I'M AT: El Arcano, see below.
Muyac Tours have a den on the river Urubamba from which their Grade II and III rafting trips depart. It's called Casa Cusi, Happy House, and is thatched and wooden, with kitchen, dining room, and sauna, in which you can hibernate after the icy water has finished numbing your parts.
Our captain, Americo, took us through a series of exercises on gentle waters so we'd be able to cope with the torrents to come. Forward! Backpaddle! Everyone Right! (which meant leapping across the guy next to you and clinging onto a piece of wet rope fixed to the side of the raft. This, and Everyone Left, were designed to lift one side of the raft out of the water, to avoid rocks.) INSIDE!!!! (this was really screamed. Everyone in the boat. In cases of extreme peril. We never used this one.)
And, so like many things on this trip, I experienced something for the first time - hurtling over boulders and rocks in the rushing streams of water, paddling like a maniac, trying to keep rhythm with the rest of the boat, plunging my arm and paddle into the churning water, shoulders and back and pivotal hookfoot aching. And it was bloody marvellous, and I got soaked, and Americo dived into the water like a crack-crazed conquistador at the end, and the two Spaniards in the boat, shaped like bulldogs, mohicanned, merely spooned the water into the air with their paddles, whilst the rest of us worked like dogs, and Americo shouted at them, the warm brothers, and further back, me and Mark and the girls sweated, and fumed, and slammed into the water once more.
After the sauna, we took luncheon to the sounds of Bob Marley, and much later, back in Cuzco, we took dinner to the sounds of a marching band, and the four of us waited for Mark's pizza, and then to Ukuku's Bar, where a small energetic bloke in a balaclava served drinks from the top of his skull, and a nine-piece band played, didgeridoos and panpipes, thimbles chattering against washboards and congas, and all was right with the world.
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