San Gil

San Gil is a pretty little town who's main attraction is adventure sports. We stayed at a cool hostel run by and Australian backpacker. He was a nice guy, and told us about the town and he also seemed to know just about everything about Colombia. I learned quite a bit when I was there. He told us where the best places to eat were, as well as organising our hydrospeed and caving adventures.

Every day we would go to the market and take advantage of the fact that Colombia is the country with the biggest selection of fruit grown withing its boarder. At the markets you can go to have fresh fruit salads and some fresh fruit smoothies made right in front of you all for about 75p. A wonderful way to start any day if you ask me.

Hydrospeed

Hydrospeed - a small polyurethane floatation board, designed for descending rapids. The user rides the hydrospeed in a prone, semi-swimming position. The upper body rests on the board and the legs hang free in the water.

Going head first into some rapids. What a terrifying concept, and yet something that sounds like a lot of fun. The safety equipment consists of little more than a helmet and a life vest. Not much, but enough, I suppose. The crash course was short, but informative. It was more or less just to tell us how to hold on to the borad and to never let go of it. Pretty straighforward stuff.

Five minutes later and we were thrown into the river. To our advantage the weather was beautiful and the temperature quite high, so jumping into col water was somewhat refreshing.

We got to the first rapid almost immediately. It was exhilerating getting sucked down into the water and having my head poking through long enough to gasp for air before getting sucked right back down. Much like the swirlies often talked about in American movies and TV shows. For those not aware, a swirly is the act of repeatedly shoving someones head in a toilet while deploying the flush.

For maybe ten minutes the rapids kept on coming and there was very little time to breath between each submersion. There came a point when my hydrospeed and I were fully submerged for a while; shortly followed by a feeling that I might have to let go of the board, or I might die. That feeling went away rather quickly when I finally came up for air and saw that that was the last rapid for a long time. The river was as calm as a swimming pool after that until the end of the experience.

We arrived on shore in the city park which consists of a forest full of trees which looked like something found in Peter Jackson's Middle Earth. A magical setting.

Caving

Our final day in San Gil was spent wandering around in complete darkness with flash lights straped to our helmets. It was difficult at first to navigate my way around, as I was reduced to complete tunnel vision, but I was surprised at how quickly I became used to it.

There are several different sections to the cave. The first one was called the Cathedral. Simply an large opening after having to get on our knees due to a small tunnel leading to it. In there we saw some bats, and then turned our lights off and sat in the dark in complete silence. I don't think I have ever had all my senses completely shut off like that before. As we were sitting there, a bat flew right past my ear. The guide told us not to move because their radar system allows them to know where you are, but they get it wrong if you move.

The next section, the mud, was by far the most amusing. The whole point of this was get dirty. Frankly, I thought this would be the worst part of the whole thing, but I loved every second of it. I took my shoes off for this, and I am rather glad I did. We crawled for a couple of metres completely flat on the ground, and then ended up in a puddle of mud that went all the way up my knee. I do not know who started it, but we ended up having a mud fight. It went everywhere and would take days to wash off completely.

At this point, the guide was having so much fun that he suggested taking us to a part of the cave not usually seen by tourists. It would involve a difficult climb, but we all wanted to stay in there as long as we could.

We walked through the third section, which was supposed to be a river followed by a waterfall, but the river was almost completely dry. This is normally the place where people wash off all the mud, but we were not so lucky. Nevermind.

The climb was very difficult, it involved sending the tallest in the group up first by giving him some footholds with our hands. Once he was up, he would hoist everyone else up. Not exactly safety first, I would have rather had a rope or something, but no one got hurt and that is the main thing.