Between Bariloche and El Bolson is the gem creeking run of the Patagonia. It is all located on 20,000 acres of private property surrounding Lago Escondido. With the help of Extremo Sur, we got permission to go in for a sweet day!
I love those rivers that are so crystal clear you can just flip over and drink.
And then huck a sweet 40 footer.
And then another one.
The scenery wasn´t bad either,
On our way from the Nilihue to the Rio Gol Gol our alternator fried our headlights and left us in the dark. We used the emergecy flashers to get to the camp site next to the road. It was a little dirty, but we didn´t hear a single complaint.
We tried to get a quick run in on the Gol Gol while still having enough day light to drive over the border to Bariloche. Tyler got chundered and recieved a nasty beating in Salto De Novios and broke his boat. We barely had enough time for him to drink his bootie before we were rallying toward Argentina chasing daylight.
Much like the drop on the Middle Palguin, flooding last year completely changed the geology of this drop. It had been run by the Epicosity boys in years past, but this drop opened up into a much cleaner, much safer SWEET drop!
Everyone got their chace on this one!
We got to do a roll session with some of Bolivia´s Olympic Kayak polo and slalom team. They came really close to getting their rolls!
Yesterday we got to paddle the Coiroca river. Right now, it is the rainy season here in Bolivia and things are juicing. The Coiroca is what they normally raft down. We did the regular 2 day section in about 4 hours and it had some big fluffy waves and nice play.
We found another sweet river to run today. A lot of great scenery and fun play, but nothing super serious. It was good to get out kayaking in Bolivia.
Nothing could keep us from this river. Even though we had days allocated to kayak, we didn´t have a clue where to go. That was only until the owner of a raft company in Lunahuana, Peru found us doing an interview in Miraflores and invited us to his house. Turned out it was at the foot of one of the best sections of whitewater in Peru.
We met up with Pedro immediately, and he showed us the goods. You will have to wait for the mags to see any real pics. We shoot all our action on slides.
The paddling in Ecuador is classic. We teamed up with Capo and had some fun runs in the Oriente.
We were surrounded by police and military twice before we even put in on the San Juan river, Colombia right outside of Medellin. It definitely gave us a strange “where the heck are we feeling” and we wondered what was going on in the area that needed so much attendance.
The San Juan is the most commonly run river in Colombia, definitely a classic. There is a lifetime worth of first descents to be had, and this is one place out of all the rest we have seen where we are already planning to come back and get them done.
Aaron “Capo” Reitig joined us for a quick run, and then road with us down to Cali.
Colombia is one of the more over looked countries in the world for whitewater kayaking.
Joe Carberry, one of the managing editors of the newest kayak mag, Paddling Life joined us for a one week ride´a´long. We paddled 3 rivers in the first two days he was with us, and hucked a sweet 25 footer. The coolest thing about it was that he is a rippin kayaker, so he would just jump first and take pictures from the bottom.
We had a jam packed week for, veg oil collection, school demonstrations and then topped it off with some Surf in Santa Catalina.
The school was a technical high school.
We got to teach the diesel mechanics class the ins and outs of running on veg oil.
Stay tuned for Joe´s photos in the the Paddling Life issue.
The kayaking in Costa Rica treated us just right. We hooked up with a bunch of the local boys like Ferdinan, Mauricio and Jorge, the Irish boys, and Scottish Greg to get on some great virgin runs. The San Pedro was a first descent.
The local boys found the Costa Rican classic The San Raphel the year before. Both these rivers are near San Isidro and join to combine the Rio Union.
