A Season in Chile – 2003

Getting There

I’d decided to spend the winter doing something different. Snowboarding and playing concerts in the Colorado Rockies was fun, but it was starting to wear thin. A skinny guy like me is not built for cold climates. I was struggling in the death throes of a romance that had gone horribly wrong, and a radical change was in order. For years, my kayaking buddies had spoken highly of the rivers in South America. And John Cornwell, my soul brother of debauchery, had been trying to talk me into coming down with him for several years. All the pieces were in place, and this would be the year. I sucked up my nearly-paralyzing fear of air travel, popped some valium, and landed in Santiago, Chile on December 4. And so it begins.

Joining John and I in our travels are John Hernandez and Sue Wagner. The four of us hire a van at the airport to drive us, all our bags, and our kayaks into the city. But first, I have to pick up my kayak that I had FedEx-ed to myself because Delta wouldn’t let me take it on the plane. We spend the next four hours in customs, trying to get it out.

I had packed my kayak full of all my gear inside a cardboard carton. The FedEx folks in the states had me fill out a form, listing everything that was in the package, and how much it was worth. This was my first mistake: telling the truth. What was all my paddling gear worth? Hell, I don’t know. I had listed everything, and roughly how much I had paid for it, and my grand total had come out to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1400.

The customs official takes one look at this invoice on my package with $1400 written on it, and immediately tells us that I owe him 30% of that total for import tax. At this point, Cornwell is the only one of us who speaks Spanish, and with his help, we try to explain to him that, look man, this stuff is my personal gear…it’s used, not for sale, and that $1400 is only what it would cost to replace it if the package were damaged. He’s not buying it. We have to hire a customs broker.

Not sure exactly what this guy’s job description entails on a normal day, but today he takes us to three different offices, to find three different official looking forms. The first form costs some money to get the clerk to sign it and notarize it, then we take it to another office, pay some more money, turn that form in for a different one, acquire two more signatures and stamps, take it to yet another office (I’m not making this up) for yet another form, paying still more money, and finally take this final form, along with my passport, which they had to stamp with a seal saying I had to leave the country with my kayak, and present this other piece of paper to any border customs that I encounter, to the loading dock, where we had to pay the guy who brought my boat out of the warehouse. This whole process took close to three hours. We are about to leave, tying it onto the top of the van, when another official looking gentleman comes running out of his glassed-in booth, across the parking lot, and proceeds to demand more money, and more forms. Completely fed up at this point, we (well, John) explain to him the entire process we had gone through, paid him still more money, and left. More than $150 and four hours later, we are out of the airport, and officially in Chile.

The moral of the story: if you’re going to ship a boat to a foreign country, lie about its value on the tracking invoice.

One of the first people I meet is a very nice lady named Monica Ferrada, who owns a little bed and breakfast down in Futaleufu, the little town where we’ll eventually end up, down in the South. She puts us up in a very nice hotel in downtown Santiago for our first few nights here. She gives us a fruit that I’d never tried before called a Chirimoya. Rich and sweet, all white on the inside, part of the melon family, I believe, a little harder than a cantelope, a little sweeter than honeydew. My first taste of Chile.

After the day’s hectic madness in the airport, I savor the chirimoya as I open the sliding glass door of the balcony, and look out over the warm summer December evening of Santiago, and slowly take in the fact that I’m in another country, another hemisphere, another world, a world that gives us warm daylight until about 10:30 at night, a world filled with wonder, splendor, flowers and beauty, welcoming, beckoning, mine, ours, and everyone’s.

Then I pass out for the next 14 hours from the Valium.

Thumb Wrestling with Columbian Drug Lords

One of the first things I’m learning down here is how much Chileans love to party. I have my first experience in a Chilean nightclub with Cornwell and Hernandez. We go out to a place called El Tunel, or “The Tunnel.” It’s a small little discoteque on Sto. Domingo, down a set of steps below the ground floor, marked by a sign probably none of us would have noticed, had our friend Cristian not taken us here. Inside the club, the dÈcor matches that of what might be a bastard offspring of the Saturday Night Fever disco and the Regal Beagle from Three’s Company. The bar is black formica, upholstered in red pleather and gold trim, with matching barstools. The floor is covered in a short shag carpet. The two main walls are almost completely mirrored. Along the walls are plush couches and coffeetables. The dance floor is translucently lit from underneath with multicolored lighted panels, with more spotlights from above, all sectioned off with gold metal poles. The whole place is darkly lit from a drop ceiling, painted completely black, with holes drilled so the lights from underneath give the illusion of stars. I’m not a big fan of nightclubs, but this place is fun. Unlike many American nightclubs, this place actually has some good taste in music, pumping out James Brown, Jamiroquai, Kool and the Gang, Earth Wind and Fire, and the like.

Chilean nightclubs don’t even start to get busy until about midnight. By one in the morning, they’re in full swing. We stay and dance and drink until about 5 am, closing the bar. Then we make the two block trek home.

Approaching the entrance to our hotel, we encounter two gentlemen standing out front, late thirties, black leather sportjackets, collared shirts, gold chains, mustaches. They engage us in conversation. We are all pretty drunk, and these guys are drinking some kind of vile clear liquor out of a jar. Might be part lighter fluid. Hernandez does a shot. Better him than me. They explain to us that they are Columbians. At some point, they had spent some time in Miami, and had gotten arrested and beaten by the cops there. Hernandez is teaching one of them to thumb wrestle. The other starts making gestures to me and John, first putting a finger to one nostril and making sniffing motions, then tapping a vein in his forearm, and raising his eyebrows in an inquisitive manner. Thanks gentlemen, but no thanks. More signed gestures. Quite the fervent sales pitch. No, gracias. No es para mi. Personally, unless it’s green, or grows on cow turds, I’m problably not interested. Hernandez and Columbian #1 are still thumb wrestling. Hernandez is winning. #2 is making his sales pitch to Cornwell. #1, conceding defeat, gives his sales pitch to Hernandez. It’s almost dawn, time for bed. Buenas noches. They continue their sales pitch as we say good night and head in, looking heartbroken that we don’t partake in their wares. That story of being beaten by the Miami police…they probably deserved it. Elevator. Rooms. Bed.

Hernandez throws up the shot.

Getting our Van

After a few days in the hotel, Cristian invites us to stay in his home, where he lives with his mom, in an extra room upstairs. This becomes a much more comfortable arrangement than the hotel. We are staying in Santiago only as long as it takes us to find a vehicle. We find one the Friday before the holiday weekend, on about our third day in the country. We we go to a car lot near a city park called El Parque de los Reyes, or the Park of the Kings. The car is a 1994 Mitsubishi minivan, with about 120,000k on it. Four cylinders, easy access to the engine and parts, no rust, tons of space inside. Perfect. The four of us each kick in $800, and we own a Minivan. One of the selling points of the van is a mural of a mountainscape painted on the back, and signed, Clod. It doesn’t take us long to officially christian the van “Clod, damn van.”

Clod still needs the revision technica, which is the Chilean equivalent of our inspection and emissions, but much more detailed and stringent. We can’t get that until after the weekend. So it’s back to Cristian’s house.

Saturday of the weekend, we take part in an asado (barbecue) that Cristian cooked up. Cristian is a world-class chef in an upscale restaurant, so needless to say, the feast was spectacular. A bunch of Cristian’s family comes over for the day. They are a delightful group of folks who are happy to meet us, and we all have fun sharing the food, drinking wine, and I play my guitar for them. We all spend the evening in limited conversation, having lots of fun playing the game of figuring out what the other is trying to say. An excellent…well…the only way, really, to practice Spanish.

I’d put a little time into studying Spanish in the months before I came here, but my level is still not much more than rudimentary. Learning a language is like trying to put together a gigantic, multidimensional puzzle. I’m picking up a few pieces at a time, taking lots of notes, and eventually a few of those pieces start to fit together. Listening to normal, rapid-fire conversation that’s largely incomprehensible to me makes me realize how much I truly have yet to learn. Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. (New spanish word I learn: picaro. No literal translation in english. Some synonyms: knavish, sly, witty, caddish. Used by Cristian’s mom to describe Hernandez. Sra. Vargas is a smart lady, and cracks everybody up, once I look it up in the dictionary.)

