There it was – the mixed feeling of fascination, motivation, respect, excitement, joy and fear. It was August 2016 and I stood in the middle of a dirt road close to the town of Peine, approximately 100 km south of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile. Food for roughly 2 weeks and 22 liters of water were stowed on my hiking trailer.
Since I couldn’t find any proper source with some basic information around packrafting the Palena, I intend to close this gap with this post. Within the packrafting scene, several people already did the Palena but solid information that is public and accessible in a centralized way is still missing.