Day 10 –
Balmaceda to Puerto Montt
February 9, 2008
Submitted by Pat
It’s delicious to wake up from a night spent in a bed with sheets. Some comforts are priceless. Most of the group are catching morning flights from Balmaceda so we pile into the bus a little after 9:00 am. We haven’t seen the other four guides since the hike back to the farm yesterday and just as we are driving out, up come the four of them, showered, shaved, and ready to say good-bye. We are really glad to be able to say our farewells to these men. They have a difficult job and worked hard to take care of us.
We have some time to kill at the airport, so after we check in we go out to the parking lot, find a spot of grass, and lay down in the sun to wait. The flight to Puerto Montt lasts an hour and a half and Nancy and I spend the time writing notes about the first part of the trip.
When we land we are met by Maria, an Earth River employee, at the Puerto Montt airport. She’s friendly and efficient and leads us at a rapid pace down the lobby of the airport to the end where we proceed to repack our gear – this time for trip #2. With us are Frank and Katie from the Lakes trip and joining us on the Fu trip are Laura and Barry from New York. That makes 7 of us which means one raft. Once everyone has repacked, we are driven back to the city of Puerto Montt by a woman who only speaks Spanish and who spends the entire drive yakking on her cell phone.
I feel car sickness creep into my head and am very glad when we finally stop at a small airstrip and are told to wait in a little house that has a huge map of Patagonia on the wall, a sofa, and a rest room. I’m too keyed up to sit. Ten minutes later we are escorted to a 6-seater Piper airplane and off we go on a half hour flight to Chaiten. There we are met at the Chaiten airport by Aaron, the lead guide for our week on the Futaleufu, Jaime the driver, and one of the trainees whose name escapes me.
After a quick bathroom break, with toilet paper brought by the Earth River folks, we load the bus and take off on another scenic three hour drive to the first camp – Terminator Camp – on the banks of the Futaleufu. Aaron and Katie sit in the back of the bus and talk about probability – Aaron is a former Math teacher who is reading a book on probability and Katie’s programming knowledge make for an interesting conversation for them. I don’t understand half of what they’re talking about.
We arrive at the Earth River office and staff lodgings in the late afternoon. I’m so happy to get off the bus and move my legs. We’re to walk to the Terminator (named after one of the Class V rapids on the Fu) Camp while our gear is transported in an ox cart escorted by Don Ignacio. The camp is amazing. All the camps are amazing. The dining area consists of long trestle tables and benches – the entire area covered by a huge plastic tarp in case of rain. At one end is a fire pit with kindling and wood ready to be lit and benches surrounding it. We are given a tour first – the bathrooms – two open huts with three walls, one facing the woods and one facing a huge mountain – with flush, yes, you heard me, flush toilets. What a luxury! Just outside of the toilets is a bowl hewed from a tree out of which a faucet pours cold water for washing hands. A bit more sanitary than anything we saw on the Lakes trip.
Our next stop is the kitchen – a huge open sided room where at least four people are busy preparing dinner for us. Everyone is very friendly and we say hello and move on to the lodgings. The places we will stay are called cliff dwellings and there are enough to sleep 24 people I think but with only seven of us we pretty much have the pick of the litter. Aaron assigns us the dwellings with the best views and off we go to unpack. We are each given a dry bag, a flannel sleeping bag liner and a pillow case. The dwelling consists of a three-sided construction with a thatched roof and two raised platforms on which are a foam pad, a sleeping bag, a pillow and an extra blanket. The open end gives way through trees to the mighty Futaleufu and the Terminator rapids. The beds are raised up to above my waist 
height – why? So that parents with kids can have the kids sleep under their beds since little kids don’t usually want to sleep alone. Nancy and Don had to rekindle their gymnastics experience in order to get in bed – let alone get down during the night to use the pee bucket.
Dinner consists of chicken and veggie stir fry over rice. It’s just before dinner when I realize I had packed the wrong gear bag and had forgotten my sun screen and my headlamp. Sunscreen, no big deal, but no headlamp and I’m in deep doo-doo. I am furious with myself and Aaron calmly says he will figure something out, but I can tell he isn’t sure what to do either. Nancy loans me her headlamp until something can be done, but I can’t get out of my funk.
We meet Claudia, the masseuse, and speak with her during dinner. Feeling as tense and angry as I am I think a massage might help unwind so I had a massage at 9:30 am and then go straight to sleep.