Monday rolls around, and finally, around 6pm, the car lot calls us and tells us the van is ready. We are all pretty anxious to get out of the city. Santiago is fun, but it’s not really what we came here for. So Cornwell and I set out to get Clod. This is where the day gets a little tricky.

We take a cab, and John tells the cabdriver to take us to the car lot at the Parque de los Reyes. Seemingly simple instructions, but cabdrivers in the city are a shady lot. He asks us if we are buying a car. We says yes, it’s ready and we’re going to pick it up. He proceeds to take us through some of the back streets of Santiago, in order to run up our fare a little more. We’re both carrying an ass-load of cash on us, and are feeling nervous and slightly paranoid. John asks him where we’re going. He answers that he’s got a friend in a car lot, and he’ll give us a good deal on a car. Jesus. No. We already bought our car, and we need to get there in…hold on…20 minutes before it closes. He charges us several thousand pesos more than he deserves, and drops us off at a car lot in a completely unfamiliar part of town that, as far as we can tell, is nowhere near the Parque. Ok, now what? John asks me if I’m carrying a knife. I say no. Neither is he. We hail another cab and get in. Tell the driver where we need to go. He takes us on another scenic tour of some of the seedier neighborhoods of Santiago. Then a Caribinero (Chilean police) flags him over. He pulls over and shuts off the car. He leaves the meter running. He gets out and shows the Caribinero his papers. Then he has a friendly 5-minute chat. The meter is still running. He gets back in. “Todo bien?” we ask. “Oh, si, si!” And finally, after a few more loops, he drops us off at the right lot with about 10 minutes to spare.

We meet up with John’s friend Arturo, who comes to help us in getting the right paperwork. Those two go into the office to take care of that, and I walk two blocks with the gentleman who had sold us the van to pick up a roofrack to carry our boats. We get all this together, and all’s well.

We drive over to Arturo’s place in order to put the roofrack together. From here, our plan is for Arturo to drive us back to Cristian’s place, in our van, then we’d give him money for a cabride back to his place, since he knew his way around the city better than we did. Arturo gets behind the wheel. He starts it up. Then proceeds to drive the van across the parking lot. As we approached the brick wall that buttresses the entrance to the parking lot, Arturo suddenly gets a panicked look on his face, and drives the van, at a leisurely 10mph, straight into the brick wall. He can’t find the brake pedal. Less than a half-hour after we had bought the van, there is a large dent in the front bumper.

After that, John drives, and Arturo navigates. We make it back home at about 11pm that night. And that’s how we became proud owners of a 1994 Mitsubishi Minivan, in excellent condition, except for a dent in the front bumper. We can now get ourselves around Chile.

Pucon

The following day, we load up our gear into the van, and say our very gracious goodbyes to Cristian and his Mom, and head south. Chile is bifurcated longitudinally by one main highway, route 5, that spans from north to south. We drive south for about 8 hours, then camp at a cool place called Salto de Laja. It is a giant waterfall, close to 50m vertical, on a medium volume river. We spend the morning hiking around the waterfall then make our way another 5 hours south to Pucon.

I like Pucon immediately. In many ways, it reminds me of my Appalachian home of Fayetteville, WV. A hub of tourism, and numerous rafting companies, and guided trekking, biking, and skiing. It’s reminiscent of Frisco, CO, or maybe Aspen in the 70s, before cocaine. I think we’re here for the first big weekend of the summer season. The streets are packed shoulder to shoulder during the peak hours that Saturday and Sunday. The town has tons of little shops, some outdoor street cafes, and lots of tourists, of the native Chilean sort, along with a few Argentines, a few gringos, and lots of Israelis. It’s lovely to sit in an outdoor street cafÈ and drink wine. Pucon sits beside a giant lake called Lago Villarrica, and is overlooked by a towering volcano of the same name. You can only see the peak on a clear day. And if the light is right, you can see the smoke.

Cornwell has a friend here named Marcela, that he’s known for years. She’s a very cool lady, speaks perfect english, and is all about kayaking. She has two pre-teenaged daughters, Elisa and Gatita. Elisa, 10, thinks it’s hilarious that my name is Ken, and calls me “Barbie” in between bouts of giggling. Marcela is letting us stay at her house. It has a big wooden deck which overlooks the lake.

We get to paddle a few rivers here in Pucon. Ran a class 2-3 section of the Linquara. High volume, and mellow. Ran the lower Trancura. Had a fun, fast surfing wave underneath the bridge at the put-in. One of my favorite runs here is the Rio San Pedro. Our put-in is where the river flows out of the mouth of Lago Rinuehue. Here, there is a large hotel, where they serve us ham sandwiches for lunch. The run is high-volume, I’m guessing 10-12,000 cfs. Mostly class 3-4. Lots of fun. One good surf wave. And my favorite feature: a powerful eddyline that created a giant spinning whirlpool about 8 feet in diameter and about 6 feet deep. It forms, spins, then breaks up and dissipates about every 15 seconds. It’s a blast waiting on the eddyline, timing my move, then diving into the thing and seeing what kind of ride I get. The water here is so clean, I can surf the wave, and look down 10 feet and see in perfect detail the rock that’s forming the wave. I can roll upside down, hang out, open my eyes, and watch the rocks going by. Fantastic.

Border Patrol and Paperwork

We hang out in Pucon for about 7 days. We have to wait a bit for one more important paper to be sent from Santiago for our van, a mysterious document called the “padron.” This turns out to be the actual permanent title and registration for the van. These, we are assured, will give us the power to cross the border into Argentina, taking the overland route south to Futaleufu.

From Pucon, we experience our first major setback. The border. We get there around 5 in the afternoon after scouting a few drops on the Alto Trancura, which reminds me of the Upper Blackwater, or maybe the Upper Yough on anabolic steroids. A fun section, but more fun in a creekboat, which none of us have. Plus, at this point, we are all getting anxious to cross the the frontera at El Paso Mamuil Malal, about 76 km east of Pucon. Properly armed with Visas, Passports, and the mountain of paperwork that Arturo, the car dealers, and Marcela assure us is correct, showing the van to be legal, proper, and ours. We prepare to face the officious zen-like scrutiny of the Chilean Aduanas. We are fairly confident in our documentation, but nothing could have prepared us for what we learn about the force of nature that is Customs Paperwork.

The first obstacle—convincing them that a discrepant digit in the year of purchase on the bill of sale was merely a typo. This takes about 30 minutes of hackneyed Spanish. Fortunately, said digit is written correctly on the title. The aduanero reluctantly cedes to this point. But they are not to be deterred in their single-minded determination to adhere to the letter of the law, down to and including the punctuation. He goes in the back and got The Book. He diligently searches this Book, pages yellowed and weathered, probably printed in the early sixties, and finally, after about 45 minutes, he raises a finger, looked up at us in triumphant smugness, and says “aha!” He points out an obscure paragraph buried somewhere in the last third of the Book, which states that if you are not a Chilean citizen, even if you have a vehicle that is legally yours with all the right paperwork and no criminal record, you may not cross the border without (A.) a notarized document saying you will return within 120 days with the vehicle, or (B.) a Chilean riding with you.

That’s that. There will be no crossing into Argentina for us. The aduanas have spoken. These guys are very bored government functionaries, who sit in a hot wooden building all day long, and their sole role in the machinery of governments and borders is to know and seek out reasons not to let people go where they want to go, because it breaks up the monotony of their day, and gives them pleasure to say no.

Osorno: Headlamps and Alternators

So we’re back to our original plan, which is to drive Rt 5 south to the end in Puerto Montt, then catch the ferry boat to Chaiten. That day we make it about 150 km north of Puerto Montt when the van starts having electrical trouble. It’s going on midnight. We’re losing headlights, dome lights, and engine spark all at the same time. The problem has “alternator” written all over it. The symptoms get progressively worse until it dies entirely at the last toll booth. With the two Johns and Sue getting out and pushing, I’m able to clutch-start it in the breakdown lane. It takes a very easy touch on the gas pedal just to keep it idling. The headlights are so dim as to be virtually nonexistent, and the spark from the distributor is missing at least one, possibly as many as two or three, out of the four cylinders.

