26, Rain, rain, rain, rain. What a pain.

Our luck with the weather ran out, like it always bound to. The clouds rolled in and the beautiful views became obscured by opaque swathes of grey misery. Undeterred, we wrapped up and wandered around in the drizzlery.

One day of non-stop rain passes and our spirits are still high, the river water is still gorgeous and the fish remain elusive. Actually, one did jump at the spinner but missed, damn stupid lucky fish.

Rio Futaleufu is home to rafting, kayaking and more rafting. The town of Futaleufu is one of those tourism hotspots filled with hostels trying to outdo each other with their rustic homely décor and happy hour cocktail deals. During a rare and welcome break in the rain we, and our brave French companions, embarked on a battle of inflatable raft vs white water vs trying not to poop ourselves. With a bonus cliff jump making the latter all the more difficult.

 

But despite the cold and huge rapids the raft survived, we survived and so did the wetsuits. We proceeded on to a camp spot with our companions to reminisce about how we all nearly died/soiled ourselves. We showed off our van levelling skills.

It’s starting to get really rural again.

We’re on the third day of mostly rain and everything is damp, the roof lining is mouldy again and we just keep driving because that’s the only time we get a heater. There’s an occasional glimpse of blue sky, quite the tease, or dolphins laughing at us land based mammals who can’t handle a bit of precipitation. We know it just looks like a slimy shadow in the water but it is a dolphin, honest.

The sun even came out one morning long enough to make a rainbow! Before it started raining again. So we made our way to a little seaside town to park under a magic free government WiFi spot and faff away the day re-accepting the terms and conditions every half an hour.

It was in this town we met Sergio. He is from Uruguay and is travelling in a pickup truck with a camper on the back. As we walked along we noted how the engine was running, but the steps to the camper were still out and Steve joked that maybe he’d forgotten. Turns out he had and 2 minutes later he drove past us with the camper back door flapping around, his steps lying in the road behind him, and headed up the hill. Steve gave chase and like a ninja cat, immediately fell over. He just so happened to be carrying 8 loose eggs in a plastic bag in his hand. Managing to break only one during the paratrooper tuck n’ roll he eventually caught ol’ Sergio and saved the day.   

 

More reminders that above the misery lives the glorious sun that we haven’t seen in days.

The morning engine start reveals that there isn’t any room left in the air for water, everything is now fully saturated both inside and outside. More driving it is then… even if the bridge looks barely fit for a bicycle.

To brighten our day we went to Jenjen’s version of the sweet shop, a fruit and veggie shop. Photo colour adjusted to show it how Jenjen sees it.

We pulled in past a nice stream to camp beside another river, slept through 9 hours of heavy rain and awoke to find that the stream had risen and our access road was now also stream. We drove right through it, it isn’t like anything could be wetter anyway!

Later, post lunch stop, we returned to the main road and saw a small campervan drive past with a dog painted on the side, one of the rental campers we’ve seen dozens off. Trying to remind ourselves what the cartoon was, we took chase and upon catching the van realise it is our Dutch friends from last week. After aggressively forcing them to stop and chat to us we all decided to make our way to a remote village that offers less crowded tours of a local phenomenon, marble caves.

The wipers ruined this otherwise lovely photo, and do you know why the wipers ruined the photo? BECAUSE IT WAS STILL RAINING.

But then the sun started to shine through and illuminate the dirty river mixing with the teal lake.

 

Just as soon as we got to the small town on the road that had been open only 17 years, we tagged along with another pair of travellers who were about to embark on a tour. Perfect timing.

The caves were cool and we learnt all about how maybe they formed, something about being part of the sea once but now a lake and dead sea life crushed or something something. Don’t you love how much we teach you?

The return journey was…. eventful. You’d think on a wide open lake it would be hard to crash into something as big as the land wouldn’t you? But our captain, which might be a slight stretch of the term, managed to plough straight into the shore. We aren’t sure of the exact cause... Firstly he said we were blocking his view, then said that a rope got caught in the steering but we know it wasn’t either of those things. It was one of two other possibilities, and we know this because we all saw him, either he was playing candy crush or reading a text from his mum telling him not to be such a massive twat and to stop playing with his damn phone while driving a boat.  No damage done, the boat is dragged back into the water and we proceed back to the planned shore as the rain starts again.

We proceeded on to a camp spot with our companions to reminisce about how we all nearly died/soiled ourselves.

And then it happened, we woke up to BLUE SKIES. Bright, deep, clear blue skies. Oh what a relief, the rain had been coming down for what felt like forever and even though we’re a lot better off than the cyclists and the hikers, it was getting tough living in a leaky cold van.

So we just saw this, and this is craaazzzy, but here’s the picture, Condor maybe?

These monsters can have a wingspan of almost 11ft and live over 70 years! Now that is crazy!

Smiles all around we said goodbye (for now?) to our new friends and started to explore this whole new, and extremely beautiful, world.

Rio Baker, an extremely powerful yet astonishingly beautiful river suitably earning the name. Not to be messed with this is Chile’s mightiest river with huge rapids of crystal clear water. Well, they were clear until Steve had his first bath in over a week plus, plus, plus some more. Jenjen checked that her skills of not catching fish were as finely honed as Steve’s and then we had our coldest night yet, 2 degrees inside the van, the thankgodfully dry van.

Getting there!