Never again.

well my rafting days are over. i experienced 2.5 hours too much of them today anyways. holy cow. i think i´m going to die soon... i really do. first of all, my intestines stopped working, so that has made me feel wonderful. i´m also at altitude, which even though i was okay all day, i have the worst headache ever now. oh wait, that´s probably because instead of taking it easy like i was supposed to do, i went rafting. cuss cuss cuss. i left my hostel at 830, never took a nap (oh right, so i am sleep deprived in addition to all this). found the place, signed up to go, and voila. 2 hrs later we were at the urubumba river... now, we didnt know if we´d make it because the farmers are striking against the govt by putting large boulders in all the roads. but we made a path using all the lanes and rocky cliffs (or, curbs??). we got situated, then there were locals protesting on a bridge over the river, so they were dropping large pieces of wood in our direction in an effort to ruin the bridge and ruin us. no one got hit, but it wasn´t a comfortable situation.

basically, we had cat 1, 2, and 3 plus rapids. i didnt think it would be that bad, and it shouldn´t have been, but it is the dry season so allll the rocks are exposed. we got stuck at least 7 times. everything was great until about an hour in, we hit a cat 3 and my boat didnt paddle hard enough, and thus, we flipped. like everything else in peru, i have only hyperventilated once before. today made the 2nd time. no one flips over on the nice, low-rocks rapids.. just the ones with huge 5 ton boulders and really fast water. i was crying my eyes out, trying not to panic (i actually did the correct recovery position), and just held on to the ropes of the upside down raft. the guide grabbed me and two other girls by our life jacket and tossed us on the upside raft. he then, with one paddle, tried to steer us out of this mess... the many "oh shit!!!"s didnt help. we finally got to the side of the shore, flipped the boat over, then a cool 5 min later we got stuck on another boulder. now, i´d done my best to be calm, realizing that panicking after the flip would only cause more problems... but this REALLY did me in. we´re on this freaking huge boulder, all us of holding on to the rope on the left top side of the raft, we´re up to our shoulders in water being sucked under, and he tells me "you, get out of the raft and sit on this rock." HELL NO! I said no like 5 times, while crying hysterically again, and he just grabbed me and stuck me on the rock (of my select fears, slimy rocks are actually one of them). they had me and another girl jump in a different raft after this ordeal, the boat finally came loose, and we continued... for another hour plus. it was awful- i wish i was cooler and could say i enjoyed it, but nothing about almost being smashed to pieces and drowning at the same time is something i want to remember fondly. terrible. terible. however u say "terrible" in french. it was.

we finally ate some lunch, i could only stomach soup despite the fact it was now 4pm and i last ate at 6am. we drove back to cusco, i got a coca tea while waiting for a CD of the pics to be. so thus, i will leave u with those. i think my facial expressions do the talking.

**ten minutos later**

uggh nevermind. this internet is taking too slow and i need to sleep. getting up at 550am tomorrow. sorry my typing sucks, this keyboard has no letters on it and is in spanish, so i do lots of guessing and poking.