We have to make it somewhere for the night. We drive the remaining 40 km to the small city of Osorno, where we will be able to assess the problem in the morning, in the vicinity of an auto parts store. The process of getting it the rest of the way to Osorno reads like high comedy.

The headlights are drawing power away from the distributor and spark plugs, so we decide to turn them off. We can only go about 35 km/hr. Cornwell is holding his small, battery-powered Coleman headlamp out the front window onto about 2 feet of pavement in front of us. Hernandez and Sue are shining their Petzl’s out the back window, waving and blinking them when we are approached by other vehicles from behind, to alert them to our unlit, slow-moving presence. We limp onward into Osorno, sputtering into an all-night gas station, where the electrical system dies entirely. There will be no more moving tonight.

We sleep huddled in the seats of the van, sleeping in fits and starts until morning. None of us wants to leave the van for the night and get a room in a hosteria, because everything valuable we had is in the van, and this may or may not be a shady neighborhood. I judge the shadiness of an area by (a.) the number of businesses and establishments that close with iron doors and bars after hours, and (b.) the amount of graffiti on the walls of said businesses. Here, all around the gas station, both parameters come up positive. We sleep with our doors locked, and our knives close by.

Next morning, I uncover the engine and set to the task of troubleshooting. It’s clear that all our electrical power is gone, and the battery has been drained of the last of its reserves. The more we had run it the night before, the deader the battery got. To me, that says “alternator.” It needs to be tested.

One thing I am learning about Chile, is that there never seems to be a shortage of mechanics, or at least, guys who will stroll over when they see the hood of a car opened up, and look around and figure out what’s wrong with it. A fellow named Manuel comes up and gives us the number of his buddy, whom he says is a mechanic, and knows about electrical systems. We figure we’ll have to bite the bullet on some kind of repair costs, so we make the call. John talks to a guy named Viji, who says he’ll be out in about 10 minutes, which we’ve learned, in Chilean time, is anywhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

About 45 minutes later, Viji shows up in a rusted, 70s-model 2-door sedan. He tumbles out of his car, unshaven, with a mane of bed-head that borders on the spectacular, about 10 different shades of hungover, and looking like he had just crawled out of a toilet in an all-night biker bar.

Cigarette in mouth, he pokes around the engine for about 2 minutes. Then he surfaces, and pointed to the belt. “Es tu correo. Es viejo y flojo.” The belt is old and worn. I was half-right about the alternator. The belt was sliding on its pully, not turning the alternator properly, and therefore, draining power from the battery. And a belt can feel tight, but still not work if it’s old. This is good news, if it really is just the belt and not the alternator, a part that doesn’t come cheap in this, or any, part of the world.

John gets a ride with another guy (one of the other lookers-on, who was hanging around watching the gringo show, and wanted to help) to the parts store, while the rest of us hang back with the van. I make some simple conversation with Manuel and Viji in my very limited Spanish. They teach me some of the names of parts of the car, which will come in handy if I ever need to find a part, and not have the luxury of pointing to it and saying “uno de estos.”

John eventually comes back with a new belt, another for a spare, and a new battery because ours was old anyway, along with a naked playmate calendar that the auto parts guy threw in for free. Sweet. Viji spends another half hour putting it all back together for us. I wanted to do it, but he insists. Fine by me. He puts the final tension on the new belt, and starts it up. Perfect. All was well. Now for the painful part. When all is said and done, he’s spent close to three hours hanging around with us, fixing our van. We ask him what he thinks is a fair price for his trouble. He raises an eyebrow, and thinks in a very picaro fashion. We cringe. He answers, “tres mil.” Three thousand pesos. About $6 american. God, I love this country. We give him 5000, and are on our way to Puerto Montt.

Puerto Montt

Puerto Montt is an interesting little town. It’s one of the major shipping harbors of the South American western seaboard. Full of street vendors, tourists, fishermen, gypsies and locals. Here is the end of the main highway that runs the length of Chile. To go to the further regions south, you either get a chartered plane flight, or you get on the ferry. We get a ticket for the ferry boat that will take us and our vehicle across the Gulf of Ancud to the tiny harbor town of Chaiten. The boat doesn’t leave until 8 in the evening, so we have some hours to kill in the town.

We go to the restaurant section of town, down by the fishing wharves. Here they practice the aggressive, hard-sell sales tactics found only in a few select North American telemarketing firms. Among the densely-spaced buildings, salt-stained wooden shelves, racks and stands displaying the day’s catch, and wooden piers and doorways, proprietors of privately-owned kitchens accost us with litanies of pescado selections they are willing to cook for us, caught fresh that morning. Some even try to physically drag us into their kitchens. We settle on a kitchen and eat salmon and potatoes that a woman in her 40s cooks for us then and there, with some white wine.

We spend another hour or so exploring the hundreds of vending booths on the street, selling native jewelry, local art, hashpipes, handmade sweaters, hats, scarves, serapes, blankets, shawls, socks, windchimes, pottery, drums, toys, panpipes, whistles, puzzles, and more sweaters.

We meet a fellow named Bret, who works for ROW, a rafting company in Idaho. He is looking for a ride to Futa, and we invite him to ride with us. We all go to the local supermercado and get some supplies for the 12 hour boat ride. About 4 bottles of wine, two whole rotisserie-roasted chickens, some bread, cheese, fresh fruit, some marmelade, beer and chocolate. We wait in line on the dock, as the longshoremen load long lines of trailer trucks, vans, machinery, backhoes, and more trucks onto the ferry. They finally flag us on. We back down the ramp and onto the boat, where they block off our tires in our parking spot between five or six rows of the trucks. And the boatride begins.

The High Seas

This is the boat ride about which, days later, people far inland from Chaiten would say, “oh, you were on THAT ferry boat!” It starts out fairly routine. We feast on rotisserie chicken, bread, cheese, and lots of wine. The porter tells us we weren’t allowed to have open containers among the public, so we take our little party back to the van. There, we drink more wine, and play cards as day turned into dusk, and we finally pull out of the harbor about an hour and a half late. The first eighth of the journey goes beautifully—after a few rounds of hearts, Cornwell, Bret and I go up onto the deck to watch the sea and the stars, and watch the last of the light from Puerto Montt disappear aft. We watch a few islands pass, then, when the captain turns the spotlight on us and asks over the loudspeaker that the gringos please get the hell down off the deck, we head back down to the parking surface, where we hang out more in the van, play cards, play guitar, sing songs, and drink more wine.

Then the ship begins to pitch. Just a little at first. We’re heading past Isla Tabon, the last of the small islands protecting the narrow waterway from the open Gulf, which is is essentially about 180 km of open sea between the mainland and the large island of Chiloe. What starts as typical Chilean spring weather turned into a raging storm that would be equivalent to one of our Nor’easters, with a small craft advisory. The ferry is soon pitching heavily across waves that at times are bigger than the boat. Bret sacks out in his sleeping bag down on the deck, and the rest of us doze in the seats of the van. We keep feeling the boat pitch harder and harder, to one side then the other. Heavy equipment and trailers are swaying and creaking loudly around us, and bits of equipment and steel chain are falling off the trucks. Bret has to seek higher ground when waves actually start breaking over the deck, and flooding the floors with fast-running rivers of salt water. Wrapped in a blanket and watching from the next deck up, I can see the waves coming at us from starboard aft, which means that we’re spending a lot of time surfing an 80-foot long ferry barge down the barrel to the right. Far out.

As I watch more waves crash into and occasionally over the deck, I think about putting on my paddling gear and untying our kayaks. I wonder if this is normal. All the floodlights come on, and the captain’s voice can be heard over the din of the storm, making frantic-sounding announcements over the ship’s loudspeaker. I’m minutes away from digging for my sprayskirt and paddle. The captain’s announcements continue. This is a time when I really wish I understood a little more Spanish. I’m still not sure what he was saying, but here are my best guesses: (1) “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for sailing with TransMar Chile. Those of you who paid the executive fair may feel free to board the lifeboats at this time. Watch your step, please.” (2) “Anybody remember which side is port and which side is starboard?” (3) “Hey, gringos, get the hell down off the deck and get back in your car!” (4) “Our executive class passengers boarding the lifeboats at this time will carefully notice that we don’t have any. Once again, thank you for sailing with TransMar Chile.”

