A new day on the Faravory

The view downstream

Rhod, thrilled while protecting an undercut in the gorge

Day 2 on the Faravory was quite different to day 1, with steeper and narrower rapids.  At one point we reached a deep gorge which was difficult to inspect.  We spent some time picking our way between the boulders beneath the towering rock walls.  This river had some powerful holes and this whole section reminded me of the Guardian Angel gorge in the French Alps, complete with the undercuts.  Amongst the many ledges and chutes was a small drop into a big hole.  There was a funky line which involved riding up onto the pile down onto the hole; getting carried right to avoid the undercut rocks blocking the left side.  We all got through with varying degrees of success.  Dory had an exciting moment when he pushed too hard left at the top and hit the undercut.  He managed to hold himself in the micro eddy the wrong side of the house sized boulder with water gushing passed him into the jaws of doom.  Rhod eventually got to him to hold him steady as he climbed out.

Dory entering the gorge

The rapids continued for most of the day with a variety of features.  After a short flat spell we reached another horizon line.  I jumped out on a rock in the middle of the river and saw an incredible view as the river dropped away in front of me.  The first waterfall was a wide, near vertical slide with two different lines.  Either sneak left of the entry hole and drop down at the edge, or punch the hole at the top and run it centre.  This was a drop we all wanted the first descent of so we used the classic method of “rock, paper, scissors” to decide.  Jo won and styled the first descent down the left.  We all paddled this one and both lines saw descents.

Jo's enjoying a first on the first waterfall

By now an audience had grown and looking downstream there were groups of people watching us as far as I could see, and I could see quite far because at the exit of the plunge pool the river crashed over a second, bigger and more jagged drop which quickly flowed into a long and horribly choked rapid.  The rapid was probably runnable but we didn’t take the time to properly inspect it, opting to portage instead.  The waterfall looked good though, and without any other contenders for the first descent I got to claim this one.  From the pool at the top I couldn’t see anything.  It was very difficult to recognise my line with only sky ahead and no markers, and hitting my line was important because on the left the river landed on sharp rocks and on the right it fed into a deep slot against the wall.  Between the two was a huge bump creating a perfect kicker, if you could find it!

As I got close enough to see over the edge I knew it was going well.  With a big right stroke I pushed the front up onto the peak of the bump then I took a big boof stroke, crunched forward and landed flat to the right of the rocks with enough momentum to carry me straight into the eddy.

Me, boofing it

Mandy on the waterfall section

Rhod ran it second, taking the same line with a big boof.  Next up Jo, who slipped off the side of the mound down into the slot and into the unknown.  Luckily the landing was deep and she resurfaced still smiling.  Mandy followed Jo into the slot landing hard on her side and wrenching her shoulder but luckily didn’t do any damage.  Nothing that a cocktail of painkillers and some scary rapids wouldn’t take her mind off anyway.  Last up was Dan with another big boof off the kicker.

Always an audience

The rapids continued past the cheering crowds at the village below, and onwards deeper into the jungle, gradually getting harder as the day grew longer, or perhaps as we were getting more tired.  We desperately looked for a beach to camp at, not wanting to get caught in the dark.  As the sun sunk in the sky we grew less fussy and kept an eye out for some grass, or mud or even somewhere flat.  At a sharp ninety degree left hand bend where the river plunged far into another deep gorge we gave up and pitched camp amongst the long grass and stick insects in a small clearing amongst the banana trees.  It went dark quickly.  We were exhausted which made pitching tents, cooking food or even sorting through our stuff difficult.  We watched the fire flies dancing in the darkness before climbing into our tents, collapsing with fatigue.

Me, somewhere on the Faravory

A hideous boulder choke

The third day started well with continuous grade 4 rapids.  After a while it eased off and there was a lot of flat occasionally broken up with short boulder rapids.  There was one very long boulder choke which took the best part of an hour to climb through and over until we reached the point where the river bubbled up again from beneath the rocks.  We paid local people 5000 ariary (about £1.60) each, more than the average Malagasy daily wage, to help us with our kayaks.

