The final week in Chile was incredible. The traveling was insane, the people super nice, and having no WiFi was a welcome relief. We traveled 8 hours to a town called Coyquie. While we were there we had to make plans on for our return trip. We had lived in a little town and going to Coyquie was a huge culture shock. The town of Futaleufu has about 1000 people. Coyquie has around 40,000 people. That's a huge difference. This being our last week was I was not looking forward to my reentry to the United States. The next part was another eight hour drive to a little town called Puerto Guadal. We found a little cabin that we all stayed in. There was very little to do so we tried to hitch hiking to the next place. The next destination was a town called Puerto Betrand . We had to figure out a way to go to Puerto Betrand. The issue was there was no buses going to or from Guadal to Betrand. After a long time attempting to hitchhike some nice people decided to pick us up. After The entire town has no WiFi and only two stores that are never open. We finally found a hostel and met the owners who were incredible nice. We worked and guided for them over the next week. Most days were filled with adventure and helping our hosts to reduce pay. While most days were action packed, there were those down days when weather would not permit access to the incredible place. When this happened I would work on my LINK project. My mentor was very helpful and I was able to get a rough draft done in a couple of days. We help guide people on a river called the Baker. The river is massive as it is fed from a lake. The lake is connected to one another lake that is one of the largest in South America. The fishing was incredible for myself and the clients. We guided both white water rafting and fly fishing. An issue down in Chile is the locals have no concept of conservation. They take as many fish as they want. This results in a lack of fish, where there should be a huge fishery.
On one of our many adventures we went on this trek up to some glaciers. As we hiked for hours and hours with a chilean who said the hike was only a few hours, we soon realized we would never make it in time. However fortune smiled on us. We saw a condor that was only 10 feet away from us. Also we saw a gumul. An endangered species and it is incredible difficult to see one.
After an awesome trip so far south it was time to start heading back to the US. The journey started with us getting a ride from our host back to Coyquie. Lucky for us we had set up flights back to Puerto Montt. So it wasn’t another 8 hour drive. From Puerto Montt to Santiago. In santiago we met up with a dear friend Pablo. We talked for many hours because we had such a delay. Sadly during this time my mentors bag got stolen. Luckily he did not have anything of utmost importance to him on it. The long flight back home was uncomfortable and hard we finally landed in the states and were HOME.