Land Ho

After a long night of pitching across rollers the size of double-wides, and an unscheduled stop on the lee shore of the island of Chiloe for the crew to rest (and possibly for the captain to have a shot or two of whisky), we pull into the port of Chaiten around 8 in the morning. From Chaiten it is approximately 170 km inland to Futaleufu. We eat a small breakfast at a local hospedaje then fill up at the last real gas station this far south. Then we drive the last 5 km of paved road into region X. And we stop where any group of travelers would stop after having been exhausted and cold and wet in a van for two days: the hot springs.

Los Termas Amarillos. A beautiful spot. We bask and melt in the natural hot mineral springs. Cornwell knows the proprietor from years past. A guy named Enrique. But everybody calls him Flaco. That translates to “thin,” so I guess in the United States, he’d be called “Slim.” He talks with us a bit as we soak, then invites us into his house, which is about 50 meters away from the main pool, up a meandering path. We bring bread, the last of our wine, and half a joint we have left over from Puerto Montt. He fixes us a pot of potatoes, rice, garlic, salmon, carrots, and broth he puts together with what he has in the house on his woodburning stove. We eat together, share what we have all around, and then it’s time to get back on the road to complete the final 90 km leg of our long journey south to Futaleufu.

Getting to Futaleufu

Driving the dirt road inland, we catch our first glimpse of the river from a bridge. I’m blown away by its beautiful, breathtaking blueness. It’s a deep clear azure of Andes snowmelt and Patagonia rain. We hike down and scout a rapid called Mundaca in the section of the river we’ll be running called Bridge to Bridge. The rapid looks a bit like Middle Keeney on the New at 6 feet, but bigger, steeper, and longer. We stop at the camp at the put-in called Salto Chucao, where we meet a few more kayakers that are staying there. Here, the sun comes out for the first time since we had stepped onto the ferry, and the sky cleared enough for us to see a high peak called “las tres monjas,” or, the three nuns. This is a giant towering tryptic set of vertical spires left over from an ancient volcano blast, on the other side of which is Argentina. We also see about 6 condors.

We drive the final 30 km up the road, and arrive in the little town of Futaleufu. Monica has arranged for us to rent a house in town for the season. It is perfect…it has running water, a woodburning stove in the living room, some rudimentary furniture, three bedrooms, and a kitchen with a combination woodburning stove, oven, and water heater. We move in that night. Then we go out to dinner at a local restaurant to celebrate, going through about 3 bottles of wine.

Partying in Futaleufu

The next day, we spend the afternoon getting the house in order. We get two meters of firewood from a fellow on the next block who sold it out of his back yard. He measures it out in a wooden cart, a stack roughly a meter high, a meter wide, and two meters long. We stack it in the back of the van and take it back to the house. Then it’s time to head back out of town to the Salto Chucao, where we’re to take part in our first real asado of the season.

An asado is a gathering for both food and drink, usually outdoors, kind of like a barbecue, but amped up a few steps. It’s just getting into full swing when we get there, just before dusk. The wine is flowing freely, and we’ve brought a bunch more to go around. Over an open wood fire, there is a spit with several legs of pig, and staked into the ground is an entire lamb, minus the head, guts, and skin, splayed out and cooking on an iron spine. As the meat cooks, I get to meet a few more of the local boaters in the area. They all talk about how high the Futa is running. The guides are talking of when they might be able to start running rafting trips on the other, more advanced sections, such as Terminator, and the infamous Inferno Canyon. They are all too high to raft right now.

The party is a mix, about half and half, of gringo boaters and local Chileans. With a few of the latter, I practice my Spanish some more, and reinforce my theory that speaking Spanish is much easier when drunk. I meet Rafa and Gustavo, two South American boaters here for the summer.

Also, we meet Vico (pronounced “fee-co”) for the first time. A native Peruvian, he runs a small rafting operation down here on the futa called Pura Vida. He has a camp on the other side of the river, accessible only by a wooden foot bridge over Terminator Canyon. Vico is your archetypical crusty old river guide…you know the one, if you’ve ever worked at any rafting company anywhere…mid 40s, balding on top, long graying hair in back (we call it, lovingly, the Peruvian Mullet), skin and face permanently grizzled from decades in the sun, in better physical shape than many of us can hope to be when we reach 40. His life is the river, and the energy. Where he goes, he brings his entourage…whoever is rafting with him that week. It almost always seems to be a group of young beautiful twenty-something girls. (It’s amazing how many beautiful women can be at your beckoned call if you have a supply of coca leaves.) His entourage, we call the Vico-lytes. Or occasionally, the Vico-pheliacs.

By full dark, the meat was cooked, and those of us with our own knives could cut slices right off thebones over the fire. A local fellow named Fernando was there, and he had brought his guitar. When the eating was done, he started singing songs around the fire. Most of them sounded like tradional South American folk songs, with lots of hooting and shouting after certain verses. This asado was, in part, for Lisa and Kristen from Montana, here for the summer, who had just had birthdays. Fernando sang a hilarious song for them. I didn’t catch all the words, but the theme of it was something about “gringa locas,” and I could surmise the general idea of the song.

Sometime later, after still more wine, my guitar made its way out of its case. Fernando and I played a few songs together. He speaks even less English than I do Spanish. It’s fun communicating with him in chords and notes. He shows me a few chord progressions of his, and I play along with some leads. I show him “Hey Jude” by the Beatles, and “Fire on the Mountain” by the Grateful Dead. We’re a big hit.

The party winds down sometime before dawn. Random bodies can be seen passed out in the grass. Tents punctuate the grounds, surrounded by kayaking gear. A few of the Chilean cowboys are still up, singing songs, drinking Pisco. Vico is trying to smoke the last of his coca leaves, without much success. He passes out on the floor of the cabin. I make my way back to my tent and crawl in to sleep as the eastern sky begins to show its silver line of dawn.

Paddling the Futaleufu

The next morning, it’s time to get up and go kayaking. “Futaleufu” is a Mapuchi indian word that means “big honkin’ river,” and those Mapuchis weren’t kidding. It’s still spring here, it’s been raining steadily for weeks, and the Futa’s higher than it’s been in years. The only section being run is Bridge to Bridge. It’s considered the easier section, and a few of the rapids are bigger than anything on the Grand Canyon.

I can’t help making the comparison with the Grand Canyon, because both rivers are world-famous for their high-volume whitewater. And everything about the Futa matches the Grand in spectacularity, scale, and beauty. The Futa has about the same magical other-worldliness about it. But the comparison breaks down. Where the Grand is desert red and brown, the Futa is organic green and blue and clear. Like the Canyon, some of this stretch of whitewater has the riverbed characteristics of a huge, high volume river. But the riverbed here is different. It’s a narrower canyon, with more water. There’s no gauge on the Futa, but educated estimations put it at close to 30,000 cfs these days. With more gradient. In technical terms, it’s an assload of water, going downhill really fast. Mountainous waves, tectonic eddylines, and fearsome holes. Remember that rapid, Mundaca, that we scouted from shore the other day? It’s bigger than it looks from the bank. I believe “mundaca” is a Mapuchi indian word for “Oh my God!” Actually, it’s the name of the landowner who owns the property on the right bank. But I like my story better. The wave that looked a little bigger than a kayak is in actuality a little bigger than a VW bus, and the line we run takes us straight into its barrel at mach 10. When a wave this big is breaking over your head, the best strategy is to duck, and protect your sprayskirt from implosion with your torso, and trust that the water is moving so fast and powerfully downstream, that you’ll be shot out the other side momentarily. Moments like these are the reason I came to Chile.

Living in Futaleufu

Chile is almost indescribably beautiful. The valleys and meadows are lush and green with grasses and wildflowers. The forests, especially the old growth, have a magical Forest Moon of Endor quality about them. So far, no small, furry, highly-marketable aliens have crept out of the undergrowth to worship my Jedi powers, but the summer is young. There are almost no poisonous snakes, spiders, or plants here. There are surprisingly few bushes with sharp thorns. The only annoying aspect of nature here is the plants that send out clinging burs that stick to most clothing, which is where nylon pants come in handy.