Dan, buried in a long rapid

Rhod on some slides

By early afternoon we were getting hungry and not wanting to risk running out of food we stopped to ask a man at some banana trees if we could buy some.  They took Rhod away, and he emerged twenty minutes later with a bag filled with hot boiled green bananas which tasted like potatoes.  They had taken him to a small house made of sticks with a palm leaf roof where the owner of the plantation had given him her evening meal and refused to let him pay.  We must have looked very weary!

Refuelled, we paddled the last few miles of easy water down to the Mananjary completing the second ever descent of the Faravory, with numerous first descents of individual rapids along the way.  I think it’s fair to say we were all pretty excited to reach this point and know there was only another seventeen kilometres to the takeout.

The Mananjary was very different in character.  It was enormous.  Over one hundred feet wide but deep and flowing through relatively open land it was far less intense than the Faravory.  It was also flowing much more quickly and we soon reached the first rapid.  We opted for a small channel taking us over a rocky ledge, rather than the enormous hole to its right, or wasting time inspecting the other channels.  The water above was pushing hard into the main line so it was difficult to hit the channel in the middle.  Dan scraped his way down the jagged wall jamming his paddle in a crack.  After paddling down Jo had to hold my kayak steady as I scrambled out and up onto the rock splitting the channels to dislodge it.

 

Soon we reached another rapid and I was glad of Jo’s big volume experience to pick a line, and Mandy’s big volume experience to go first.  It was HUGE.  As I dropped over the horizon line, staring down the green tongue into a crashing wall of water I was sceptical.  As I hit the hole I put all my energy into fighting left so as not to get swallowed up by the bigger hole further down on the right.  We had mixed lines on this one too; Dory emerging at the end with a split helmet.

Local transport

That evening we camped on a big sandy beach.  Again, the locals paddled over in their dug-out canoes to watch us.  In the morning we paddled another two hours.  The first kilometre had some grade two rapids, and then it was flat until we reached the take out at mid day. 

The road and village at the take out

 All the photos on this page were taken by Jo Meares

River of Gold

The Team (left to right)- Dory Sifford, Geraint Anderson, Josephine Meares, Rhodri Anderson, Mandy Chan, Daniel Crowley.  Photo courtesy of Dan Crowley.

We drove back to the house in Antananarivo to meet Dory, the last member of our team, who had flown out later than everyone else.  I also had to swap my kayak for one that still floats.  We were told that there was another 2 Dagger Nomads with no holes or welds in but they were located in Ranomafana.  Our next river was a little further on from there so leaving Jo, our first guide, we set off on our nine and a half hour drive south.

Lemur spotting on the way to the Faravory

Being a passenger in Madagascar is a scary experience.  The horn is an essential, otherwise how else would you let anyone know you’re coming when you are overtaking on a blind corner high on a mountain road.  We passed lots of impressively damaged vehicles like a lorry in a ditch with the entire rear axle another fifty meters up the road.  All the cars and busses had cracked windscreens.  Our bus had completely bald tires resembling formula 1 slicks more than something you would use to combat a muddy dirt track road.

Palm leaves drying in the sun for thatch

We arrived at night and parked on the busy main street where our driver spent a long time on the phone before walking off and leaving us for an even longer time.  Eventually a man turned up peering in through the bus windows and walking around the vehicle a few times.  After unsuccessfully pretending we hadn’t seen him Dan eventually slid the window open slightly.  I’m not sure who this man was but he knew our next guide and set off to find our driver.  He then showed us the way to the guest house owned by the rafting company.  We got there, faffed a while, faffed some more, then finally someone turned up at the house to tell us that there wasn’t any electricity and we should go to the hotel further up the road.

