On this page you can review one of three high school kayak semester destination options: Chile Gap Year Semester 2011 for graduates or a high school semester to Chile or South Africa. You may also be interested in our endorsed kids and teen summer kayak camps.

Chile provides a host of cultural and photo opps add that to the world´s best kayaking and you have a great semester.

Chile Gap Spring 2011 “Best Program for High School Graduates”
The gap year semester is designed for high school graduates and offers an exciting and productive leadership development opportunity. Traveling with your kayak to Chile´s best rivers is the fun part. But did you realize that the immersion Spanish, leadership development, and participation in a service learning project are also rewarding?
Click here to read more “Chile Gap Spring 2011.”

Chile Fall Semester 2010
Chile has become the student’s top choice destination due to offering the world´s best whitewater, an inviting and warm culture, and the stability of your own Pucon home base. On this trip you will master your boof on the Seven Teacups, playboat on the Rio Nuble, surf the point breaks of Pichilemu, and both playboat and run waterfalls at your Pucon home base. Read more “Chile Fall Semester 2010.”

South Africa Spring Semester 2011
“I want to surf great waves and master freestyle skills.” Everyone regards the White Nile as the world’s best freestyle destination and with the 2011 World Championships approaching this semester will be your advantage. Add New River Academy’s reputable college prep education, a perfect safety record, cultural exploration, and you get to take photos of super cool giraffes and elephants and you have a super cool high school year that awaits. Read more “South Africa Spring Semester 2011.”

Check out our “Easy to Apply Application.”

Endorsed Kids and Teen Kayak Camps
Huge Experiences is proud to endorse the best kids and teen kayak camps in the United States and Canada. If you are trying to decide which program is the best for you then click the “Endorsed Kids and Teen Kayak Camps” link.

Photo Credit and Teen Kayak Camp with NOC- New River Academy director David Hughes will be leading this unique course offering a photography high school credit as you kayak this summer. Students will master fundamental components of photography while parents can check out the blogs. Plus you get to kayak daily.

Downstream Edge Freestyle Junior Kayak Camp- New River Academy director David Hughes will co-lead this Colorado freestyle kayak camp with Downstream Edge coaches. If you want to master freestyle and compete then this is a great short Colorado camp.

Keeners Teen Kayak Camps on the Ottawa River- New River Academy instructors and students have been a part of the Keeners teen kayak camps for years. This camp is phenomenal with a riverside base next to the world´s best waves. The Keeners are producing the best freestyle kayakers in the world plus it is a super fun river.

Check out our “Easy to Apply Application.”

When in Chile the gappers where lucky enough to paddle the on the Rio Claro before it dried up due to a huge hole opening up due the earthquakes. This is a video of us paddling the Entre slatos and the Siete Tazas.

The school was at the Rio Futaleufu the past week or so. When we were there the Futa Fest was on and the NRA students did incredibly well, with Eric Bartl coming 2nd out of the playboat division down river race and David Gorski, Lorenzo (spanish teacher) and Stephen Forster coming 4th,5th and 6th. The Rafting team with Andy, Matt Smink, David Gorski, Lorenzo, Stephen and Tino came 1st beating a pro Peruvian rafting team. This video has some footage of the playboat comp and just us having fun. Hope you enjoy!!!

For my final project in photography i chose to do my photos in black and white. Not all in black and white, I did decide to have some photos with only one colour highlighted and there is also a photo with a washout of the colours. I think that some of these photos are my best work.

See you on the water!

New River Academy just finished an epic journey from Pucon to the Rio Futalefu in Patagonia and back. I got some great photo opportunities along the way. Here is a slide show with some of my best shots. Enjoy! -David Gorski

As you know, we are in a country that experienced a national disaster. Lucky for us, we were too far south to notice much, but the story is different for many Chileans. In Santiago alone, over 600 people have been displaced. Imagine losing your home, wondering about the location of loved ones, and on top of that, having nothing to wear or eat. We all want to do what we can to contribute to disaster relief; we discussed taking the entire school north to help out with some serious projects, such as rubble removal. But after careful consideration, due to continuing aftershocks and travel conditions from road damage, staff decided that it would be unwise to bring our students directly into a disaster zone. So this is what we did instead!

On our first day back in Pucon, we all headed into town, to the local Red Cross, to assemble care packages for the victims of the earthquake. We put together boxes stuffed with clothes and bags bursting with food to be shipped up north. We were given giant sacks of random clothing and divided the clothes into individual outfits to be bagged and distributed. It was actually fun to sift through the clothing, some of it outdated and outrageous, and piece together whole ensembles. It was a lovely group activity that further helped us acknowledge how grateful we are that the earthquake did not affect us personally. I am thrilled that we managed to give back even just a tiny bit to a country that has given us so much.

Tomorrow is our last day of school!!! Time has whipped past us… we will all be seeing you soon!

Callie

Alex Anderson wonders if this is donation-appropriate

For the past few weeks my spanish class, spanish III, have been working on a puppet show called Caperucita Roja (Little Red Ridding Hood) This was a great way to learn spanish and was great fun. You can watch the full show in the video below!!

WOW!

What an amazing week. New River Academy has been based at Cara Del Indio which is the take out and put in two amazing sections of the Rio Futaleufu. I wish you could all be here to experience how blue and big this river really is. It is truly one of a kind. After a few days of training on the Futa all the students competed in one of the biggest most important competitions of the year. Its is thrown to bring awareness to the river and other chilean rivers so damming does not continue to happen. Because of this tons of international paddlers flock to the competition to compete and support the cause. You will be happy to know that NRA swept the competition. The first even being the down river race. Katie Kowalski took first in the womens class. Eric Bartl took 2nd in the mens playboat class. Lorenzo 4th, Stephen Forster 5th,David Gorski 6th in long boat class. Then NRA put a rafting team together led by Lorenzo and we got 1st in that race as well. In rafting we beat the Peruvian national rafting team. The freestyle placing was Me in 1st place, Stephen in second and Eric in Third. This is a great reflection of all the athletes working hard on their skills everyday and it paying off. I hope everybody is well. Check in soon.

Best,

Coach Tino Specht