Every morning at Bio Bio Patagonia’s guided adventure tour starts with a few important rituals. First, the guides trickle into the kitchen quincho – the hub of camp – making sure to greet everyone with a warm hug. We crowd into the kiosko around the espresso machine. After delivering a warm drink to our guests in their tents across camp, we do a few more morning chores. We wash dishes, chop firewood, and make sure there’s still a warm fire going in the hot tub stoves.
Perhaps the most important morning ritual is the mate, an herbal caffeinated drink that’s much more Patagonian than coffee. On especially cold mornings during our guided adventure tour in Chile, we huddle around the wood stove in the kitchen and pass the mate gourd around, chatting about the river level, or what everyone dreamt about the night before, or maybe who was dancing with who at the sunset bar.
Once we’ve had our mate and everyone has gotten a hug (don’t skip the cocineras!), the guests move towards one of our beautiful yoga spaces, and the guides move up to the boat barn to get the gear ready for the day. Depending on the day, that could be loading up the disco and grill into the trucks for an island lunch later on, or pumping up the rafts and sending them down the hill towards our put-in. Either way, we make sure we have everything we need to succeed before breakfast, including a few coolers full of beer and ice, no matter what the plan is for the day ahead.
Once we have breakfast and a plan, which can always change with weather or water levels, or the mood of the trip leader, it’s time for the reason we are all here. The thing that keeps many of us coming back to Southern Patagonia year after year. The mighty Futaleufu.
No matter what section we’re doing, no matter what the level, and no matter who’s on the team, it’s always a great day on the Futa at our Patagonia guided adventure tour. To anyone, it’s a fun and beautiful river with exciting rapids and impressive scenery, with powerful clear-blue water and a lush forest on both sides. But to the guides, it’s whitewater paradise. With several different sections, ever-changing water levels, everything from walled-in canyon rapids to long boulder gardens, no day is ever like the one before. And as guides, we thrive on it. No matter what else is going on, the river demands our absolute presence of mind. We are focused from the pool above the first rapid all the way to the bottom of the section.
The best part, beyond the incredible river that we run, is being a part of that team. From guides who have been on this river for almost twenty years to newer guides coming down to cut their teeth on some big water, we all have the same love for the river that drew us to the Futaleufu in the first place.
And truthfully, there’s nothing like cracking the fist beer after another incredible day. But the days in a Patagonian summer are long, and they don’t end at the take-out.
We either float or drive back to camp, where more good times are waiting for us. That can mean relaxing in the hot tub all afternoon, seeking solitude in the sauna, fishing in the flatwater by camp, or practicing salsa moves at the sunset bar. We make sure the fires are hot, the drinks are flowing, and everyone is having the time of their lives.
Before dinner, we fire up the parilla for the night’s feast, or put on our traveler’s best and set glasses and a selection of local wines up by the sunset bar for the weekly wine tasting (the one day of every trip where most of the guides make time for a shower). And of course, we check in with our cocineras and see if they need any help with dinner… or just to gossip in the kitchen.
The evening might end with a bonfire on the hill where guides and guests can showcase their musical talents, or it might be a dancing kind of night at the bar with some Latin music. No matter what, it seems like the good vibes from the river carry deep into the evening, and there are always stories to tell.
There’s never a dull moment when you’re at Bio Bio Patagonia’s guided adventure tour, in the best way possible.