Brown Lemur

After dropping off our stuff at the hotel we were taken to a pizzeria which was the furthest restaurant away and didn’t do pizza.  It was a decent place though and sold cheap Zebu (Ox) and rice.  Like everywhere else, it also sold very big bottles of “Three Horse Beer” (THB) which did a good job of de-stressing us.  As we ate we watched the geckos running along the walls.  We then went to inspect the kayaks back at the guest house that we weren’t staying at.  We were led through the darkness to a small room with two inflatable kayaks, and nothing else.  We also found out that our plan had been changed and we would do a different river.  After unsuccessfully trying to call our contact who was arranging some of our logistics we returned to our hotel for more THBs and bed.  Before going to sleep Dan did manage to get through on the phone to find out that one of the Dagger Nomads was “Non operational”.  The other would be there in the morning and was in good condition.  He also managed to change our plan back to the original.  This seemed to be the theme in Madagascar.  Whenever we went more than a couple of hours without going over the plan it would suddenly change and we would spend the next couple of hours trying to change it back.

Dan paddling some slabs

We rose early the next day and went over to the house to check out the kayak.  True to his word, a new kayak had arrived in the night to replace the inflatable.  Unfortunately this Dagger Nomad was actually a Bliss-Stick Mystic giving us a problem.  There were two tall people and only one big kayak.  Rhod, with his smaller or more flexible legs drew the short straw and squeezed into the Mystic while I used the Nomad he had used for the first river.  We packed the kayaks, gave the guide instructions on where to meet us, asked for four wheel drive vehicles (which would be absolutely necessary for the next river) and set off for a multiday on the Faravory.  The Faravory had seen one descent before ours.  It was soloed, but none of the rapids had been attempted.

The view downstream from the put in

The drive to the river wasn’t too bad, once we finally got going.  We were first taken back to the guest house, then drove around for a while and then taken to the town hall.  Some time later we were finally travelling in the right direction.  The road was generally good, mostly tarmac with only the last couple of hours along a dirt track.  At one point we all got out to make the bus lighter to get over some particularly bad pot holes but most other holes had been partially filled with big rocks.  We reached a rickety old wooden bridge high above the Faravory, meandering over the sand far below us.  As we packed our kayaks a crowd gathered; a situation we were getting familiar with.

Locals panning for gold

At mid day we finally set off.  Like the Sahatandra, it was a wonderful feeling paddling under the bridge leaving the chaos of the towns and roads behind.  The first part of this river was completely flat and, worse, shallow.  We spent some time sliding our heavy kit laden kayaks over soft sand.  Looking down through the clear water we could see flakes, and sometimes small lumps, of gold glimmering in the sun.  It seemed like every corner we turned for the first few miles hid people panning for gold.  Entire families lined up in the river as the Dads in the front jammed huge wooden poles into the river bed and bounced on them to disturb the sand, hopeful that they would uncover a nugget.  The others, women and children, stood up to their waste scooping the disturbed sand in their wide metal pans.

Praying Mantis

Mandy picking her way down stream

After a while the river changed character and started to get steeper.  Like the Sahatandra it was horribly siphoned.  Unlike the Sahatandra, the rapids were good quality.  Fun and sometimes intense, but almost always easy to scout from the boat.  The first main rapid of the day was long and complicated ending in a big enclosed ramp with an unprotectable hole.  Anywhere else this would have been fine but here, with our heavy kayaks, so far from help and not wanting to risk getting our kit wet again, we walked it.  The portage was awful, first clambering through thick bushes then climbing over slippery rocks taking us far from the river.  We followed a small stream dropping steeply over and around big boulders.  Here I saw my first of many praying mantises of the trip.  I also saw other odd looking insects.  We passed our kayaks down a six foot waterfall into the shallow pool at the bottom where I saw frogs and even fish.  A little further along I got back into my kayak to cross a deeper pool, limboing under the spider webs disconcertingly low to the water.  After more than an hour we emerged back at the river.

Giant spiders.  This type was typically the size of a hand.

