It takes a long time to get here. Janet took me to the SF airport at 6AM Saturday morning. Flight left at 8. About 5.5 hours to Atlanta. 6 hours in Atlanta airport. Then, 9.5 hours to Santiago, leaving at 9:30pm. The only saving grace was that my bro Augie got me into biz class with his Delta employee status. Also, Augie and Karen met me at ATL and took me out for dinner. THANKS GUYS!
Arrived Santiago around 8:30am Sunday, including 5 hour time difference from home. Go through customs, etc, and then catch a local flight to Temuco. Just made it. Get picked up by Tom Long, owner of Cascade Outfitters at 11:30 AM. I have been traveling 24 hours. Did I mention the business class seat? Did I say how grateful I was?
Oh, one little problem- no suitcase. It got left in Santiago. They did, however, deliver my ski (paddle) bag with most of my gear, so at least I can paddle.
Turns out there were 3 others on the plane who are with me on the trip - Bill & Janice from Boise, and Barbara from D.C. Tom takes us home, about a 2 hour drive to Pucon. We drive mostly through scenic ranch land with views of snow covered volcanoes. Weather is beautiful- about 90 and sunny. Not humid.
The company is owned and operated by the Long family - Tom, his kids, their wives, their kids - a big happy clan of expert kayakers. They bought some land just outside of town and built a big house/lodge within the last 2 years. It is beautiful. I will get some pictures up here later. My camera was in the lost suitcase.
So- they fed us lunch, we took an hour nap, then went boating. I had to borrow a few things to supplement the gear I had, but it worked out. Today's boating was just a nice easy Class 2+ run on the Liacura river just to break off the rust and let them see how bad we are. We were 4 boaters and 3 instructors: Tom, Tren, and Smiley. It immediately became very apparent that this trip will focus on instruction. Tom is a great instructor and he loves teaching. They have the 2 weeks broken into 24 "sessions". Each session is a morning or an afternoon of boating. if you do them all, that's a boatload of boating.
This evening, another guy showed up - Bruce from Boise. When they picked up Bruce in Temuco, my suitcase was there, so I now have all my stuff.
yay.
