Exploring Patagonia for a month

Our story starts in Costa Rica, of all places. My partner was doing an internship in a surf school and I didn’t have much to do while we were stationed on the sandy beaches of the Pacific Ocean for two months. My days were spent walking along the beach and lying in a hammock, so I had a lot of time to think. One thing kept coming back: I wanted to create something new.

I had been dreaming about Patagonia for a good while and my month there was the highlight of my calendar after our time in Costa Rica. I had heard Tom Rosenbauer talk about Chilean Patagonia on the Orvis podcast and seen the videos online. I didn’t speak Spanish and the thought of travelling alone without knowing the local language made me uneasy. My hammock days were spent online researching different fly fishing lodges and guiding services. I didn’t want to burn through my travel funds in a week so that ruled out the lodges from this trip. Instead I decided to take the hard road and go exploring on my own.

Fast forward a couple of weeks to end of January and I was on the plane flying over the Andes. As we got closer to the airport I had my eyes glued to the window, looking at the rivers and lakes as if I could spot a rising trout from 3000 meters. As the plane landed I remember thinking how comically small the Balmaceda airport seemed after the international airports I had navigated on my travels. I picked up my rental car, relieved that the person at the counter spoke English and that my nightmare scenario of repeating “No comprende” until they took back the keys didn’t come true.

Eyes glued to the window, somewhere over the Andes.

Driving on the Patagonian roads wasn’t much different from driving in Finland or Norway, so no trouble there, but I did get pulled over by the police about 15 minutes from the airport. They wanted to see my licence, passport and the registration for the car. We had major difficulties communicating, as my travel-worn brain could not understand his questions and my limited Spanish reduced my replies to confused looks and repeatedly saying “I am from Finland”. It did not help that the officer asked his coworker to come over to the car window as well, doubling the number of questions fired at me in machine-gun Spanish. Finally I understood that their main concern was whether I had driven over from Argentina or arrived by plane at Balmaceda. It was all a bit stressful, but I wasn’t too worried; I’d read online that the police in Chile are fairly trustworthy. In the end we were all laughing. They spent a while marvelling at the pictures in my Finnish passport and then sent me on my way.

I had booked accommodation just for my first week. An Airbnb close to Rio Simpson and Coyhaique. My thinking was that I’d have that first week to look for the next place once I knew the area a bit better. The 5-star reviews and positive comments turned out to be less trustworthy than I had thought. The place was a dump. Moldy bathroom, broken lock and a dusty room. I carried my stuff in and sat on the bed for 15 minutes, thinking this is not the Patagonian dream I had travelled here for. I carried my luggage back down the narrow staircase and told the host I wouldn’t be staying. I drove straight to what seemed like a passable hotel close by and walked over to the booking desk. I paid more than I would have liked for the next three nights, but at least I now had a place to stay that wasn’t moldy.

The Rio Simpson was flowing 500 meters away, so I packed my gear and walked out on the river. There were some mayflies on the water and a trout rising every now and then. A size 14 Parachute Adams and a couple of casts later, I had my first fish in the net. A small brown trout, nothing to write home about, but it did feel like a defining moment. I had now caught trout in six different countries and on both hemispheres. I kept fishing for a couple of hours and caught more browns and rainbows, but nothing bigger. Naturally this spot right next to the town of Coyhaique was not the most productive, as I had suspected, but there were fish and they were taking dries, so I was happy enough.

I spent the next week exploring the Simpson wherever I could access it. I popped into Coyhaique every now and then for groceries and asked everyone I met about the fishing and possible places to reach the rivers. It was not easy to get information and my limited Spanish didn’t make it any easier, but with a mix of Google Translate, hand signals and profound confusion I managed to find some places to fish and stay.

By the end of the week I had some decent success. Caught and lost some nicer-sized trout, but the truth is that this first week was not easy and there was a lot of frustration. I was figuring it out on my own, and that was expected.

On my second week I drove a couple of hours north from Coyhaique to the Rio Nirehuau. I had read about the hopper fishing on the river but later found out that I had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The landscapes were lovely, but the fishing over those couple of days was mediocre at best. The area also seemed to hold all the thorny bushes in the world, and they were not kind to my waders.

The old suspension bridge over the Nirehuau.

The guided days

I talked to multiple guides over the phone and by email, and booked some days with the ones that seemed the best. For a person who has always fished without a guide, there were some cultural shocks. It felt odd to have a guide tying your knots and yelling “SET THE HOOK!” when a fish moved on the fly. I did get used to it and had some great experiences while learning a lot about the local ways. The guides did get me onto more and bigger fish, but I still found great value in discovering things on my own, so I continued my search.

Guided day, trout and a big grin.

Rio Paloma

My search eventually took me to a gravel road leading to the Paloma river valley. There was a bridge over a canyon where the river flowed, and shortly after that the valley opened up. It had just that remote valley feeling I had been searching for, and the river was clear, with deep pools for bigger trout.

It was the last week of my month in Patagonia and I spent long days on the river trying to learn its ways. After scaring many fish by wading too close, I learned that here the rainbows were often surprisingly close to the shore and the browns deeper under logs or riverbanks.

Fishing the upper Paloma.

The fish on the Paloma seemed bigger on average than what I had found on the other rivers in the area. Rio Paloma was the last place I fished on the trip, but I knew this was the place I wanted to return to.

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My best experiences from my month of searching could have been distilled into a week if I had known then what I know now. On the drive to the airport I was already working on turning it into something anyone can book.