March 3, 2019
Day 2 – this morning, we ran a series of mostly Class 5 rapids appropriately called “Inferno Canyon”. The names of the major rapids says it all — Infierno, Purgatorio, Danza De Los Angels, Dynamite and Escala De Jacoba. Nancy and Ralph portaged around this Class 5 whitewater and met us on the other side. These rapids were really powerful. It reminded me of The Gauley in the fall except with a much higher volume of water. We picked up Nancy and Ralph on the other side of Inferno Canyon and then ran some Class 3-4 rapids until we got to a Class 6 rapid called Zeta. This is a commercially unrunnable rapid which we all had to portage around. The guides had to do some fairly complex rigging to hold onto the catarafts and rafts with ropes as they passed through this Z-shaped and very powerful rapid. One cataract flipped on the way through and got hung up with the raft and it took about 45 minutes to get them unhooked. Before we loaded up to paddle further down river, everyone had the chance to jump off a 40 ft. cliff into a beautiful blue-green pool of deep water. Nancy and I passed on this…..but Lou, Bobby and Finn took the plunge! We then headed down river, stopped for lunch, and paddled through a series of Class 4 rapids (Caos, Wide mile, Casa Salvage). We finished up the day around 4pm and had a short ride to the Lago Lancanao cottages, where we stayed for the next 2 nights. This property was designed by the same architect that designed the Uman Lodge, and while it was not as impressive as the Uman Lodge, it was still extremely nice. The property consists of several 2 bedroom, two bath cottages along the shore of a beautiful glacial lake.
For dinner, the lodge staff prepared a traditional Chilean Asado (roasted sheep over a fire) and traditional veggies for this area – potatoes, onions, and peppers.
A couple notes about food….First, they eat very late in Chile, usually between 9-10pm. Thankfully, our guides made sure we were eating around 7pm. Also, there are very few vegetables available in the local area. Most meals included potatoes, carrots, peppers and onions. We finally had a green veggie the last couple nights but it was locally grown Kale and frankly, it tasted like grass (although Bobby did say it was the best grass he had ever eaten!).
We saw this great farm dog where we picked up Nancy and Ralph at the first take-out.
Tyler, our trip leader and head guide
Click the link below to see a short clip of the Class 6 Zeta rapid. The guides had to rig up the boats to get them through the rapids. Two of the boats got flipped and tangled……it took about 45 minutes to get them free (better a raft than a person!).
At the end of the day, we checked into the Lancanao Lodge cottages for 2 nights
We did a lot of hard paddling today so everyone was quite tired and ready for bed after dinner.