Editor’s note: This article describes Earth River’s original camp-based Futaleufú trip. Today, every night of the trip is spent in a boutique lodge with private bathrooms and hot tubs. See the current Futaleufú multi-lodge rafting trip.

One day in 1989, as Eric Hertz’s rented Toyota van bucked along a dirt road through the remote mountains of southern Chile, he looked down from a bridge and was what appeared to be a narrow tongue of the Caribbean Sea, a ribbon on bright aquamarine blue foaming with whitecaps.