There is an unspoken reverence here for the water, the land, the air. The locals here like to party as hard as anybody on the planet. But there are almost no places where you find empty beer cans, broken bottles, and spraypainted rocks. They seem to have a respect for the land that is sadly lacking in the US. Heavy industry has not made much of a dent here. At least until Endesa, a large, privatized, Spain-based power company carries out its plans to build a dam which will put most of the Futaleufu under a man-made lake, exactly like they had done to the Bio Bio a decade earlier. They already own the water rights.

The town of Futaleufu is laid out in a grid of dirt streets in the flat plane above the levee where the small Rio Espolon meets the Futa. From town, you can look in any direction, and the vistas include forested hills, and further up, rocky peaks with snow still on them. Most of the houses are relatively simple wooden structures, with corrugated tin or aluminum roofs. Our house is set back from the street, in between two others.

We’ve lived here about a week now, and have gotten to know our neighbors. A young man named Tito, his wife Macarena, and their 3-year-old son Esteban live to our left. Tito likes us, and stops by to say hello at least once every two days or so. He came over a few nights ago with a hollowed out honeydew melon, with the pieces cut up, put back in, and the whole thing filled with white wine, which we all passed around and drank with a spoon. On the other side, we have Vicente, who is learning to be a guide for a local company, owned by our friend Marcela from Pucon, called Guias Nativos. His wife, Monica, teaches handicapped children.

We get our supplies from 5 or 6 local mercados here in town. Most of our food comes from one called Casa Andrea, where the ladies in the market know Cornwell, and let us keep a tab, which we can pay later at our leisure. Casa Andrea is also where we get our gas for our van. There are no gas stations here in Futaleufu. Gas is sold from large metal drums that come in weekly on the supply trucks, and dispensed from wine jugs in 5-liter increments. 5 liters cost about 6000 pesos. You do the math. Most of our odds and ends come from the Ferreteria, which we call simply, the “getting stuff place.”

This week, it’s Tito’s turn to host the asado. He has a lamb, which has been tied up in his side yard next to our house for about 3 days now. It’s been bleating next to our uninsulated walls about once every 6 seconds. Macarena had hung some laundry out to dry on the line. In a heroic last act of defiance, the lamb takes down much of the clothing from the line into the yard. Then it bleats some more. Around 6 this afternoon, the bleating stops. It takes a few minutes to wonder why it is so blessedly quiet. I look at Cornwell, and he looks at me. We’re both having the same thought. “I wonder if…” We go outside to look, and sure enough, Tito and a couple of his buddies have done the deed. The lamb is now meat. They had just made the kill, and are drinking a little of the blood, with with one of the organs (maybe the heart, or possibly the liver) with a little salt. They offer us some, but none of us are brave enough. But we will take pleasure in consuming some fresh roasted loin tomorrow.

Christmas and New Years in Futaleufu

We celebrate Christmas eve by paddling the Rio Azul, a low-volume class 3-4 run fed mostly by snowmelt. This empties into the top of the Terminator section of the Futa, which we run next. This section is shorter, but bigger than Bridge to Bridge. The riverbed has more of a canyon quality…vertical walls, more constricted drops, and still every bit of the 30,000 cfs that’s making this a pretty epic springtime down here. Terminator rapid, we walk around. Some other rapids of this section: Asleep at the Wheel—an enormous flush down the right side of the river that funnels down into a giant wave the size of a small house. Son of Terminator. Khyber Pass. And Himalaya—named for the size of the waves.

Christmas day, we get together for an asado in Vicente’s barn. They have set up a grill over an open wood fire, and are roasting chicken, lamb, beef, a few longanesas (the Chilean version of Keilbasa), and a few hot dogs for the kids. Christmas here seems to be more about food than it is about presents. I kind of like the fact that nobody seems to need a lot of stuff here, and everything about this holiday here is so far removed from the autopiloted green and red capitalist consumer-zombie nightmare that has so jaded me about Christmas in the US. Here it’s more about getting together with the family. Speaking of family, later in the afternoon I go to the local Centro de Llamados—a place where you can go and make a long distance call, then pay for it afterwards—and talk to my extended family at our annual Christmas get-together.

Christmas night, we are invited to dinner with by our friend Tatiana, in her restaurant she’s just opened this year called Martin Pescador. We have dinner with her and her American husband Mitch, their kids, a few other local boaters, and our Argentinian buddy Torhu. (Torhu is a nickname—it comes from his full name--VicTOR HUgo Reynoso.) The feast is all cooked by Tatiana and her mother, Maria in their kitchen. It consists of a large roast turkey. The stuffing, instead of the traditional American bread/spice/celery combination, is based in rice, dates, apples, pineapple, and at least one other fruit. Also there is salad, bread, and of course, more wine, which was our contribution to dinner. For dessert, Tatti and Maria have made these decadent waffle cakes that have merangue and cheese and chocolate.

After dinner, more wine is had by all, and more conversation. Then they make me get out my guitar, and we spend some time singing songs. A group of cowboys comes in a little later for some late night food and drink. They are sitting at their own table on the other side of the restaurant, but then join the party over by the fireplace when the music gets started. They join us for wine and song, and we take turns with the guitar. A couple of these guys play some rowdy folk songs which all of the Chileans here know the words to. During one of these, Tatti and one of the cowboys clear a spot on the floor and do a traditional South American dance called the cueca that involves scarves and sidestepping and subtle body language that is subtly symbolic of a mating ritual. The evening ends around 1 or 2, and we make our way home to pass out.

Around New Years, Monica arrives in Futaleufu to open up her cafÈ and hospedaje, called Surandes. She runs it with her daughter, Maria Jose, affectionately nicknamed Negra, and Negra’s friend whose name is also Maria Jose, affectionately nicknamed Larva. The place is a large house—the downstairs is the cafÈ and kitchen, the upstairs is where they live. There are two or three table settings, and around the place are various crafts, sweaters, and memorabilia for sale. Next to the door to the kitchen is a glass deli display case usually stocked with some sort of dessert items, cakes, torts, cookies, depending on what Monica is baking that day. She’s a fantastic lady, and we like to call her our Mom of Chile. We’ve taken to getting up late and going there for breakfasts. They cook over a wood fire stove in the kitchen.

Terminator

We run the Terminator section again, this time, running Terminator rapid. I paddle with Hernandez, Bret, and a Montana kayaker named Matt Wilson. Matt shows us the line. He knows the river really well, and explains that the first half involves paddling down the far left side of the river, through and around a maze of boulders, pour-overs, and holes, then catching an eddy along the left bank, the scout eddy. Once we make it into the scout eddy, we’re committed to running the rapid. The rest of the rapid involves dropping out the back of the eddy, down a large chute that sends you to the right, out towards the middle at about mach 8, behind a giant boulder. From there, we cut back to the left, threading our way between numerous exploding waves and gigantic chundering holes. This is the sneak line. Not too many people are running the line down the middle from the top. (The last person I know of that did, took a long and heinous swim.) And it might be misleading to some to call our line a “sneak,” because it’s still a difficult, involved, and consequential line through a truly bad-ass rapid.

Hernandez takes the beating for the team on this particular run. He gets stern-squirted behind the rock, rocketing him out into the middle of the river, where he proceeds to drop into two, possibly three gigantic holes in a row, getting trundled in each one successively. The beatings on this river, as big as they get, can usually be surprisingly gentle, if you hang in there. As a friend described this river in one sentence or less—stay in your boat…hold on to your paddle…it all flushes. Hang out underwater until you feel the chundering stop, then roll up. This is Hernandez’s strategem, and it works out well for him. And it’s fun to watch.

We Stir up Political Unrest in Esquel

We learned recently that, in addition to the threat of the Endesa dam proposals, there is a much more imminent threat to the Futaleufu river in the form of a gold mine around the town of Esquel, near the Futa’s headwaters across the border in Argentina. Most of the people over in Esquel are not very happy about this, and neither are many Chileans over here. On a Saturday afternoon, we pile Me, Sue, Hernandez, Cornwell, and as many Chileans as we could fit into the van and head across the border into Esquel, where a large protest is in progress.

