The Maipo Valley

This year I am attending New River Academy, a high school that travels around the world to paddle while at the same time being able to do school where ever we go. This Semester we are in Chile, the past 10 days I have spent in the beautiful Maipo valley an hour from the capital city of Santiago. For the first seven days we slept under small pavilion, some of us on the ground, others in tents, and a few of us(me) would hang hammocks up between the wooden columns that hold a tin roof above our heads. The camp ground “Cascades De Las Animas” is owned by our Spanish teachers family. It is an amazing place, surrounded by massive mountains and place right on the Maipo River. On one side of the river is the entire facility, wonderful wooded Campground, an awesome restaurant with live trees ticking out of it and the inside is all masterfully carved wood, a huge pool(though the water is frigid), a sauna, and a bunch of half built but beautiful cabins which will most likely be finished by the end of the year. On the other side of the river behind a locked gate at the edge of a bouncy wooden bridge there are the Estorga Family houses. They also hold a Mountain Lion, and two giant eagles in a cage, along with 150 horses and many other amazing things. We got a chance to take a hike up to our Spanish teachers house, it was about a ¼ mile hike up the side of a mountain to his ridiculous house. The craftsman ship that goes into these houses is superb. His house is made from stone and amazingly carved wood, and it is built around a massive boulder. From his house is an absolutely stunning view of the arid desert mountains and the single massive snow capped monster of a mountain in the distance.

Every day we wake up in the insanely cold morning are and have morning workout, which is either running, yoga, or arms and abs, which is pushups and ab exercises. Then we have breakfast and the first 3 classes. Then lunch time, and the next 4 classes. Finally, its paddling time. The first day we all paddled the lower Maipo, which is a sick class 3-4 super continuous run. It is nearly non stop he entire way, though there are no dangerous rapids. For the rest of the time we were allowed to choose whether we wanted to do the lower, or the much harder Upper Maipo. For the rest of our stay in the Maipo valley, I paddled the Upper Maipo everyday. The is much like the lower, except the smallest rapids on the upper are twice the size of the biggest on the lower. The entire river is like class 4, 6 mile long roller coaster ride of a rapid. Huge wave trains and large random holes, along with tons of super fun boofs placed every 20 feet is the trademark of the Upper Maipo. Right smack dab in the middle of the 6 mile run is a large class 5 rapid called the French Curve. The rapid involves a boof over a large hole into a extremely quick twisting rapid with a must make boof over a large curler. The consequences of not making it to the left side of the river is going into this massive curler in front of a massive boulder that feeds straight into a huge undercut.

We took a day off in an attempt to make it to the Thermas up in the mountains, but unfortunately did not make it due to rock slides across the roads. Instead we went the opposite direction up the Yeso river to check out some cool concentration camps of a old Chilean dictator and an awesome waterfall just across the road from it.

Here is a video from that day.

A Day in Chile from Jordan Poffenberger on Vimeo.

Now we have moved to Pichilamu, a sick little surf town on the pacific ocean. An update of this awesome town will come later once I have had some time to go kayaking and check out this sick place.