Me on a boof ledge

Some more rapids took us to our lunch spot where we ate bread above a terrific horizon line.  Here the river plunged over a thirty foot ledge which almost looked good if it wasn’t for the enormous hole between both tiers of the double drop.  This portage complete, the rapids picked up and as we learned how these heavy boats handled our confidence grew.  Jo bagged the first descent of a small ledge drop, with a worrying cave behind the curtain, by pulling off a stylish flare against the far wall.  This was a good confidence builder helping us realise we could still throw these heavy boats around.

Siphon!

Not wanting to risk paddling in the dark we stopped reasonably early to camp at a small uneven grassy patch which even had some wood for a fire.  As soon as we arrived we were being watched.  A group of about thirty people came and sat about twenty feet away to stare.  They stared as we changed, as we pitched our tents, as we cooked, as we ate and as we sat around the fire.  When we woke in the morning they still sat and stared, and they stared until we paddled off out of sight.

Packing up on our first morning, with an audience

 All of the photos on this page were taken by Jo Meares.

Madagascar: Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Photo courtesy of Dan Crowley.

I’m back from one of the most epic adventures of my life and over the next few blog posts I’ll tell you all about it.  The excitement started as soon as I got on the plane.  Due to some odd rules the plane and all its contents (including us) had to undergo insecticide treatment.  Decontamination complete we could enjoy the luxuries of Air France; red wine, good food and films.

Our bus

Arriving at Antananarivo airport was a different experience.  Passing though the chaos of passport control, then the chaos of baggage reclaim brought us to the chaos of arrivals where people pounced on us to helpfully wrestle our luggage out of our hands for “tips” to carry it to the car.  On the short journey to the house in Tana where we spent our first night we passed an ox cart in the dark, its silhouette illuminated by the blazing torches front and back sending glimmering embers dancing into the darkness.  What an amazing experience, and so different from the motorways over five thousand miles away.

About to set off on our first Madagascan river

In the morning we met our first guide, (man) Joe, who would be coming with us on the road.  We were also briefly acquainted with the plan that Rhod and Dan had conjured up.  They flew out a few days early and had intended to paddle a warm up river while Mandy, (girl) Jo and I would travel to Perinet.  That night we would meet them, stay in a guest house and in the morning set off for 2 days of good quality white water on the Sahatandra.  Oh the bliss of that long drive, still naively thinking that anything could go to plan in Madagascar.  Getting stopped by a drunk gun wielding police man demanding money should have been a warning.  Arriving late at night we reached the town of Perinet.  The narrow mud streets were difficult to drive in our minibus while looking for the others.  After a lap of town it was clear they weren’t there.  In the morning there still wasn’t any sign of them.  Conscious that we were working to a tight schedule for the entire trip, and crossing our fingers Rhod and Dan were on their way, the three of us set off downstream.

Someone doing their washing in the river at Perinet

It was a wonderful feeling leaving the crowds behind at Perinet.  It was even better looking ahead as the jungle grew thicker.  Huge palms towered over the thick trees.  Banana leaves poked out through the green.  Looking up, long webs hung over the river, each with a big fat black spider in the middle.

Mandy, somewhere on the Sahatandra

Jo punching a hole

The kayak I had rented was in very poor condition.  It may have been manageable on a short (and deep) day trip but for anything with rocks, or anything where the hull had to hold together it was completely unsuitable.  It was terribly oil canned, and at the edge of the big concave there was an cavernous hole that had been badly welded, possibly adding to the damage.  Half an hour in we reached the first small rapid and as expected the weld split.  Within 5 minutes I had to stop on a sandy bank to empty.  This set the theme of the day and although the water was reasonably easy, things were tough with a heavy water-filled kayak.  On top of that the river was horribly siphoned.  Madagascar suffers from violent floods every winter.  The immense volume of water crashing down the river moves everything, rolling house sized boulders along with the flow.  There wasn’t much rock that looked bedded in.  Just about every rapid contained at least one line that led under a boulder.  On most, the majority of the water led into big sumps.  It was always scary looking back upstream at the river above, seeing the water being squeezed out from beneath big boulder chokes.

