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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Mandy, somewhere on the Sahatandra |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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