In the winter of 07/08 I had my sabbatical year in which I did quite a few things. One of them is a 5 month during trip from Mexico City down to the south of Chile, Futaleufu. It’s hard to tell all the amazing things I’ve done, seen ans experienced on this trip but I’ll do my best.

It starts in Amsterdam with my budy Sjon de Gast, buying our tickets. Our initinary is flying to mexico city with a few days in NYC, and then heading overland through central and south america to Chile. Oke, this soon turned out to be a bit over enthousiastic so plans changed a bit.

On arrival in Mexico it turned out flying boats can be hard and thus our equipment is delayed and makes us stay in Mexico city for a few days. With no directions but Oaxaca we left for our first destination, Oaxaca, where there’s supposed to be a river. Soon turns out to be a large province of mexico as well, but after a week of spanish classes in Oaxaca we find our way to Huatulco and have our first Mexican paddling session, in de jungle. It’s really hard to paddle out there if your with two unexperienced travellers!

Road continues through Mexico for a few weeks and then into Guatemala for a quick visit, some more spanish classes and another jungle river to be paddled. By this time we’ve seen lots of the countries and culture but we’re done with that and looking forward to some paddling!

Then headed for Honduras to the river Cangrejal, which is located in the middle of the jungle and one of the most beautifull and peacefull places i’ve ever been. The river was fun with a little playhole and quite a few drops to walk up and down. There’s also a interesting upper section with some more challinging waters. Then there’s this trip organised by Omega tours into the jungle, a river hardly seen by paddlers takes me on this 4 day overnight trip, an experience I would not havel liked to miss and I’m looking forward to such a high quality trip soon again! Honduras is home to the second biggest reef in the world and also known for it’s cheap PADI diverslicense courses, so that’s what we did!

Then off to well known Costa Rica, but we’re late and running out of time, and Sjon out of money. He decides to fly home from there and I travel to Panama to catch a flight to Chile to continue with Lieke Servais. Costa Rica was sweet with one full week of ocean surfing and the Sarapiqi valley with some amazing rivers. We’ll need to come back and do all the others still though..

Then Chile, where I met Lieke who arrived the same day from Equador. Straight on the bus to pucon, a change with central america and a bit more civilised. The water turns out to be low this year and unluckily a lot of the shit isn’t running anymore.. Yet we’ve done some of the Pucon classics nad had the Fuy a perfect waterlevel, but lost all the photos of this river.

Then of to Futaleufu with our Chevrolet truck. I stayed here for 5 weeks and together with Phil we were probably to longest not local residents that winter, hell what a sweet place this is! No thing but kayakking and doing everything you are thinking of. Met lots of people and had a great time here with many asado’s, party’s and paddling sessions!

Then back to Pucon with my friend Phil from Canada through Argentina, a 5 day trip without your own car, crazy! Then staying in pucon for 2 weeks and paddling the liucura many times with great freestyle sessions. I met Sergio vidal and Nico and Raul Buenaventura here who are great locals pushing kayakking in Chile!