River Rafting Redux -- El Rio Pacuare

My trip to San Jose and thereafter the suburb of Heredia has gone well. I´ve given in to “tentacion” and gone to McDonalds thrice, BK once, and Taco Bell (more for irony and the fact it was the only restaurant open late than anything else). They are about the only places that taste exactly the same or better than the versions in the states, every other hamburger I´ve had with one exception has tasted off somehow.

I haven´t done much here but visit my first host family, which was fun and it showed me that I´ve made a lot of progress in my comprehension and speaking ability. And I went to see “El Expreso Polar” on Navidad, which I recommend for its amazing animation if unescapably hackneyed and sappy plot (more tolerable when you are practicing Spanish). The theater is in Heredia, where they have a brand new American-style mall called Paseo de las Flores, but it showed me how spoiled I´ve been because the multiplex plays only four movies at a time. “Bob Esponja“ the movie comes out on New Year´s Eve here, so I´m waiting with “anticipacion.”
By coincidence, everything fell in place on the night before La Nochebuena (X-mas eve) and two of my friends came to the same hotel where I was staying although we hadn´t discussed it over email yet. (It has been very difficult to arrange meetings by email.)

On La Nochebuena we went rafting on 18 kilometers of the River Picuare, which flows into the Caribbean side of the country. What a rush! Each river is a new natural roller coaster. Pacuare is particularly scenic, which plenty of waterfalls and birds that we spotted on the way down the river.

I fell backwards out of the raft on about the first rapids run because the position of my feet was off a bit. I was able to keep hold of my paddle and grab the grip line on the perimeter of the raft. One of my friends was to my left and she some how plucked me up out of the water, so her new nickname is “la heroina” (heroine in Spanish, also heroin). The guide said the rapid was only a class 2 or class 1, but I told him there´s no law saying we can´t pretend it was a class 4 or 5 to spare my ego and make for a more deft-defying story. So, yes, “And all the sudden we were in the midst of a class 4 whirlpool that ejected me from the raft, as I struggled flailing, missing rocks by the barest margins.” This story add twenty years.

We did get some good class 4 rapids, however, and we ended up having to use every technique in the book, because on the very last part of the trip we had hit the side of the river in a river bend under a bridge, and the raft was about to flip so we had to rush towards that side to prevent that.

This year, I´m going to have a Nicaraguan New Year´s, I´m going to visit for a few days in the Southwestern city of Granada, and perhaps tour part of Lake Managua and who knows what. Tenga un prospero año nuevo!