When our neighbors Tina and Dave LeMaster approached us about a trip to a fishing lodge near Chaitain, Chile, we were intrigued, to say the least. Our fishing adventures had taken us many places in the US and even down to the Bahamas, but we didn’t think South America would enter into play. We took the bait and started making our plans for an epic journey to get there and 9 days of hard fishing, ending with a visit to Santiago and the surrounding wine country. I’m actually writing this 7 months after our trip because I didn’t have a computer with me and just got too busy to resurrect my blog until now.
The trip down included flights from Durango to Dallas, Dallas to Santiago, Santiago to Puerto Montt, Puerto Montt to Chaiten, and then a couple hour drive to the lodge! We did spend the night in Puerto Montt across the lake from a volcano before the last couple legs! We arrived to some rain, which is par for the course down there, something I didn’t know until after we returned. If you look on your weather app for Chaiten, it’s raining down there 90% of the time. However, for us – we had 9 days of great weather – totally lucked out.
The lodge is run by Marcel, a Dutchman, who has been there for years guiding this fishing operation. He loves his life there and has made quite a name for his place. We shared a cabin with the LeMasters and walked over to the lodge for their innovative meals and family-style dining. We were lucky to meet some really lovely couples included some great folks from the Vermont/New Hampshire area, who we’re hoping will come to visit us in SW Colorado.
There was so much water down there, it was unbelievable. Expansive rivers with lots of fish and no people. Rafting, mile after mile in dense forest and blue skies and glaciers in the background There wasn’t much biomass but the rivers haven’t been overfished, so we were able to catch more than our share and some really big rainbows and browns. I had oftentimes of people having a 40 or 50 fish day and wasn’t sure I believed that until I boastfully say, I had that kind of a day on the 8th day of fishing. Everyday was good but on this particular day, it was cast and catch successively for hours. I’ve always said this has never been about the fishing, but that was pretty impressive.
We were fished out after 9 days – never took a day off and shoulders and arms were ready for a rest. We left our friends and headed to Santiago where we stay in one of the nicest Marriots we’ve ever run across. It helps that Florian has lifetime platinum status which gets us some nice perks. The down side of that was how many nights he’s had to spend in their hotels on business over the years…
Santiago was interesting. It’s a poor city of over 7 million people, and we were told to hold tight to all our possessions in several parts of the city. We saw Pinochet’s old mansion and remembered the many people who disappeared when he was President. We took the funicular up to the top of one of the mountains to get a view of the rather polluted city. We drove to the outskirts and visited two very nice Chilean wineries where we purchased some wine from old reserves and ate delicious farm to table food. For a trip that we had never planned on taking, it was quite an experience. We decided that we probably won’t book another 9 day fishing trip – back to the standard 5 days. The 70’s are changing some things.
