After a few hours, we were becoming more at home on the boards, and were adapting to paddling on a moving river. However, Patagonia was not going to let us simply drift to the finish-line without a struggle. Throughout the trip, the infamous Patagonian winds (second in strength only to Antarctica) were blowing consistently from East to West, and sometimes from the North. The day we started on the river however, everything changed, and we were faced with a biting headwind coming directly from the South. This created conditions that made that first day on the boards one of the worst of the entire adventure. We were constantly being spun 180 degrees, and would often be drifting backwards through rapids and being pushed against the banks of the Leona. We would regularly lose our heads, and the rant of expletives would echo through the canyons and valleys around us.
