PANGAEA 11 AMAZON CAMP – DAY 9
Today we woke up in the warmest ‘snow cave’ ever. Only to realize we had a raid to complete !
We began the morning nice and early with a quick breakfast. At seven we all rushed to get ahead in the raid. We were all really motivated to complete the raid and of course to win.
Team Efforts started with a lead, we got to the camp early the previous night and were well rested as well as thoroughly relieved to have slept inside. We were the first and only team to get to the first checkpoint of the day. We got there by ‘skiing’ down the mountain on our snowshoes.
After a few spectacularly funny falls we finally reached road. Soon we reached our second checkpoint and took up the challenge of dragging a tyre up a mountain. (Of course after a few feeble attempts at rigging the other teams tyre) The men on our team worked like machines to get the tyre there impressing everyone all the way up to the next point. The best part of today was definitively sliding back down the mountain on snow covered slopes. There were a few close encounters with ‘cliffs’ and a lucky escape from a concussion. We worked great as a team and had fun the whole way singing and chanting our name. That is exactly how we ended our raid, as a group and with a whole lot of spirit.(and we won !)
Team BEAST went in the wrong direction as soon as we reached the river. We all agree that were never seen anything so spectacular ! We spent about an hour walking on the frozen river and saw a few dangerous holes in the ice. After our amazing ice-river experience we realized we were off course and found our way up the mountain to the road, and our next checkpoint. We walked for about 30 minutes before Luke told us to go to the checkpoint missing the previous one.
We had a great time singing and chatting, Reghard leading us in our songs all the way. Checkpoint number ten (where we picked up our tyres) we found to be very cold although we warmed up soon hiking up the mountain. We carried the tyre two at a time and the rest carrying their backpacks. Luckily everything that goes up must come down ! It was a great feeling racing and sliding down the mountain on our bums. We were really happy to see the end line as we ran the final slope, this was an experience we will never forget.