Me on a rare bedrock rapid

The paddling was slow going.  Inspecting was tough and combined with constantly emptying the kayak we were way behind schedule.  Despite this, there were some decent rapids.  About half way along there was a long bedrock slide that led into a 90 bend with a huge cushion wave reflecting off the far wall.  When we arrived there were some children playing on the rocks at the top.  When we ran it the entire village turned out to watch.

That evening we stopped on a small sandy beach at about 5.00, an hour before dark, to give us time to light a fire and cook food.  We didn’t have a stove.  This was with the two who had gone AWOL but we intended to cook our cuscus on an open fire.  We didn’t have a tarp, this was with Dory who hadn’t arrived yet, and the tents were with Rhod and Dan wherever they had got to.  Fire lit we sat down to prepare our evening meal.  When I opened the dry bag containing the food, to my horror it had leaked and now contained a soggy mush with bits of cardboard that had once been a box and the two halves of my spork that had snapped.  The bread had gone the same way.  My clothes bag had also leaked so my sleeping bag and dry clothes were dripping wet.  These dry bags clearly didn’t cope well with being submerged for eight hours.

Packing up ready for the long walk out

To raise our spirits we spent half an hour chasing a large fish around the shallow pool it had got stranded in.  Despite our best efforts we weren’t getting grilled fish for tea that night.  Luckily, at some point around dusk we heard some shouts across the water.  The others had made it off their river (after taking 4 days rather than the estimated 2) and had taken a local bus to Perinet where they met Joe.  He then took them to the get out of our river where the three of them hiked along the railway line that followed the river until they saw us.  I was so happy to see them all, and I was happier still to see their heavy bags that they had carried, filled with camping gear, food and clothes.  That evening we ate rice and pesto, and sat around the campfire until way past our bed time (which, as we found out, was very early in Madagascar).  I borrowed a sleeping bag from Dan and was asleep in a tent before nine o’clock.

In the morning we packed up ready to walk out.  There was no way I was going to paddle the sinking boat another day, and if we wanted to reach the next river in time we had to finish today.  We followed the railway to the take out.  Out of sticks and kayaks we built a sled that could be dragged along the tracks and we alternated between pulling duties and the arduous job of correcting the sleds direction as it kept slipping off the rails.  After a few miles we saw our first train slowly chugging around the corner ahead of us.  Lifting the sled and kayaks as one we put it next to the tracks and pressed ourselves against the wall as the dirty metal rolled past us in billows of smoke, hauling its heavy cargo.

The next train was a bit more frightening.  We had reached a gorge, with the train line hugging the slope high above the river.  The sled was proving hard work to keep together and had already cut through the throw line we used to lash it together where the rope was rubbing against the rails.  It had also stopped raining so it wasn’t sliding as easily as the metal rails were drying out.  After another section of rope wore through we stopped to retie it.  Just as we set off again someone shouted “TRAIN”.  I turned around to see a train behind me with the gap quickly closing.  We grabbed the sled pulling it off the rails towards the drop into the gorge, braced ourselves, ducking low next to the tracks trying to hold the mass of wood and plastic to stop it sliding over the edge.  A split second later the train was passing, and one of the kayaks was going.  Sliding from the top of the pile it lightly skipped over the edge of the drop and quietly slid through the bushes out of sight.  Thankfully it stopped in the vegetation before going over the final drop where it could have escaped for good into the river over a hundred feet below.  Sending Jo to get it, she tied it to a rope so we could all haul it back up.  The sled had also taken a battering and desperately needed repairs.  After carefully retying all the knots another train passed.  Again the sled fell apart and this was the final straw.  Shouldering our boats we hiked the last part back to the village.

Tired, broken, hungry and thirsty we clambered back into the minibus.  Our bodies were beaten but not our minds.  This was only the warm-up and harder challenges were still to come...

All photos, unless stated otherwise are courtesy of Jo Meares