Back from Futaleufu

I’m just back from about two weeks in Argentina and Chile, where I did Bio Bio’s Futaleufu trip (by way of Pete and Momentum River Expeditions), with a couple of extra days in Buenos Aires. The trip was fantastic — great whitewater, great people, and great food. My Futaleufu photo set has some of pics from the trip, but no actual whitewater pics. The class III-V+ rapids were a blast, but a little wet and busy to be breaking out the camera.

The trip started in Bariloche, Argentina — a lakefront tourist destination that you’d recognize the world over. Lots of restaurants and bars, and more chocolate shops than you’ve ever seen in one place before. Arriving around 5pm, we walked around town, grabbed some dinner, wine, ice cream, and more wine, and called it an night by Argentinian standards.

The next day was a travel day, heading from Bariloche through Esquel, Argentina to Futaleufu, Chile. It was a long van ride, with a bit of good scenery but mostly just road, road, road. Some good mountains, a moderately exotic demilitarized border crossing, but mostly just boring travel time.

However, when we finally got to the “camp”, we were in for a surprise — this was more like a small village than a traditional camp. Whereas I had been prepared to sleep under the stars in my sleeping bag, we had a spacious tent inside an enclosed platform… with mattresses and everything. There were numerous permanent buildings, from the kitchen to the bar to the new-this-year flushing toilets and showers with plenty of hot water. The word “camp” is really a stretch.

The next morning — Monday the 19th — we got set up with wetsuits, life jackets, and so on, and got out on the river for the first time. The guides had never seen the Fu at such low water levels… but low for this river is still about 8,000 CFM, or about the size of the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon. It is a big, powerful river even at low water levels.

Over the course of the next five days, we worked the main stretch of the river (”Bridge to Bridge”) three times, ramping up from a cautious and tentative run that took about 4 hours to a relentless, non-stop run that took about an hour and a half. We also did the first commercial descent of Dynamite, a new rapid in Inferno Canyon that was created by blasting for a new road. The low water levels also necessitated a rare center-line run of Terminator, a huge V+ rapid.

All of the rafting was a blast — huge whitewater, not a whole lot of slow water, and pretty incredible scenery for those brief lunch breaks. All of the guides were great, and in the whole week, the three boats only had two swimmers. Of course, the guys running the catarafts were a bit more aggressive, sometimes with disastrous (though amusing) results.

In addition to the rafting, there were excursions in inflatable kayaks, on horseback, and by bus to the nearby town (this last I skipped so as to sit around and lounge for a day). And, of course, there were nightly parties with good Chilean wine, a great wood burning hot tub, and a whole lot of interesting people.

When the trip finally came to a close, we were deposited back in Esquel, Argentina, where we discovered that our 2:15pm flight to Buenos Aires was delayed… to 10:30pm. So a couple of us attempted an Esquel pub crawl, which wasn’t entirely successful. First, it was too early in the day. And second, apparently it was “dry Monday”, which seems like a particularly woeful day for bars to close. Still, we found a couple of open places and had some of drinks while waiting.

Once we finally got out of Esquel, we spent a couple of days in Buenos Aires. And let me tell you: there is quite a contrast between a river camp on the Futaleufu and a metropolis with over 12 million people. Buenos Aires, or BsAs as it’s often abbreviated there, is an interesting place… especially for someone whose Spanish is limited to the stock phrases repeated ad nauseum by recordings at Disneyland (”please remain seated” has limited application when exploring a new city).

We spent a couple of interesting of days cruising around the city, learning the subway system and the various downtown neighborhoods, and eating plenty of red meat and drinking interesting red wines. There was the cheese plate from hell, the huge picture of the exotic transexual above our hotel bar, and one very cool cable-stayed pedestrian bridge. We also hit a Tango show which had some great, albeit over-rehearsed, dancing and music. But by this point, I was a bit worn down and had abandoned the camera, so no pics of that stuff.

All in all, this was a fantastic trip, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking to get some time on one of the world’s great rivers.