The mining company is called Meridian Gold. They’re a Canadian-based company who, with a little help from the World Bank, were able to circumvent international environmental policy and basic common sense to make way for some very lucrative short term profits. In a shady inside deal with the Argentinian government (broke and starved for funds after the privatization and deregulation of currency, also ministered by the World Bank), they’ve commissioned about 400,000 hectares of land up among the Futa’s headwaters to mine for gold, without the consent of the people.

The first step in the gold mining process is to strip mine the land, then pulverize the bedrock, which will release heavy metals into the soil and water table. The next step is worse. The leaching process will treat the pulverized bedrock with raw cyanide, which will all wash back into the river basin.

Among the protesters are the fishermen of the Futaleufu, whose fishing business is quite possibly more lucrative than all the whitewater rafting outfitters combined. When the river is poisoned with cyanide, the entire fishing infrastructure will come to serious harm.

Also present are a representative faction of the Mapuchi Tribe—a people with much to lose (not just money) if this project goes through. These are the same indians who were displaced by the Endesa dams of the Bio Bio, and who continue to riot in protest to this day. In a strangely ironic twist, the Mapuchi have been labeled as a potential terrorist threat by the U.S. government under the recent creative addition and expansion of the definition of “terrorism” by our Brother in Christ, George W. Bush. Be that as it may, the Mapuchi will not be displaced or dispersed quietly.

Part of Meridian Gold’s deal is that they will be allowed to proceed with their operations tax-free for the first five years of productions. The projected time of operations is about 5 years. In other words, they’ll be taking the gold, leaving the cyanide, and not having to pay a cent to clean up the mess.

The protest takes place in the central town park of Esquel. It is a large, peaceful turnout of 3-5 thousand people, which, for an area this sparsely populated, is a pretty signifigant voice telling Meridian Gold to go home. There are loudspeakers there, and several speakers are speaking in turn, telling the crowd what is going on.

A few of us get separated from Cornwell, and we aren’t sure where he went. Remember that scene in the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, when they’re checking out a parade in the Chicago streets, and they get separated from Ferris? They’re discussing where he could have gone, when they hear his voice come over the loudspeaker, and he’s made himself the star of the parade? This is kind of like that. We hear a familiar voice come over the loudspeaker, and sure enough, John is throwing his hat into the political ring. In Spanish, he explains that he’s from an area in the U.S. that has been heavily damaged by mines, that they cause floods and poison the water. That the Futaleufu river is famous around the world for its pristine beauty, and that there are fewer and fewer places like this in the world, and it’s good that everybody here knows what a treasure they have in their back yard. That he is proud to see everybody here stand up and speak out to those who want to take it away from them. And proud to see people who know that it’s wrong to sell nature for private interest and profit. This gets the biggest and loudest applause of the entire afternoon. I’m glad to see the voice of the river and whitewater community represented.

After the speakers, the entire crowd sets off on a march around the town. I’m not sure what, if any, effect it will have on whether the mine goes in or not. As we all know, even in a democracy, what the people want isn’t always relevant in the face of vested interests. But here, at least they haven’t given up on trying.

Life in Futaleufu Continues

This is the season of asados. This week, it’s our turn to host. We got our own sheep a few days ago, and spend the day preparing. Vicente and Monica let us use their barn for the fire and the roast. Tito was the acting master of asados (I believe “asadador” is the term). He shows us how to dress the sheep. It involves gutting it, spreading out the ribcage and legs, and skewering the entire carcass on a metal cross, the bottom of which is staked into the ground then slow-cooked next to the fire for the next four hours. We drink wine and beer, and take turns basting it with a mixture of Heineken, salt, garlic, honey, and a little lemon. The meal is ready right on schedule, around 11pm, typical of Chilean-style dinners. The party is a big success, with a turnout of, I’m guessing, 30-40 people.

Here are a few more random observations about life in Futaleufu:

Sometimes, when buying stuff in stores, if they don’t have exact change in the drawer, they’ll give you a few pesos worth of candy.

I’m not a coffee drinker, but my friends here are pretty frustrated. You’d think, South America, great coffee, right? Well, apparently, they export it all. The only stuff you can get around here is the instant Nescafe in the can. So if you come here and want good coffee, bring your own.

Ditto for good fruit juice. We’re spoiled in the states. Here it all tastes like Tang.

If you want fresh fruits and vegetables here in Futa, go to the store on Friday or Saturday. That’s when the fruit trucks come to town. Stock up for the week on your produce, because all the good stuff is gone by Monday or Tuesday.

Take your time, and don’t have a schedule. Nobody here’s in a hurry. Until they get behind the wheel of a car. If you’re driving around, watch your ass. They drive like mental patients.

The accepted, and expected, form of greeting when meeting someone of the opposite sex, is to exchange a kiss on the cheek. Being the shy guy that I am, I’m still getting used to this, but it’s kind of sweet, really.

The second-person familiar plural is never used here. If you say “vosotros,” they look at you funny and ask you if you’re from Spain.

In most bars, if you want a drink, you go to the register and pay for it, then they write you a ticket to take to the bartender, who will get it for you. Haven’t figured out the purpose of this extra step, but like I said, I’m not in a hurry.

As far as news goes, down here is the information bunghole, and the news you get on one of the few stations you can pick up is mostly watered-down pablum and drivel, even worse than that in the U.S. When I left the states, George Bush had a pretty big hard-on for Iraq. I have no idea if he’s started shooting his wad yet.

You can feel free to feed chicken bones to the dogs around here. The ones that couldn’t stomach them were weeded out of the gene pool a long time ago.

If you don’t like mayonnaise, make sure you specifically ask for your food without it. Especially when ordering any kind of burger or sandwich.

“We thought you was a toad!”

On a random night, Cornwell is putting one of his river videos together on his computer. He is pulling an all-nighter burning dvds for the clients who have bought the video and were leaving early the next morning. He puts a disc in the burner, then goes to bed for about 45 minutes to read or sleep until the computer is ready for the next disc. This goes on until about 5 in the morning. He has just put in his last disc to burn, then retires to his bed one last time. Me, at this point, I had been sleeping in my room since about 1 and am dead to the world. Then, suddenly, I awake bolt upright to John bellowing “HOLY JESUS!!!” from his bed. Cutting back to John’s point of view—he’s more than ready for a little sleep. He’s been working all night. He finally gets to lie down for a few hours of rest before he has to get back up to meet the clients. He’s falling asleep, reading a book, and at the same time, hearing a small rustling sound of indeterminate origin coming from somewhere in the vicinity of his bed. The rustling isn’t going away, and he’s hoping we’re not getting mice in the house. He’s got his headlamp on, and he flips it around to have a look under the bed. Nothing. The rustling continues. He tries to sleep, but the rustling still continues. He flips his headlamp back on, turns his head to the right, and finds himself staring into the face of a giant toad the size of a softball, sitting calmly on his pillow about six inches from his head, staring back at him. That’s when his plea to Jesus comes about. The toad, possibly sharing his sentiments to Jesus, sits transfixed in heavenly rapture by the bright light. Wide awake now, I jump out of bed and go out to see if the house is burning down or what, to find John staring, wide-eyed, and babbling about toads. He gives me the lowdown as he was coming back inside after carrying said toad to its land of Canaan, outside in the misty morning of the approaching Chilean dawn.

High Water on the Futa

We’re into about our third week, in which it’s done nothing but rain, often horizontally, every day. This cycle has followed close to three weeks of sun and high temperatures. The weather systems seem to rotate in 2-3 week cycles, one working its way over the formidable wall of the Andes as another moves in to take its place. There have been summers here when no one’s seen rain for three months, and the Futa drops down to a low and bony 8000 cfs. But not this year. Apparently, this in an El Nino year, and El Nino’s not screwing around. The river has been holding close to 30,000 cfs all summer long, and now, with this most recent cycle of rain, it’s up to close to 50,000. This is the highest I’ve seen the river since I’ve been here, and higher than most people have seen it in the last four years. And there’s more rain in the forecast. The rafting companies can no longer safely run the Futa, not even Bridge to Bridge.

