We left the Futa with only one swim in the exit rapid to Inferno Canyon. Herr held on but was sucked out of his boat by the incredible force of the river. We felt very lucky to escape this high water descent and portaged the rapids called Zeta and Throne Room in order to make sure we made it to Argentina. Although, the next day we discovered that our paperwork for our rental vehichle had been sent back to Santiago, dashing our hopes of running the Rio Escondido near Bariloche. We booked another ferry to head back north and then set our sights on the Rio Michimahuida.
The Michimahuida is a 30km run that descends through 4 distinct gorges and required us to hire a shuttle driver. It was a classic river with insane views, tough whitewater and too much water. Our flows were high so we took our time making it down the first canyon through awesome boulder pile after boulder pile. In the second canyon the gradient got much steeper and Herr swam again, this time in a very bad spot. He was okay but his boat took off without him down some gnarly class five. Luckily he got out and we got his paddle but his boat was gone and we were deep in the Patagonia wilderness. The remainder of us made a slow descent down the canyon and found his boat in one piece a mile or so down stream. We went really slow the rest of the day and made it off the river on New Years eve to find that our shuttle driver had built a bonfire for us at take out. We camped and had a great dinner to celebrate the new year barely staying awake till midnight.
The next day we took the ferry back to Puerto Montt and had dinner again in Puerto Varas. While traveling and scouting rivers on our way back to Pucon, we were eating an early dinner on sunday evening when the earthquake hit. The whole place started rolling side to side and the shaking was pretty gentle but we watched our truck bounce up and down. We laughed at how surreal the whole event was. Later we learned that a 7.1 had struck a few hundred km away off the coast with little damage.
Today we made it to Pucon and are trying to sell our boats. We got our last lap on the Palguin and are planing on heading north to do some mountain climbing. It is raining really hard out right now and we want to let everyone know how much fun we are having.
