Futaleufu

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Hello again!

Our next stop after our long stay in Puerto Natales was the small town of Futaleufu. We headed here for one reason only- white water rafting. After rafting in both Africa and Ottawa, both Laura and I were hooked and lucky for us, Futaleufu is consider anywhere from the 1st to 3rd best white water rafting location in the world depending on which list you are looking at. As I mentioned in the last blog, 25hr bus ride from Puerto Natales to Coyhaique was our first task. To our surprise, we actually traveled almost all 25hrs in Argentina! Because the south of Chile is so disjointed with islands, etc., north bound buses originating in Chile and going to other locations in Chile are required to use Argentinian roads. This was not an issue, it just added a few boarder crossings to our journey which we hadn't expected. After arriving in Coyhaique after our long ride at 10:00am, we had expected to find a hostel, spend the night, and then hope to make it to Futaleufu the next day. The stretch from Coyhaique to Futa is not very heavily traveled and so getting information all the way south in Puerto Natales about this journey was basically impossible. On top of that, we didn't meet any other travelers who had gone to Futa so we basically had to play it by ear as we made our way north. To our surprise, upon arrival in Coyhaique there was a bus scheduled to go straight to Futa (12hrs) that day at 10:00am. There wouldn't be another bus going there for at least 2 days so we said what the hell, and hopped on! What's another 12 hours after you've already been on a bus for 25 right haha. The ride to Futa was a tough one. We were in a small mini-bus so the seats didn't recline and they wern't very comfy. Also, most of the trip was on gravel road (probably 80% or more) which was made very rough due to the fact that it rained the entire day of our trip! Needless to say, it was a bumpy 12hrs. We arrived in Futa around 11, checked into the hostel where the bus dropped us off (super convenient), grabbed a bite to eat and then went right to bed.

The next morning, we walked around for a bit checking our different rafting companies and luckily found one (Futaleufu Explorers- definitely recommended) that we could raft with that same day. So around 2ish Laura and I plus 2 Argentinians and an Israel headed to the river to raft the commercial section called "Puente to Puente" or "Bridge to Bridge" in English. This section had Class 3, 4 and 4+ rapids. Overall the day was great. Futa differed from our other 2 rafting experiences in 1 key area- LESS PADDLING! One unique aspect of Futa is that it's essentially continuous white-water for 2+ hours. There is almost no flat-water between rapids so even when you are quickly recovering after one rapid, the current is still so strong that you barely have to paddle! That makes for super fun white-water, but also dangerous sections because the risk is there to fall out of the raft on one rapid, and then float down other ones so you have to make sure you either never let go of the raft if it flips, or get back to the raft ASAP after you fall out. We still paddled our asses off during the rapids, but that's the fun part so no complaints there. We managed to get tossed from our raft once on a rapid named "Pillow." After receiving only a minor thrashing in the water, we all got back to the raft quite quickly and you'll see from the picture me pulling Laura into the raft like a good boyfriend! In total we spent just over 1.5hrs on the water which included I think 12 rapids (1 on which we swam/floated down outside the raft for fun) and 1 cliff jump (Laura only). By the end of the rafting we were extremely satisfied, but also super cold. You can see from the pictures that we wore wet-suits, however they didn't do much it in the freezing cold Futa river. Add to that, pouring rain in sections plus wind made for very cold and useless hands by the end of our trip!

P.S. for those of you who might try rafting at the future- sit in the front! We hadn't sat there in either of our other 2 trips but we did for a section of our time on the Futa and it was AWESOME! Way more fun up there, trust us!

We couldn't catch a bus out of Futa for another day so we decided to spend our second day doing a beginners white-water kayaking course. This again was an awesome day! We both really enjoyed learning something that we feel we'd love to take up as a hobby when we return home (depending of course on where we live). For the first half of the day our instructor (a girl from Ottawa) taught us the basic paddling strokes, how to do an emergency exit from the kayak, different techniques for bracing when you're in white-water, and then finally how to roll our kayaks. All of this was in a small lagoon type area just out of the main current of the river. The water was still very cold (we wore even more layers this day along with the wetsuit and kayak specific gear). Of course it poured rain again for most of the day but we managed to stay reasonably dry and warm all things considered. So how did we do with the roll. To make a long story short: Laura got it, I did not. In fact, our instructor said that Laura was her first student who successfully rolled on their own on their first day! Needless to say, we were both very proud of her! Me on the other hand, had a much tougher time. Unfortunately, my kayak was too small, and so I spent much of the morning getting into and out of the kayak on shore to allow me to regain feeling in my lower body. Because the kayak was so tight on my hips as well as being too short, within about 5mins of me getting in, my entire lower body would go numb- not a great feeling. Excuses aside however, the roll was tough. Basically the key is to not try and muscle your way from upside down to right side up. You have to stay very relaxed, roll the kayak with your hips first, then bring your upper body out of the water (the best rollers look almost limp when they pop out of the water), and lastly, the most important part of the roll is to not bring your head up until everything else is finished. This is the toughest part. Intuitively you want to get your head out of the water ASAP. However, if you try and do that, YOU WILL NEVER ROLL (i.e. my experience). Anyways, like I said: Laura- 1, Greg- 0. For the second half of the day we picked up one more instructor and paddled about a 1 hour section of the river which had strong current plus 3 class 1/2 rapids. During this time we learned how to paddle into and out of eddies, as well as do what is called ferrying across the current plus practicing our bracing on some small rapids. This was all really fun. It makes you appreciate the power of a river like that when Class 1 rapids are making you nervous! It gave us a whole new respect for professional kayaks running Class 5 sections bigger than what we rafted that's for sure! Overall though we did well. Neither of us flipped the kayak on this section so we stayed nice and dry! The sun even came out a bit....for maybe 5mins.

The next morning we hoped on another 12 hour mini-bus for our next destination: Pucon! Volcanoes, more beautiful rivers, and hopefully warm weather (we were getting tired of rain at this point).

Until our next blog,
Greg and Laura

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