But we’re still kayaking. This is some of the highest-volume water I’ve ever paddled. My friends from the states are asking me about the surf down here. I want to write them a poetic description of the perfect surf wave…blue/green…glassy…an eight-foot face topped with a cap of retentive break that will let you throw blunts and kick turns until you can’t stand it, then an eddy on the side that lets you paddle up and catch it again. Apparently, there are a few of those when the water’s lower. But not now. Most of the surfing to be had here involves having only one shot at catching waves at 90mph on the fly, skipping and popping like a rag doll, catching massive aerials if you have the right kind of boat, then being thrown back into survival paddling in the massive cfs.

We make a run down Bridge to Bridge when the river has peaked to over 50,000. The features are amazing. Many of the rapids have one, or a sieries, of gigantic…things…that surge, crest and break on a cycle of 3-6 seconds. One person can paddle the perfect line through the big green highway, and the person paddling right behind, running the same line, will get the bomb dropped on his head. You can be right on line, then a giant surge can reach up and throw you twenty feet to the left of where you just were a second ago. (Holy shit, how did I get over here?) The boils and eddylines can be pretty fearsome, and sprayskirt implosions can be an issue. I’ve dealt with this by cutting two U-shaped holes in the thigh-braces just under my cockpit, then cut a length of bamboo for an implosion bar that fits exactly in that space, underneath my sprayskirt, theoretically maintaining some extra structural support for the stretched neoprene. This saves my ass at least once that I know of, in Magic Carpet Ride.

Magic Carpet Ride—I like to call it the world’s scariest flatwater. It doesn’t look like much of a rapid, really. It’s perfectly wide open, with almost no gradient. Running it involves paddling down this wide open channel, cutting left around a pile of rocks, then cutting back to the right, heading downstream and out. Sounds easy, and generally it is. But the whole river, when it cuts left around the rockpile, surges through a field of spooky whirlpools into this giant eddy on the left the size of a football field, flowing powerfully back upstream to the top of the rapid. It’s deceptively easy to get surged into this eddy. If this happens, you have to paddle all the way back up to the top and try again.

With all this extra water, the move is complicated with some of the weirdest surges, boils, and whirlpools ever. I’m running my line and all appears to be well. I can see my exit, and I am almost there, playing dodg’em with the spooky shit. Then I get my ass handed to me. The waters part, and a giant gaping seam opens up underneath me, and sucks me down deep, boat and all. I hang on and hold my breath as the sun goes away. After a few seconds, I pop back up vertically like a watermelon seed, still spinning in the vortex of the maelstrom. I get some awesome unintentional rodeo moves for the next ten seconds or so, until the whirlpool finally washes out, and I find myself in the eddy on the left, which, with the high water, is full of giant floating logs and trees. I work my way up through these, get to the top and start over, rolling the dice again. This time, all is well. Far out. I love this river.

Tito Dances the Cueca

It turns out our neighbor, Tito, is a competition-level Cueca dancer. There is a regional competition here in the local gymnasium, and we go to watch for the evening, and support our neighbor. The music for the Cueca is always in 6/8 time, and primarily strummed on the acoustic classical guitar, usually accompanied by an accordion. The crowd all claps along on beats 1 and 2, then 4 and 5. The dance is highly symbolic of a courtship ritual. The man wears a wide-brimmed hat, a woolen cape, and boots with large spurs. The woman wears a hooped skirt, usually in bright primary colors, and flowers in her hair. The band starts playing, and the crowd claps. The man starts by approaching the woman and offering her a dance. Thewoman then spurns his advances and feigns disinterest. The man takes off his hat, and asks her again. They walk in a circle, arm in arm, until the band starts in with singing the song. At this point, the dance starts, with silk scarves waving, and both partners exchanging subtle body language and fancy footwork. About halfway through the number, the man backs away and does a routine with some heavy foot stomping, then goes back to the dance, which usually ends with the man dipping the woman. Each couple gets to do this for three songs, while the panel of judges rates them, I’m guessing, on form, style, showmanship. Tito gets third place that night, and gets to go to the next level of regional finals next month in Chaiten.

Greenhouses

Here’s something else I find kind of cool about Chile. If you want to grow your own greenhouse, the government will subsidize it. You see them all over the place down here…small structures framed with wood, or sometimes bamboo, covered in translucent plastic. This program was started a few years back by the country’s health care system.

Health care here is tax- and government-based (some might call it “socialized,” if that’s not too dirty of a word), not privatized like ours. An expensive problem on Chile’s tax base was the treatment of rampant colon cancer, especially down in the southern regions of Patagonia, where the main staple of the diet is meat, and running to the grocery store and getting fresh vegetables is almost never an available option. (This is a tough country to live in if you want to be a vegetarian.)

The government launched a campaign for people to eat better foods, and invested in creating an incentive for people to grow their own vegetables, thus creating a healthier national diet, and thus, saving everybody the health care costs in the long term.

I try to think back to my country, and remember when there were ever any policies implemented that involved nutrition and diet in reducing health care costs. I’m still thinking. Maybe in the eighties when Ronald Reagan declared ketchup to be an acceptable vegetable.

Dugold Fox

We are partying down at Salto Chucao. I meet this dude named Fox, and his girlfriend Penny, both from Scotland. It’s a great night of sitting around a fire, drinking cheap wine and singing songs. Salto Chucao is becoming famous for hosting some raging parties, and this one ranks up there in the top 5. Matt and Dave are here, from Earth River. Dave passes out in the grass next to the fire. We laugh at him as he snores. Vico was here with the Vicolytes. In addition to his entourage, he carries with him a leather bota bag full of cheap nasty sweet wine (if you’re lucky), or occasionally something nastier. We call it the Vical Sack. This was being passed around liberally.

Fox is a nice guy with a subtle sense of humor that cracked me up a few times. Maybe it was the Scottish accent, which I find the coolest of all anglo-saxon dialects. And Penny’s a sweetheart. Fox is a solid boater, and a few days later, he and a few friends go and run Terminator. He’s run it at least twice before. This time, something happens. He misses his eddy on the top right, and drops into the right side of the rapid, into some nasty stuff. He hangs in there throughout the drop, and flushes out the bottom, still trying to roll. He keeps trying to roll up, and keeps missing.

Out here on the Futa, swimming out of your boat is something most of us think of as a last resort, an option to be pursued only when you can’t do anything else, and you have absolutely no air left. Perhaps things would have gone better for Fox if he had swum. Or maybe it would have been the same. After one final roll attempt at the top of Son of Terminator, his efforts cease and he washes upside down, boat and all, into the next drop. And the next after that. His friends try to help him all the way down through Khyber Pass and Himalaya, but 50,000 cfs is a powerful force to be reckoned with, and they can’t get him to shore until the Bio Bio campground, 5 km downstream in the flatwater. They do CPR on him for close to two hours, but he is dead before he ever gets to shore. He died in his kayak.

People can talk about “dying doing something that you love,” and “going down fighting,” which is pretty much what Fox did. But these concepts bring little comfort to people with a ripped-open empty space where a brother once was.

Which brings us to the Scottish wake. It is held at a bar next to the Cabanas Espolon here in town. Among the representative factions are Americans, Chileans, Argentines, Peruvians, some Germans, Brits, Spaniards, and a group of French guys. Everyone wears a blue and white flower, picked from a wild bush down at Salto Chucao. On the table with pile of wildflowers, are a giant bowl of condoms, and lots of whisky. The whisky is flowing freely, in the rich Scottish tradition. I can’t stand the stuff, but drink some out of respect. The music is loud and the revelry is in full swing.

Sometime later I find Penny over near the bar with some friends. Give her a hug. She hugs me back.

“How’re you holding up, girl?”

“Ok, I guess.”

“I wish I could have known him more.”

“Yeah, I do, too. It wasn’t long enough. It doesn’t seem real.”

“I know. He was just here, partying with us the other night.”

