Jan. 1st - 5th: Futaleufu!!!!

This post will be a consolidation of this week, which we both agree has been the best of our trip so far. We wake up on New Years Day to find Nicholas has left a note stating that he had arranged for us a shuttle, lodging in Futa, and arrangements with Expediciones Chile (ExChile) for us to raft the Futaleufu River with them. Looks like he kept up his end of the bargin! We packed up and waited over an hour for our shuttle driver to show up, while conversing with a middle-aged British professor named Malcom, who was to share our shuttle. The driver eventually showed up, and we departed for our 3 1/2 hour gravel road adventure. It soon became obvious that the truck we were riding in had been making this trip for multiple decades, and I couldn't help but flinch as the engine stalled monentarily each time she shifted between 3rd and 4th gear. The drive itself was gorgeous, and we were treated to many waterfalls and lakes, but the omnipresent rain kept the Andes at bay.

Finally, we arrive in the promised land! Futaleufu is a small town of about 1000 people (that probably would be more like 100 if not for themagnificent rivers in the vicinity), cobbled together by a collection of gravel roads.

Here´s a photo of a photo of the town from the air.

At the center of it all is the Rio Grande Lodge, the only multi-storied building in town and the epicenter for all things ExChile. Exchile is the biggest game in town, and their are also the oldest, after being formed in the mid-80's by Chris Spelious, a former olympic kayaker and the first man to successfully kayak the entire Futa River. We rolled into the main office, and discovered that it had been raining in Futa for 24 days, and therefore the had been off the Futa River for a record-setting 12 straight days. The water level that day was an unbelievable 300,000 cfs (the MacKenzie river that we rafted for the wedding was about 2,000 cfs). Since they usually don't run trips when the water is above 130,000, it looked like we might be S.O.L. - a grave disappointment after traveling so far to get here.

Luckily, Exchile did find us a nearby canbana with a kitchen and living area (the place that Nicholas "booked" for us was closed the entire time we were in Futa) so we went back to our new place and began praying for sunshine. That night we went to the Rio Grande and enjoyed a very delicious dinner while observing a very rowdy bunch of "official guests". These were the people who had paid $2000 a person to spend five days in Futa, complete with their own personal guides and 3 squares a day. They had obviously bonded over the previous couple of days. We were happy to be invited over to their table after dinner and after making introductions, the first of several bottles of Johnny Walker started to hit the table (at $60 a pop, mind you). During the evening we met, Bob, the head guide for Exchile and expressed our disappointment about the high water levels. He sympahthized and said that maybe he could get us on a Class II kayak trip the next day on the Rio Espolon, the river that runs by the town.

We hung out as long as we can handle it at the lodge, and then made our escape with the thought we might be kayaking the following morning. For some reason the following morning we woke up with a headache, but we still struggled over to the Rio Grande to check in with Bob. He told us that they didn´t have any spare guides for us that day, so we gratefully went back to bed.

That afternoon we took a self-guided hike to Eagle Rock, a big rock outcropping that was suppsed to provide fantastic views of the area. Bob had generoulsly provided us with a handdrawn map. "You take the road out of town a mile or two, until you see a bridge, then take a right at the next fork, follow that dirt road another mile or so to the cow path, follow that til you see the big rock, that´s where you´re going."

The hike was long, but the views on the way were amazing and we we finally saw the rock we were to climb, we got pretty excited. You can see the rock in this picture, the big pointy rock on the right. As we climbed, the rock loomed and cows and bulls blocked our path, but we kept going. We finally reached the top and the views of the valley and the Rio Espolon were absolutely spectacular. Well worth the sweat!

While we were up top enjoying our lunch, we hear the clamber of additonal hikers, and we felt pretty sweet about ourselves when two of the official guests popped over the ride with their guide, all sweating and out of breath, to see us already there sunning ourselves on a rock with the assistance of no guide.

They ending up having the last laugh, however, upon arriving back on the gravel road down below and jumpingon their mountain bikes for the 3 kilometer travel back to town along the dusty road.

After the hike, we returned to town to clean up and again enjoy a tasty meal at the lodge. It was the final night for the couple we had met on the trail, and earlier that day they had sworn to us that they would not be partying that way again, as they were flying home thefollowing day to the kids aged 5, 9, and 13. They proved to be poor judges, as by 10:00pm the two of them were waltzing around the room as Johnnie Walker had again made his presence felt. We got sucked into the infectious comraderie, and again stayed later than might have been prudent (while telling each other it was simply to make up for our NYE debacle). The good news was that it hadn't rained at all that day, so we went to be hopeful and happy.

The following morning we weren´t quite as happy, but it turned out to be a beautiful day. We went kayaking on the class II Rio Espolon with an australian guide named Sharon, andwhile the rapids were somewhat tame, the river itself was beautiful, and the weather was the best we had seen in weeks. That evening we recieved the best news we'd heard in a while; upon arriving for dinner, Bob came over to us and told us that we were running the Futa tomorrow! As we had been asking about it several times each day, everyone kind-of knew how excited we were to run the river. Luckily for us, the guides were just as excited as they had been off the Futa for 15 days at this point.

The section we were to do was called "Bridge toBridge" and it features 10 class IV rapids in 9.6 kilometers (about 6 miles). Above is a photo of a map of the section. The water level was still quite high, but they were paying a seperate outfitter to supply them with two extra safety catarafts, and they had 3 safety kayakers as well in case anything went wrong. With all of this in mind, we had a very quiet night and rested up for the big day.

