Kayaking Adventures in Chile - Road Tripping

Santiago de Chile

It was early morning in Santiago, the traffic was horrendous and the Waze navigation was playing games with me!  We had left Los Queñes early morning, witnessing the crack of dawn on the Santiago ring road with the glowing red clouds welcoming the start of the day and our only Chile Kayak Adventure Trip for the season.  David was following me in his truck.  It was going to be our first time working together, I have known David for a number of years but have never worked with him.  He came highly recommended from a guest of ours and a good friend.

We picked up the majority of the guests in Santiago airport and finally Jim, who was relaxing in a hotel as he was the only one of the advance party to actually make it to Santiago on time!!  Arwyn, Mikenzie, Becky, Brittany, Jim and Will had flown from all over the US to get here on a recommendation of some friends who came with us previously to Chile.

We arrived at Los Queñes to a lovely lunch, prepared by Fran.  I asked Fran if she would like to drive, cook and entertain on the trip and she jumped at the chance of working alongside me and David!

Los Queñes

Todd’s place is sweet.  The wooden cabins (cabañas) are well built, look out over the river and you get a good nights sleep listening to the sound of the river!

I first met Todd, years ago in Chile.  He had worked in Idaho as a raft guide and so we had a lot of mutual friends, I enjoy catching up with Todd when I am in Los Queñes.

Rio Teno and the Rio Claro of the Teno

We were at Los Queñes to kayak the Rio Teno and the Rio Claro of the Teno.  It is the perfect place to start our Chile Kayak Adventure and Road Trip.  The Rio Claro of the Teno is a short drive up a dirt track and what is normally a beautiful clear river was actually brown and silty!  Todd explained that there was not much snow on the glaciers so the river is being fed by melt water mixed with ash from previous volcano eruptions!

After spending 2 hours playing around, surfing waves, making moves and getting used to kayaking in Chile, it was the perfect warm up.

We finished at the cabañas for lunch, we were fed by Fran and after a little time to for lunch to settle we headed back down to the kayaks.  We continued downstream on the Lower section of the Rio Teno.  A fun section with some bigger waves to surf and more shoulders being formed by the rocks which were ideal to boof!  At the take-out Fran picked us up and we headed back to the cabañas to relax.

I was cooking a curry for everyone tonight.  Will was a vegetarian and the rest all ate meat.  So Will was being cooked rice and dal while the others would receive an authentic Himachali Chicken curry (boneless hahaha).  I tend to cook India food to an Indian taste due to spending so long out in India and having Stanzin stay many seasons with us in Austria.  Though I always to search for the mirchi (chilli) as Stanzin used to hide it away due to him not being able to eat spicy food!!  And this was the biggest question, spicy or not spicy?  I have a big tolerance to spice, even the Indians are surprised!  So I tested it on Fran and David, they looked pleased and were not screaming for water so hopefully, it should pass!

The meal went down extremely well, Will loved the dal and with just a few grains of rice left over, the chicken curry was finished.  This was great news!  It looks like I will be cooking a few more curries on this kayak trip down to Pucon, Chile.

The following day we headed further upstream to kayak another part of the Rio Teno.  It was a fun class 3 river, more continuous, with plenty of moves to make and some sweet waves with eddy access along the way!

The Rio Teno had been devastated by floods a few years back and you can see the evidence of redevelopment as we kayaked closer to Los Queñes.  A couple of rapids had now become easier, the long one by the monument had completely changed and so had the rapid in the gorge by the village.  We arrived back at the cabañas, had lunch, packed up, said our goodbyes to Todd and headed for the next river.

Rio Claro

The Rio Claro unfortunately was a no show! The past Winter season had been terrible in Chile with little snow and we knew this was going to have a dramatic effect on the rivers all the way down to Pucon. I made the call with David after we got information from his friend, who rents rooms up there, that it was a no go. David also spoke to a couple of friends who were there just recently and they said it was super low. Unfortunately for us, it was too low to run the 7 Tea Cup section of the Rio Claro and so we took everyone to the Rio Nuble instead!

Rio Nuble

This is one of my favourite rivers in Chile!  The Rio Nuble is an alpine style river and reminds me of rivers at home in Austria, albeit the Rio Nuble is a lot wider and carries more volume.  We were going to spend a couple of nights in cabañas by the village of San Fabien.  Our goal was to kayak the Upper Nuble and then to see what sections would be worth kayaking either upstream of the Upper section or below the paused dam project.

I have kayaked the Upper Nuble a fair few times for fun, to check it out for our Chile Kayak Adventures and to lead the river.  Everyone time I have finished kayaking the Rio Nuble with a smile on my face.

