The Other Side of the Counter

One of the biggest reasons we love traveling to fishing lodges is is we re-learn what it’s like to be a guest. It keeps it real for us, and reminds us why people enjoy their experiences when we are the hosts in Alaska.  We get to observe someone else create a service product while noticing their timing, challenges, successes and failures.   Our favorite is being treated to the signature productions, be it an experience in the field or within the hospitality of a lodge environment. 

We have stayed this last week at Magic Waters Patagonia lodge, founded and run by Eduardo Barrueto and his wife Consuelo. 

Magic Waters is distinctly a family operation; you dine with Eduardo, Consuelo and their children every meal.

Eduardo went to college then considered being a lawyer. Instead he went to culinary school where he met Consuelo. Eduardo and Consuelo founded a catering business while Eduardo pursued his real passion: guiding for trout part time. Most lodge owners & operators have a story that relate to the day when an entrepreneurial-minded guest sets us down and tells us it’s time to do our own thing. Eduardo tells that story from the perspective of, after a great day of fishing, sitting on the bluff overlooking the present lodge location. His guest, a  real estate developer from the United States, told him: “This would be a great place to put a lodge.  I’ll finance it, you run it.”

For a week Lynnette and I enjoyed day after day of fishing in the field with Eduardo’s guides while, at night and in the morning, we observed the processes of the lodge. We saw everything from the presentation of great meals to the water supply system completely losing its pressure. Deja-vu from the opposing point of view.  Each evening Eduardo and I traded war stories of our challenges and realizations. We had so much in common. In the final analysis, it’s about the relationships we develop with our guests and the small inspirations we provide to them while they are in our world and out of theirs. 

Eduardo loves what he does, and I hear in his voice enthusiasm for his vocation coming from the depths of his soul. While we were there he and Consuelo were finishing major improvements to the lodge such as a new kitchen, a new dining room and a new bar & game room. It was fun to watch the local tradesmen progress during the course of the week and, while Eduardo kept up his smiling enthusiasm, knowing it was all fraught with challenges. 

On our last day at Magic waters we were treated to a signature experience. Eduardo had arranged for a huaso (cowboy) to take us on a horseback train from a roadside trail head deep into a canyon where we would fly fish for brown trout and enjoy a stream side lunch of asado, a cut of beef flank cooked on a cross using the radiant heat of the fire. 

The huaso, named Alfredo, Grew up in the local valley and was completely at ease with every step of the game. He had an open, friendly face & smiling eyes that his postures and actions followed. 

We accompanied two other guests on this adventure: Pam and her husband Ray from Boise Idaho.Pam grew up on a ranch in Wyoming and was extremely confident on the horse. Ray grew up in New York City and, luckily for him, the horse knew to follow the one in front of it.

We were dropped on respective sections of the river while Alfredo and his son took the string of horses to the asado site upriver. 

Lynnette and I had a glorious morning casting dries to hungry Brown Trout. Eduardo explained that the warm sunny day would begin bringing terrestrial insects out of the earth then they would fall from the trees & cliffs into the water and thus begin feeding the trout for the summer. 

Eduardo tied two giant beetle patterns onto the end of our lines.
Lynnette caught two immediately and, while she and Eduardo moved up river I  cleaned-up the far side of the river while remembering what Monte had taught me the first day: move the fly. I cast and twitched a giant beetle fly in and out of log jams  as crazy brown trout literally broke out of water attempting to eat it.

After a few hours we reached the field camp with the fire smoking from within the trees and the horses tied all around them. 

A side of beef flank was tied to a cross of green sticks and roasting over a pile of hot coals. Alfredo, the huaso,  basted the meat with a salt brine and offered us mate, a green herb drank like a tea, and we watched him sharpen his knives as Eduardo served us an excellent Chilean wine.

The flavor of the meat was exquisite. I can offer few words to describe the complete feeling of listening to that small river, the wind and birds while wearing waders, sitting on a log, savoring that meat & wine.  Our maitre’d was a huaso and the dining room a forested river valley in the Andes, attended by a string of strong, sure horses eating quietly in the trees surrounding us.   

Genius, Eduardo. A signature experience.