Chonos
Back on dry land after a week in the Chonos – a really wild area of Chilean Patagonia – with big skies, high winds, thick forests/jungle and boat swallowing currents with whirlpools that would make the captain of the QE2 quiver.
The trip was being filmed by BBC Scotland for a program in March (if you live outside of Scotland you can watch it on Sky, plus it may well make it onto UK TV and Iplayer), by the production company Triple Echo (Who made The Edge, The Mountaineers, Climb and several of the best climbing docs seen on TV over the last few years).
The trips aim was for me and Karen to kayak about 300 km down to Laguna San Rafael, a large Laguna that has a glacier carving off into it, through some of the wildest paddling terrain you can imagine, with big open crossings (20km), high winds and limited campsites (especially with Karen being paraplegic). The main thing from the beginning was Richard Else (the director) wanted the trip to be a 100% genuine adventure, meaning they could offer no support once we began, and would only help if we got into trouble, which was crucial as we would not have began such a trip with just the two of us (this was to be no Bear Grylls style adventure, were the Discovery channel stipulate that the film crew have to be 45 minutes from a hotel). As it was starting such a trip with just me and Karen was a big ask, as moving a double kayak alone, plus helping Karen move around on land would be a big problem without help, but me being me I said we could handler it. We’d been told there were very little tide, which would make this possible, as the boat could be pulled up and Karen could get to and from it easily, and I wouldn’t have to move the boat (this had been the case when we’d tried out a two person trip down the coast of Swedan last year).
Unfortunately the lack of tides proves to be untrue, with a two metre tide range making life considerably more difficult.
To add to this problem, they day we departed I did some as yet undiagnosed damage to my back, and within a few hours was completely immobile, finding just climbing onto the boat that would take us to the start point almost impossible (I’ve never felt such pain in my life).
Laying down stairs as we chugged out of harbor I saw no way I could consider kayaking, and knew the trip was over, which was bad enough, but made worse by the tens of thousands of pounds that had been spent on the TV program.
2 days later, and after several dozen pain killers I sat in the kayak on a beach looking out a 5km crossing of some seriously rough water – wandering if this was a bit of a hard start considering I hadn’t sat in a boat for about six months, and that once we left we were basically on our own. And yet amazingly, although I’d staggered around the beach like a cripple, once I was sat down, the pain went away. All we could do was try and do our best.
210 km’s later we fought our way across the Laguna past ice bergs, big waves and bigger winds, hitting the shore after a 50km day, and the hardest days paddle of our lives, the film crew staying back as we dragged the gear from the kayak to an old shed and Karen bumbed across the beach (no piggy backs on this trip). We had done it, and yet again the Patagonia gods stuck true to their word as the “eater of men”, and we scrabbled for make some form of shelter as the crew said good bye and left us for our last night before we could board the ship and sail home.
But in Patagonia it’s never over until it’s over, and come the morning the storm had grown so bad the ship couldn’t get us, leaving us stranded, the force of the wind getting so bad the roof began to lift off. “Don’t worry” I’d said, “it’ll hold, this huts been here for years”, at which point I began to hear the nails pinging out one by one, and the door blew in, landing on me, the wheelbarrow holding it shut hitting Karen. All of a sudden things looked very serious. “Can you tie the roof down?” asked Karen, which I did, chucking boulders on top to make doubly sure.
Everything was soaking, all our gear scattered around in the hut, as we considered the implications of being stuck here several days. Then we heard a welcome message over the radio “Boat to kayak – the wind has dropped, we’re coming to get you right now’.
And they did.
Five hours later, with the boat banging through the waves, the wind screaming again the bridge, drinking Pisco Sour and listening to Bob Dylan, the last week all seemed like a dream, with so many feelings, images and emotions packed into such a small amount of time, always the best indicator of a great trip, something that takes many months to digest.
— January 31, 2009 02:23 PM
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