We headed up early morning to kayak the Upper section of the Rio Nuble.  We usually put in by the confluence but the river was running just below medium so rather than take the longer warm up, we put-in close to the river just above the first set of rapids.  The first of which took us through some stunning box canyon like rock formations, the flow kept us moving and we quickly arrived at one of the longest rapids in the river.  It was a boulder garden festival, the river was deeper, the lines were silky smooth and working our way from one side of the river to the other to grab a sweet little sloping boof move into the eddy.  It was alpine kayaking heaven!  The smiles on everyone’s faces were abundant and we continued kayaking down this amazing river.  Suddenly we came to the biggest rapid of the Upper Nuble.  We scouted river left to check out the line, I have run this rapid when it is just holes and it gets a bit pushy!!  Today, there were more rocks sticking out and with a couple of different options for lines it was going to be good to watch everyone kayak down.  A couple of big holes to miss, one to punch through and then do you go for the big boof at the end or carve the waves and shoulders making some super silky boat control and movement!?

Half choose the big boof line and the rest the silky smooth carving line!  There were some great lines to be had, some lines did not go as expected but everyone paddled well and the Rio Nuble was delivering the goods!!

That evening there was a festival in the little village, so we walked up to listen to a Señora sing local songs about gauchos, wine, love and the land, while we checked out the mass of stalls selling everything from mate cups and bombillas to Chilean food, jewellery and of course beer!

David and I talked about the next day and decided that the middle section that they are currently rafting was going to be a lot lower than when I last kayaked it.  So rather than  kayak the short section above the confluence we decided to  head back to the Upper Nuble as we all had so much fun yesterday!

The following days kayaking happiness just continued on the Upper Rio Nuble.  Smooth lines, perfect boof strokes and plenty of smiles.  The biggest drop we scouted and again it all went smoothly.  Fran was waiting for us with some fruit and snacks, before we loaded up and headed off to our next destination on our Chile Kayak Adventure Road Trip, the Rio Bio Bio.

We arrived at the cabañas a little later than expected due to a huge festival of gauchos, cowboys and cowgirls, even whole families traveling in their traditional attire on horseback.  It was something to be seen and the amount of people on horseback was unbelievable!

We pulled in at Don Carlos place and showed everyone their cabañas.  They were blown away, the whole location looks out over the now flooded Bio Bio gorge.  The light was fading fast and big dark thunderclouds could be seen way upstream in the mountains.

Dinner was Balti chicken, dal and rice while Will got, for me, the best dish and a revelation.  Paneer!!!!  Yes, there is paneer cheese in Chile and it is so so good in a dal (lentil) curry.  Fran told me about Chile having paneer, I was a little nervous at first as I was worried the cheese will melt into the dal and sauce.  However, it was paneer and this made me super happy and Will of course!

We settled down to watching the lightning strike the mountains upstream and listening to the thuds and deep rumbles of thunder all around.

This Chile Kayak Road Trip is giving us so so much!

Rio Bio Bio

It was a bit of late start as just after breakfast we were bang in the middle of a thunderstorm.  Cracks of lightning were hitting the mountains at regular intervals and it seemed as though the thunder would never stop.  We made more coffee for everyone, I got a cup of tea, Fran and David were enjoying a maté.

Once the weather had calmed down, we headed up to the ferry crossing and put in on the last part of the Rio Bio Bio.  What was once a mighty river carving out gorges has been damed at numerous sights upstream  However, it still has some nice sections that are worth a paddle or just to explore the upper regions.

We had Albert come along with us, he is a local kayaker who I met many years ago when I was running these trips with Gringo.  We have been in touch ever since and it is great when he comes along to kayak with us.  This is Albert’s home river and he is really proud of it and you can see what it means to him when he gets to show international kayakers his home run!  Of all the rivers we kayak on our Chile Kayak Adventure Road Trip the Rio Bio Bio has the biggest water fluctuations.  I have kayaked it with rocks showing this year, compared to the previous time when it was at least 3 metres higher and that is an honest calculation!  Today it is about running some big water rapids, negotiating crashing waves and even punching some of the holes on the way down.  It was the perfect river to wind down a little but still kept you on your toes as you never really know if that was really a big hole behind that sweet wave!?

The final part of the Lower Bio Bio is the 30 minute kayak out on the lake to the cabañas.  The scenery was beautiful, some of the group banging it out kayaking continuously , others were taking it all in and a couple of the team asked for some more coaching on dynamic forwards paddling.

Coaching is an integral part of our Austria Kayak Courses and we get kayakers asking more for coaching on our overseas trips now.  We have been working on dynamic forwards paddling with members of the team from the very first day.  We had some who really wanted to improve their forwards kayaking on white water.  So, with time spent on flat water training and preparation for white water being seldom wasted we worked on a few points and added some practices to the flat paddle out!

It was time to pack up and head south, our next stop would be the kayaking mecca that is Pucon and our second home!

Kayak School Arlberg’s Chile Kayak Adventures

Kayak School Arlberg is completely revamping its overseas trips with more emphasis in the next couple of years for Chile!  We will be updating our Chile part of the website in the New Year and we will be sharing updates about our Chile Kayak Adventure Trips on our newsletter and then later throughout social media over the next few months.

If you have not already, you can sign for our newsletter below.  We do not bombard your email inbox with hundreds of newsletters like some big corporations, I think this is the 3rd I have written so far this year!!  We get great feedback from our newsletters so they maybe worth checking out!?