Marco were 'go up and then down and then up and past the green field and you will see a small trail. Follow the trail and you will need ropes. Ask the burro drivers...' When we got to where we thought the putin might be, we stopped and waited for the burros. We asked some locals we saw on the trail if they had seen burros with kayaks, and got mixed responses from '10 mintues back' to, 'they aren´t coming'. Spanish in the countryside is very difficult because most of the locals speak Quechua as a first, and spanish as a second language. Our boats showed less than 20 minutes later. This was good because we were in the middle of the desert with mid day sun and not nearly enough water or shade!


The hike to the putin may have been the most dangerous part of the Flatwater Canyon. Between the 500-1000 vertical foot drop very rapidly, and the gale force winds trying to pluck us off the hill with our kayaks, it was very scary. Our burro guide led us down the 'easy to find path' which was in the opposite direction than we would have guessed. We were waiting for the burrow driver to turn left toward the small pueblo, but he kept heading straigt towards the vertical cliff. Don´t try this one without a knowledgeable guide for the trail. The burros headed for the cliff:



Once we reached the river, we all breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that all that stood between us and our camp was 7km of mostly continuous Class IV-V whitewater that none of us knew. It was nice to get the kayak off the shoulder and into the water, as usual.

The river started up slow, but within a km or so, it was full on. The first big rapid was a steep boulder garden, ending with a great drop into a tight slot. Once we got through this one, we could all tell that it was going to be an epic run.

The miles down below held numerous big boulder jumbles, but all runable whitewater. The magnitude of these rapids was huge (notice Todd for perspective in photo below, the little yellow spec up high in the rapid)


About halfway down the run we got to a rapid that looked like a killer, but on closer inspection went well. All the water went over a ledge into a huge boulder. Andy probed it and the rest went as well. The entrance was tricky with some sieved out lines, but sliding over the ledge into the boulder was unreal. The entrance:

The rock slide move:

The actual canyon in this section was beautiful. It had steep walls and lots of interesting geology.


The whole run took our team less than 2.5 hours. We spent about two hours running the first half, while it mellowed out a bit for the second half and we just bombed down it. We took out at our camp at Belinga, happy to know we were only the second group ever to venture into that part of the Cotahuasi Canyon. This part of expedition kayaking is really exciting to me: going into places where we are some of the first or few people who have ever passed that way. In Flatwater Canyon, we were persons 5-10 to pass through. Buen hazo!

At camp that night, we prepared Opal Cactus for dinner which turned out to be a bit hard on everyone´s stomaches. The camp was across from the town of Belinga, in a greener section of the desert canyon. Truley beautiful:

10/22 - Middle Cotahuasi, to Puente Sipia

This mission started out interesting, as things always seem to with the illustriuos Gian Marco Valentino (cusipata.com). We dropped off the crew for the hike into Belinga, the town where we begin the Cotahuasi River Canyon. The hike is 15km into the Canyon, passing by Sipia Falls, a 4-tier, 450 foot cascade in the middle of the canyon. The scene at the putin was crazy with kayaks, gear, burros, and people everywhere.

Andy, Baker, Gian Marco and I decided to head upstream of the town of Sipia to run a short section before our hike into the putin at Belinga. About halfway back out, Gian Marco realizes that he has forgotten all of his gear, so he hops out of the coaster to run back to Sipia to grab his gear that is being taken by burro to Belinga. He managed to catch the buros, get his stuff, and run back to where we were putting in, about halfway between the town of Cotahuasi and Sipia.

From the putin down there were some mellow warmup rapids and busy Class IIIish stuff. When a bridge came into sight overhead, the action really picked up. The rapid after the bridge is a wide sweeping right bend with clean lines to the left. Some big hydraulics through here, and then a big, horizon lined boulder field. We stopped to scout this rapid (left), and it proved to be one of the best in the run:

The line was somewhere down through the middle with a few big moves above the crux. The key move is the left slot on the side of the large boulder down in middle of the rapid. All of the water crashed into this one, and it has a gnarly looking sieved out line on the right. Stay left here.

After this long boulder garden comes the finale, the cascade that is visible from the Bridge at Sipia. The bouldery whitewater maze has a clean line down the middle between the huge boulders, and then two sweet boofs down at the bottom. As we ran down this rapid, a heard of llamas were being forced across the brige over our heads. A true Peru momment.

After we took out at the Sipia Bridge to begin our hike into the Canyon de Cotahuasi, we met up with Lady, the girl who was in charge of our buros down to her town of Belinga. Beautiful canyon scenery and cactus' for the next 15km!

Sipia Falls, not runable...