Our plan had been to finish the run and get a taxi back into El Chalten from the boat terminal on the lake. Due to us getting lost on a number of occasions during the run, we had arrived in darkness, and there were no taxis to be found. With our electronics out of battery, this meant we had an unplanned 17km walk back to El Chalten through howling winds, a realisation that mentally broke us. We limped into El Chalten at 4am, 25 hours after leaving the night before. We could barely speak, and arrived at our hostel which was locked due to the time, so we accepted defeat and slept on the porch. The days that followed were agony, our legs were constantly cramped and our feet were torn to shreds. Normally, we would have rested for weeks and let our bodies recover, but we had one more task to fulfil, a 120 km world-first paddle-board down the La Leona river. 72 hours after finishing the run, we unpacked our boards from their travel bags (incredibly the Red Paddle Co boards pack down into a suitcase size bag, so we flew them over from the UK), inflated, and loaded them with our tent and supplies.
Ahead of us lay the La Leona river and behind us the huge expanse of Lake Viedma. Our route would take us through the Jurassic hills and into the wilderness.
