ChileAno

On the road again...

One month and couple days after I came back from Canada, there is another mission under way. On the 11th of November I left from Prague to Frankfurt, spent an amazing November day with a hot wine and in the evening boarded a TAM flight to Sao Paulo and finally Santiago. The most rad thing on the board was the movie selection. Guess what? Among all those Friends, soap operas and romantic movies I found a kayaking movie. No kidding. The Nomads featuring Tao and Rodrigo Tuschner took me straight to Pucon for some great creeking and waterfall times. That's what I call motivational movies:)

The beatiful surroundings of Los Quenes

Anyways, at the Santiago airport I got picked up by my friend from Czech Mira Kodada and after a short detour to Santiago off we went to Los Quenas to visit my friend Todd Ericson. Todd has got an adventure company in an amazing surrounding of high mountains and two sweet rivers so Chilean Adventures and Hosteria Los Quenes became our base for the next couple days.

Our dogs :)

Mira Happy after his first paddle in Chile

Shuttle to put in Rio Claro of Teno

The rive Teno was pretty high and a sweet warm up run. Pretty pushy class 4/5 run with brown water, not many eddies and almost 30kms of whitewater.

Rio Teno, way high up

One of the first rapids/ me (photo Mike Goglin)

Yes, we had flat...

Todd, giving us some instructions and tips where to go

After few days of acclimatization and Pisco jet-lag treatment we were ready to start travelling to Pucon. Joined by my friend Mike Goglin alias Turbo, we headed firstly to the infamous Siete Tasaz on Rio Claro. This river is one of the most amazing environments I have been to. Simply wow. I don't know if there could be a better example of super clean pool-drop/waterfall river.

After some typical kayaking mucking around and asking directions in Spanish, none of us really can speak, we met Dave Hughes and The New River academy, who helped us to find the Put in for the 22 waterfall section.

On the way to Tiese Tasaz...

Tiese Tasaz- pure fun run

The 22 waterfall section is around 2.5 kms long and put huge smiles and few freightened expessions from bling edges on our faces. The run starts with short hike in (depends on ability of your rental car) and an interesting seal launch straight into the first drop. From there on it's just a pure fun to the take out. Drops and waterfalls all the way. I have tried to count but you have just so much fun you forget the numbers. There is one specially interesting blind 30 footer that just sneaks on you. Looks the same as all the other edges until you actually go over it and see the green water 10 meters below :). This fall is followed by blind narrow box canyon with few rapids. Pretty cool. For the rest of the run we're left with more clean drops in deep volcanic canyon. We left the canyon laughing like small kids. Sweet

Second drop in 22 teacups (photo Mike Goglin)

One of many, forgot the count.... (photo Mike Goglin)

After having so much fun, me and Mike decided to run the Cinco Tasaz (5 teacups) just downstream, portaging the 2 blocked and manky canyons bellow the bridge.

Finally Cinco Tasaz/me (photo Mike Goglin)

We left for the famous Siete Tazas for (7 teacups) the next morning. This section has 7 of the cleanest drops and pools you have dreamed about. Nothing scary, just pure fun.

Visitor :)