We wake up to clouds, but no rain. We join everyone for breakfast inthe lodge, and then the 16 of us load in the bus for the hour drive to the put-in.

The guests (including us) were very somber during the drive, as nobody really knew what to expect. We finally arrive and after the safety talk and paddle practice, we are off! The guides put half the people on the two paddle-catarafts, a huge hyrbid that was about the most stable thing you could take down the river.

The one regular paddle raft had us in the front (we had the most experience in rafting among the guests), Wayne and Richard (two very funny Brits and our favorite non-family people on the trip so far), Deborah and Liz, two friends from NYC, and Bob, the head raft guide from Canada. We fashioned ourselves the dream team, and it was our job to go through each of the rapids first (as either trailblazers or guinea pigs, I'm not sure which). We set off down the river, and Bob tells us that around the innocent looking corner is a mile long set of two consectutive Class IV+ rapids. With our stomach in our mouths, we turn the corner and proceeded to have the most fun yet on our adventure.

Big, frothy, nastywaves abounded, but with Bob on the oars in back we hit every line exactly right. We went from rapid to rapid, eddying out when possible, and had an absolutely wonderful time. Here´s a photo of us in the paddle boat on the right with the cataraft close ahead ready to help if needed. The adrenalin kept us all paddling strong, and way too soon we were at the take out after only a hour and a half on the water. All of the guides knew what they were doing, and it turns out we did not have a single swimmer that day (when someone falls out of the boat, they are a "swimmer", even if they don´t want to be). We all slapped each other on the backs a number of times, and made the shuttle back to the lodge for lunch a long nap.

Carrie was determined to have a home cooked meal, so we headed to the "super" mercado (think a 14' by 14´ room) looking for enough grub to fashion together a pasta meal. Turns out that each store sells about 90% of the same stuff, with the remaining 10% being what we actually wanted. Since they were 10 or so of these supermercados scattered all over town, it took us awile before we were able to cobble together enough groceries for Carrie to whip us up some dinner, but we finally got what we needed. After eating, we had back over to the Lodge to find out about the following day. Bob greeted us enthusiastically at the door and informed us that we would be running the Futa again the following day, albeit with a smaller crew. We got to bed quite pleased with ourselves, as we were going to get another crack at this amazing river.

The following morning again greated us with overcast skies, but by the time we were in the water, not a cloud remained. It was a fitting omen for what would become the best day of our vacation so far. That morning, we were down to 8 guests, so we loaded everyone in one raft with Bob on the oars. The two additonal people made a huge difference, as we were much more sluggish with the extra weight. Additonally, the water level was noticably higher today. The disadvantages of this quickly became apparent, as we missed the line we wanted in the 2nd rapid and descened into a series of deep holes along the river side. Richard, the Brit, was ejected on the front left, but Dave and another passenger quickly brought him back on board. We made it through the rest of the rapid, and Bob the guide pulled us into an eddy and gave us a calm but serious talk about how we are going to paddle harder today if we didn´t want to get flipped in the bigger rapids ahead. That was all he needed to say, as swimming in the rapids ahead would be very likely be a multi-mile swim through very big rapids.

With additional addrenalin in our systems, we powered our way through the rest of the rapids, each noticeably bigger than the day before. The sun was absouletly golden, however, and we laughed our way through the best parts. We ran the entire stretch in about an hour, as today we didn't need to wait for all of the extra safety boats to maneouver into position. We got off the river, and Bob asked we of the sweetest questions we've heard, "Who wants to run it again?"

It turns out that only 5 of us (luckily but perhaps not coincidenatly the five best rafters; us, the Brits, and a kayaker) wanted to do it again, so after a nice lunch at the put-in we set off. We started out by doing a surprise flip test in the calm water before the rapids started (see pic of people in the water here). That should have let us know that Bob had some special plans for us and wanted to make sure that we were up to the challange... just in case. We reflipped the boat and got back in quickly and were therefore ready for the big lines. It soon became obvious that we had lost about 420 pounds of dead weight while maintaining all of our power, so Bob spent the entire run taking onthe phatest, biggest lines on the river, and we essentially ran 6miles of non-stop, big water, class IV action in 40 minutes, laughing and giggling and smiling the entire time. We couldn´t get the grins off our faces if we had tried. The picture here shows our raft going through a rapid with a cataraft and two saftey kayakers below ready to go after any swimmers. For perspective, that dot of yellow in the whitewater is an 18 foot raft with 7 foot oars and 6 people aboard, including us. Luckily on this run one of the former paddlers was taking photos for an adventure company she worked for, and was dashing from rapid to rapid in a car to get the photos. So we had the driver shoot a couple with our camera, too, and that´s how we got these shots. We got absolutely drenched, but we had full wetsuits on, and the weather was fantastic. Not only that, but the water was beautiful, and the river was surrouned by snow cappedpeaks on all sides. Just absolutely breathtaking. The second run of the day was not only the best run we had on the Futa, but overall the best time either of us have ever had a river. And that, my friends, is saying something.

That night we enjoyed our final meal at the lodge, and had drinks withour new-found friends and said our goodbyes. We kept it within reason, as we had mutiple legs of travel in our very new future starting with a 7am bus ride. However, everyone was in a celebatory mood and Dave smoked the last of his Cubanos with our new friends. Futa certainly had not been an easy place to get to, but it had been more than worth it. All told, we had run 42 rapids in 2 days, with 30 of them being class IV-V. Additonally, we had spent less than 40% per person as compared to the "official" guests by putting the trip together ourselves. We would be quite surprised if we were to never to see this magnificent river again.