Finger Update

The digit is doing well. The wound is finally closed and I am able to do stuff normally again. I still have no feeling in half of my finger, but the tip works, and the rest of it works, so I´m happy.




Lookin good.







I am happy with it´s progress. Tee hee.

Futa Life

Futaleufu...... it´s amazing here!

The town of Futaleufu is gorgeous. It´s a really tranquil, super calm place. Everyone and everything is really laid back. It´s in the middle of nowhere, which kind of slows down time.
There´s beautiful snow capped peaks in every direction.

I´m staying in the H20 Patagonia guide house, which is newly remodeled. It´s the nicest guide house I´ve ever seen. It´s one of the nicest places I´ve lived in! And who can beat the location!?


Out my livingroom window, I can see two different snowy peaks. It´s awesome!

The interior is great. They haven´t quite finished remodeling, but we´re finishing what they didn´t. It´s great little afternoon projects..... and excuses for drinking beer..... for me and my house-mates.

My roomies are this really cool couple from Switzerland. Mark and Fabi. They´re great. It´s just the three of us in the house, which is even more awesome. We have family meals together... hee hee... it´s great.

The Rio Futaleufu

I got on the river for the first time the day after I got here. It´s BIG. It´s low water right now... and it´s still BIG. Big, beautiful rapids. I´m really stoked to run it on my board.... but I feel like I should learn the lines a bit better to avoid a total ass kicking the first time. I´m really stoked to run Mundaca on my board. It´s one of the bigger rapids on the Bridge to Bridge section. I don´t have any pics of my own yet.... but they´re coming...

Lots of stuff to do
When I´m bored.... I can go on a bike ride. Which I usually do once a day. I tried to bike to Inferno Canyon the other day, but the rain beat me there, and I had to turn around in the downpour. I got some cool pics though.

It´s beautiful here, even when it´s raining.

I boarded the Rio Azul and got a 1st descent on a riverboard! It was pretty fun, class 3 stuff. The Azul has spectacular views of Tres Munjas, which is a pretty sweet mountain.

The put-in is beautiful too!

Yesterday, Fabi, Mark, Mitch and I went hiking up the little creek near H20 base to try to find access for canyoneering trips. Fabi and I split from them and hiked up to a waterfall higher up.

I´m loving it here! I´m planning on spending a month here, just training since there´s not really any work. I´m plenty happy training and chillin here in this amazing place!

Pucon

Pucon is a giant eddy. You end up in it, and it´s very hard to leave. You think you´re just about to break through the eddy line, and you get distracted, ending up right where you just were.
Pucon is awesome. There is so much to do here. There´s lakes, rivers, mountains, volcanos. It´s great. The town is great too. It´s just like Jackson Hole, or Aspen, or any other mountainy, outdoorsy, touristy town. Things are expensive, and there´s lots of tourists.


We met a cool dude named Rodrigo, who owns Kayak Pucon. Within seconds of meeting Rodrigo, we ran into LJ Groth and Todd Anderson. We work on the White Salmon with LJ, he works at All Star Rafting. Todd owns a kayaking company in Hood River. What a small world. Rodrigo´s parents own some cabañas just out of town where LJ and Todd were staying. They invited us to sleep on their floor that night. That was nice because I had just chopped my frickin finger off and was not in good shape.
The next day we got our own cabaña there. A nice 4 bedroom. We got a good deal from Rodrigo too.
The view from our cabin is awesome.


Our second night in Pucon, we had a Chilean barbecue. So... what you do is you buy as much meat as you think you could possibly eat and then some, and then you buy some bread and you make an ahí salsa.
I ate so much friggin meat I thougt I was gunna vomit, and then I ate more meat. Ha ha... It was so good though.
SO MUCH MEAT!!
Chillin before the bbq. Rodrigo and Emma talking to the Swiss dudes.

We followed up the bbq by playing Hot Shalaca with the coals. Good times.


Pucon is great. Great people. Great whitewater. Great scenery. I´m loving it.
We went with Ben, Scott and Andy on a couple of their runs. It was really cool. We hiked to a really waterfall, Salto Buey, while setting shuttle for them.



Pucon´s been great so far. Can´t wait to have more fun here.

Choppa Choppa Choppa

Well, my time came once again. Time to injure myself.... ha ha. This time it was a good one.

After we left Santiago, we went to Siete Tazas, a series of waterfalls halfway to Pucon. We camped there and the boys had an epic ascent from the valley above an unrunnable unportagable rapid. They had to hike back in the next morning to get their boats out, and it took quite a while. But they´re all ok, and everything´s good.
It was beautiful there.



We left Siete Tazas early to avoid paying the park fees, and were off to Pucon, with 7 people crammed into a pickup truck. With 7 people´s bags, 3 kayaks, and one riverboard all in the back. It was tight.

We stopped for lunch around 3... and filled up the truck at a gas station. We were making cheese and avocado sandwiches. I started cutting the paltas (avocados). To get the pits out, you hit them with the knife to sink it a bit, then twist and pull the pit out. I was working with Ben´s new Gerber Diesel (we´ve been talking about the Diesel and its superiority this whole trip) which is pretty much the sharpest thing I´ve ever seen. I hit the pit with the knife.... it went through the pit, through the palta, and through my finger.
It instantly started bleeding everywhere, and I knew it was pretty bad. I ran into the bathroom... for some reason my logic was to bleed in the sink... yelling "I just cut my finger really bad! It´s really bad!" all the way to the bathroom.
I got the bleeding to stop after like 5 minutes and Andy cleaned it and steri stripped it and we bandaged it up. Pucon was 3 hours away... so we went.
We got into Pucon around 6 and I immediately went to the emergency room with Emily. They took off the steri strips off and looked at it and took me into another room. They laid me down and put my hand on a metal table. They numbed it.... num num num.. ha ha. ... which hurt pretty bad. Once numbed.... num num num... ha ha... he opened it up and cleaned it. I couldn´t see what was going on really. He told Emily that I had cut an artery and that we should look. I looked up only to see blood spurting everywhere. Aaah. I laid back down.
The doctor stitched up the artery and realigned the nerve so that it could heal back together. Then he stitched the wound on the outside. 5 stitches. Not so bad.


10 days total. 5 days in the splint, then 5 more days till the stitches could come out. No getting it wet for 5 days. Bah. There went all my whitewater plans in Pucon.

So... 5 days later, I took it out of the splint and it looks pretty good. It feels relatively fine, besides the shooting nerve damage pain. That´s the worst part. It goes from weird tingly to shooting pain without notice. For the most part I have all my movement back, just some of it is excrutiatingly painful. Yay. Hopefully this will greatly improve every day.

Choppa choppa choppa. The finger will survive.