“Yeah. I can’t stop thinking about him…lying in the hospital in Puerto Montt…resting…”

Her eyes mist over for what is probably the 20^th time that day, and a tear rolls down her cheek.

“Penny, tell me something really cool about Fox.”

“Fox was one of the most wonderful people I knew. He was great and full of life. He was very strong. When I got sick last year, he was strong enough for both of us. He was a great teacher, and I learned so much from him, and I’m thankful.”

“I’m thankful to have known him a little bit like I did. And you know he can still teach you things, right?”

“I know. And I have no doubt that he will. I’m so happy for everything that he gave me, and he’ll be with me always.”

A little bit later, Fox’s buddy Alex Nicks stands up on a table, and the music is turned off. The room gets quiet. He speaks, his British voice already a little tinted from the whisky.

“Everybody. We’re here tonight to celebrate the life of Dugold Fox!”

A round of cheers and raised glasses.

“First of all, I’d like to thank those of you who were there to help with the rescue yesterday. I don’t feel like I have to name names. I’ll just say that everybody involved did everything they could to try and save Fox, and I don’t believe anybody could have done anything else that would have saved him. So thank you.”

More cheers.

“Dugold Fox was the son of a Scottish butcher. He came from a working-class background, and let’s face facts, he was never going to be a brain surgeon. Many people born into that station in life never even get to leave their hometowns. But Fox rose above his station brilliantly, and learned to kayak, and lived his life in a spectacular fashion. He traveled to this far corner of the world to paddle one of the best rivers on earth.

“As we pulled him onto the shore yesterday, and I was looking down at him, purple and blue, lifelss…it was one of the most horrible fucking things I’ve ever seen. But I couldn’t help thinking, as he lay there beaten and drowned, that he looked like a warrior. He died giving it all he had. He lived his life working hard to seek out the best life had to offer. And he went down fighting, as a noble warrior. Let’s drink to Dugold Fox!”

All cheer and drink as one. Then the room gets quiet again as Penny takes the floor. Instead of speaking, she sings a song, accompanying herself on the guitar. The room stands in a hushed cathedral of silence as her Scottish voice fills the air with sweet and high celtic melodies that would welcome the noblest of heroes into the halls of Valhalla. The aria fades into silence, and the room breaks into a cheer that is surely heard by the gods and spaceships.

After Penny sings, the music is turned back on, more whisky is poured, and the party begins in earnest. Tables are moved back against the walls, and everyone is drinking and dancing. Sometime after the twelfth bottle or so, the French guys begin dancing on the tables and ripping off their shirts for Penny, who seems to be holding up remarkably well. It lasts until close to 5 in the morning. At last count, seventeen bottles of Scotch whisky have been consumed.

On the afternoon that Fox was dropping into Terminator, the space shuttle Columbia was making its re-entry into the atmosphere. Somewhere over Texas, it disintegrated at 30,000 mph. These past few days, as the rest of the western hemisphere is glued to the television thinking of the astronauts aboard the Columbia, a few of us down here in the southern tip of South America are thinking of Dugold Fox. Kayaker. Son of a Scottish butcher. He and the astronauts have this in common: They both went out big. And will be missed.

Heading back North

The summer is nearing its end. After spending several more weeks in Futa, we begin our long trek back north. This time, we are able to travel the overland route, through Argentina. Sue had left Futa a month early. Cornwell, Hernandez, and I are traveling with two other friends, Ben and Emily, from the states. They will hang with us in the van, share the ride, and chip in for gas, as we make our way east into Esquel, then north to El Bolson.

This is a little hippie town with a large open air market. We make it here by about 6 pm. We drink beer in a little street cafÈ, and eat a late dinner in another outdoor sidewalk restaurant. Then we stay overnight in one of the many cabanas in the camping areas. The next day, we spend the morning and early afternoon checking out this little town. I get some hand-made ice cream. I also find a hand-knitted sweater vest in the open air market for $10 American. From here, we drive further north through San Carlo Bariloche, around the lake, up and over the mountain pass, crossing back into Chile at the Frontera Puyehue.

We stay overnight in Osorno. I’m still having flashbacks from our ill-fated alternator belt debacle here, months ago. I look at the nudie calendar in the van, and wonder how Manuel and Viji are doing. It seems like so long ago, so many miles. Or in this case, kilometers.

On our way back into Pucon, we stop to paddle the Rio Fuy. Getting there is a bit of a chore, driving over some absolutely atrocious dirt roads for close to two hours. But it is worth it. It is a low-volume, steep run, about 10 km long. The put-in is at the natural mouth of the lake, into the river. It is raining, so the colors of the run are deep green, blue, with lots of mist contrasting the dark granite rock. Several really fun drops on this run, with one big waterfall, about 9 m high, vertical. My line in this one: launch off the lip, over-rotate on the descent, then land in a face-plant in the foam at the bottom. Makes for some great video.

We roll into Pucon after dark, then find a restaurant that is still open and have a late dinner, even by Chilean standards. We stay in a hosteria that night, and the next day, we take our leave of Ben and Emily, needing to get to the Santiago airport to catch our flights home.

Our final nights in Chile are spent in the house of Juan Pablo Izquierdo, a friend we had met down in Futa. Juan Pablo owns a high-end, five star catering business. He also has his own graphic design and advertising company. He’s done fabulously well for himself, and perhaps “house” is too diminuitive a word to describe his place of residence.

At one time, it was a warehouse. It has a double set of steel doors that open from the street into a landing where he parks his car. Through a set of curtains, the place opens up into an open space the size of a gymnasium. To our right, is an open bar with a large selection of fine wine that he keeps when it is left over from one of his catering jobs. He welcoms us to help ourselves to the wine, and also to one of the twenty or so giant legs of smoked pork that hang from the ceiling, 20 feet over our heads. Near the bar is a pool table. The ceiling is steel girders, and the floor is cement, partially covered with rugs of varying sizes. To our left is his living area—a couch and two lounge chairs, all covered in black and white spotted fur covers. Next to this is his desk and computer. On the walls are various antique signs, licence plates, and various other bizarre memorabilia that has found its way into his place. Near the back is the sculpture garden…a surreal scape of giant bamboo poles, iron welded chandeliers with glass candleholders, and, inexplicably, a three-foot garden gnome wearing a rubber face mask of Osama bin Laden. Hanging out in this place is truly a surreal ending to a long strange journey.

Saying Goodbye

It’s a bittersweet task, saying goodbye to this place and all its treasure. To the new friends I’ve made. To Monica, to the Maria Joses, to Cristian, to Marcela, to Elisa and Gatita (“Hola, Barbie! Hee hee!), To Fernando, to Matt and Bret and Lisa and Kristen and Jill and Rachael and Dave and Damon and Josh and Ben and Harvey and Tara and Canyon and the rest of the gringo boaters, to Toru, to Lorena and Pablo, to Mariana (sweet lovely Argentine beauty), to Juan Luiz, Juan Jose and Sebastian, to Vico (and the Vicopheliacs, and yes, even the Vical Sack), to Mitch and Tatiana, to Adrei and Mauricio, to Delmira, to Tito and Macarena and Esteban, to Vicente and Monica, to Juan Pablo, and all the rest of them.

To the wine, the chocolate, the asados, the pollo milanesas, the breakfasts at Surandes, the parties at Salto Chucao, the drunken nights in Scorpios.

To the acres of open meadow, the tall grass undulating waves in the wind. To the wildflowers, bright splashes of color in silent torrents of misty green. To the trees…the arucaria, the coyehue, the roble, the pino. To the fallen trees, 75 years dead, punctuating the fields like giant husks of sun-dried dinosaur bones. And the dead wood still standing, looming salt-colored spires, turrets from a long-gone, but not forgotten, bastian of solitude, basking in the eternal cycle, skeletal fingers pointing to heaven. Does heaven point back? Ask the mountains, capped with fire from the last of the sunset. Ask the water, running clear over cobbled granite, round from the eons. Ask the chucaos, the ibises, the condors. Ask the Mapuchi.

To the moments, the songs, the siestas, the energy.

To the Chilean cowboys, sitting around a fire with me as I play the guitar, all of us drunk, bellowing the chorus to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine.

Salud, caballeros!