Rafting with Joe

My brother Joe is visiting this week. His first full day in town we went rafting for a full day on the Mendoza River. The trip covered 30 kilometers although it ended up only being maybe 2 - 3 hours on the water. We stopped for lunch at an abandoned railway station in the middle of nowhere. The railway ran from Argentina to Chile but was abandoned in the 1950s. There have been attempts to revive it as a freight train, but the Argentine trucker's union strongly objected. Seems to me it would be a great tourist train, but maybe the bus lines would then object!

I'm in the raft with 3 passengers and Joe and Jake are in the raft with 4. I was put in the Spanish-speaking raft to even out the numbers. The couple in front are from Buenos Aires. In Jake's raft, they got stuck in a hole behind a rock for about 5 minutes. My guide waded up-river and threw them a line to pull them out. Water completely swamped their raft, but they did not flip. Later, their guide was catapulted several feet in front of the raft and Jake and the other guy fell out but held on to the strap around the edge of the raft. Joe hauled them back in. The guide took a lot of ribbing from the chase kayak and my guide. My raft was somewhat more stable because of the oars the guide used, but he nearly lost the oars once and I and the woman in front of me almost fell out once. The kayaker spends all year kayaking and rafting. During the winter he goes to Ecuador.