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The closest I’ve come to dying on an adventure was on a rafting trip in Peru. We spent three days on the mighty Apurimac river, the longest and largest tributary of the Amazon. Our 50km section passed through a gorge 2000 metres deep with some of the most dangerous white water in the world, something I wasn’t aware of when I booked.
I hadn’t fully recovered from an earlier gruelling trip and started with a cold which developed into a raging fever. I was in a bad condition to be facing such a challenging adventure.
.... You can’t start a trip on an empty stomach and so as soon as we arrived at the river our guides prepared lunch. They were a relaxed, jovial bunch, who’d worked together for years. I didn’t yet know of their skill in the water, but they knew their food and how to prepare it, and were neat and organised, and to me that all boded well. It was a simple meal of finely diced vegetables and tuna doused in lime juice and salt, a sort of tinned tuna ceviche, with cheese and bread.
On the river the team were transformed, both mentally and physically. They looked different; their stature rose as they steeled themselves for what was to come, and they were focused and unwavering. They knew the river and how dangerous it could be and treated it with the seriousness it demanded.
There were over thirty of us in all, in four large inflatable boats, two supply boats and two kayaks. Six and a guide in each boat; three on each side perched on the inflatable rim, with a paddle in our hands and our feet wedged under a strap in the bottom for stability. Facing forward at the back of the boat, on a seat on a raised platform with two giant oars was the guide. He’d steer and line the boat to run the rapids like a rodeo rider on a bull. He’d shout loud and simple instructions: ‘left paddle’, only the left side to paddle; ‘right paddle’; ‘left in’, the left side to jump into the middle and hang onto the rope running around the edge, ‘right in’ and ‘middle’, when we’d all jump in, if say a horizontal wave was about to hit us or if he saw a void in the rapids and the boat would drop a few feet and could easily bounce us all out.
The tiny kayaks were the first responders. They were super agile, darting about like flies, one at the front and the other towards the back, always alert, there to pick up anyone who fell in. If someone did they would get very close, but just out of reach, shouting words of reassurance until the unfortunate soul had calmed down and could follow their instructions. It seemed cruel to make the half-drowned wretch suffer a longer beating by the river, but if they didn’t the kayak ran the risk of being capsized by the weight of the flailing swimmer.
The team moved instinctively just with the occasional hand gesture above the roar of the river. Their choreography was expert and graceful. It was like watching a highly trained American football team with a set move for every possible eventuality.
After lunch we each got kitted out in a wet suit, over-shorts, long sleeve top, life jacket, helmet and wetsuit boots. It was all bulky, tight fitting and hot – like wearing a suit of armour – and with my cold and rising fever I was struggling to breath.
The driver of our boat was called Romel, short and slight, but hugely skilled, strong and courageous. Ahead of a set of rapids he’d give us a brief overview and then we’d paddle until we hit the line of attack, when he’d tell us to stop. As we drifted into the jaws of the rapids I’d feel a surge of adrenaline and concentration, then as we hit and followed his commands, an intense burst of energy and focus, and finally as we safely reached the other side, a huge release. We all felt the same. Our shared risk and collective effort was quickly forging us into a team and by the second day we were bonded, rowing and moving in unison under the calm guidance of Romel. Like every great leader of action he had our utmost respect, and he inspired in us great confidence – it was a ‘river rapid love-fest’ – and we would have followed him anywhere. At the end of one particularly ferocious set of rapids he shouted ‘middle’ and we all jumped inside as a huge foaming wave covered the boat. A second later and we all would have been washed overboard.
It was the groups tradition that once a boat got through a set of rapids everyone would raise their paddles, knock them together and chant. It was very primal, bonding, and intensely satisfying.
As for the chant – well, it had to be from Ben Hur, one of my favourite films. I’ve seen it so many times that I know a lot of the dialogue. Running through the film in my mind has got me through many a long, cold night in a bivvy bag. One time, on a hike with my godson, who is now the epitome of charm and good company, but at the time was going through a rather taciturn phase, I spent a large chunk of the day reciting as much of the dialogue as I could remember. There is a great scene when the hero, Charlton Heston, finds himself as a galley slave on a Roman warship. His commander, the great Jack Hawkins, addresses all the slaves before a battle and implores them to ‘row well, and live’. And so that became our chant – a little close to the bone as it turned out.
