Futaleufu Multi-Sport Expedition: Part 1

Send Yourself to Summer Camp
Maybe you had the opportunity to go away to summer or sports camp as a kid. I didn’t, but I certainly made up for it when I sent myself on an Earth River Expedition Trip. I decided on the Futaleufu River Multi-Sport expedition. The Futaleufu River (known as “The Fu”) is a river in northern Patagonia, famous for its intense whitewater rapids. Earth River made the first complete raft descent of the Futaleufu in 1990 and introduced commercial rafting to the river.

Getting There
I flew from the U.S. to Santiago, Chile. The next morning I flew from Santiago to Puerto Montt, Chile, and boarded a small charter plane to Chaiten. Upon arrival at the small airstrip at Chaiten, we boarded a bus for a spectacular three-hour drive past the snow-capped Andes mountains, lakes, and rivers to our first camp, with our bags arriving shortly thereafter by ox cart.

My Fellow Campers
Like a kid on the first day of summer camp, I felt a little nervous. Would I like the other kids at camp? Would they like me? I needn’t have worried. My fellow campers were interesting, unique, and accomplished. Ranging from twenty to sixty years old, they included an energy firm partner, an eye surgeon, a court-appointed child advocate, an EPA Water Board conservationist, an entrepreneur who’d started his own dirt bike touring company, a real estate investor and developer, pizza restaurant franchise owners, a car dealership manager, a retail chain executive, a lawyer, a physician, a high school teacher, and a gentleman whose job entailed some type of work in U.S. Government security that was never specifically identified.

I was traveling solo but I never felt like a third wheel; there were other solo travelers in our group. Traveling to South or Central America as a single woman traveler might have been daunting for me, but any worries I had disappeared during this highly organized group trip. I was only alone if I chose to be, to mediate in my own cliff dwelling under the stars.