That night we camped on a sandbank in the gorge. It was a beautiful setting but I was in no state to enjoy it. The adrenaline of the afternoon had kept my cold at bay, but now it had free reign and by the end of the evening had become a fully blown fever. It wasn’t helped by hearing that over the last few years several people had died on this stretch of river, and that the most dangerous section was coming up tomorrow. I sweated it out during an uncomfortable night staring at the strip of stars visible above the narrow gorge and thinking about the river.
By the morning the fever had passed, but I was feeling a little weak and the cold had gone to my chest. With my tight-fitting life jacket, breathing was strained. My head was in a fog and that’s no place to be on a deadly river like this.
If you fell in the main dangers were:
being smashed against the huge boulders which peppered the rapids;
taking in water and then if you ended up facing the raging flow of the river being pummelled and not be able to breath, or
being dragged under by strange eddies and currents.
But the one that really frightened the crew was a whirlpool – a large vortex of water, usually at the end of narrow sections of rapids which could easily pull a person under and was often too dangerous for a kayak to enter. We only came across one, but it was big and caught one of the supply boats. The driver desperately tried to break out of its grip. It was like a scene from Greek mythology, from the Odyssey when Odysseus is sucked into a whirlpool off the coast of Sicily. Our modern day Odysseus had a life jacket that was battered and worn like leather, his bare arms and shoulders straining on the oars, with wild hair, a full beard and a mud-coloured helmet, he was soaked and glistening. He shouted something to his colleagues on the rocks. They pulled and pushed and after a herculean effort he managed to break free. But it was a sobering sight.
Fortunately, the day started with a series of smaller rapids but quickly got more serious. Several times we would be hit by huge waves or a void and Romel would shout ‘middle’ and we’d all jump in the middle and hang on to the guide rope. As we were finishing a gruelling set of rapids we were heading straight towards a huge wave of water bouncing off a boulder. Romel shouted ‘middle’ and we jumped. As we landed the boat hit a void and dropped sharply. We all reached for the guide rope to stabilise us but as the boat hit the water me and the person opposite missed the rope and bounced up, hit each other, and, with the grace of a pair of synchronised swimmers, somersaulted over our respective sides into the raging water.
As I sank sound was muted and I remember looking up at the swirling opaque light with white bubbles of air spinning and reflecting. I surfaced into the loud raging water, gasped for air and was dragged under again. As I sank deeper it grew darker, a churning mass of brown and black. Without the air bubbles, it was difficult to see the speed of the water, but I could feel it and out of the murkiness boulders appeared like ghouls in a ghost ride as I was buffeted off them like a ball in a pin ball machine.
I don’t remember trying to breathe, but I do remember feeling disorientated. I'm not sure how long I was under, probably much less than it felt – maybe only ten or twenty seconds - but as I was pushed backwards and down further, I looked up at the light of the surface shrinking and the murky dark water pouring in from all sides. I remember thinking ‘now I’m in serious trouble’. Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye, a movement of water and then I felt being pulled backwards as Romel, with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, grabbed me and pulled me to the surface and towards the boat, where I was heaved back onboard. With incredible bravery Romel had dived in after me.
My poor fellow paddler was left to be spat out by the rapids and picked up by one of the kayaks. He wasn’t happy.
That evening, over a well-deserved beer, I asked Romel why he’d done it. He shrugged and smiled, and wouldn’t be drawn. Maybe it was that unlike most of the others, we were both married and had young children, maybe because I was ill, maybe he knew that the water I was in was particularly dangerous, or maybe, as I suspect, he didn’t know why – it was just instinct.
That’s the thing about a great guide like Romel; we trust them with our lives, and they protect us with skill, heroism and modesty. They are the unsung heroes of any adventure. I will never forget the gift he gave me so casually, and of all the mental images I have from my travels the most meaningful is of Romel’s arm approaching me, like the hand of God.
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