Homeward Bound

End of expedition, the team contemplate the Atlantic

 

Cut short and denied access to Brazil the team became retrospective; what were we truly aiming for?   

 To travel the Amazon source to Sea certainly yes, but our motives have always been so much more than a qualification, a quantity of miles. What we have gained is more than we dreamed possible, and we’re big dreamers. To be challenged, to experience hardship and difficulty and come through a better, stronger person is a bi-product of an expedition but the aim of an adventure. We are first and foremost adventurers. That is; primarily on a personal journey and secondly on an aim-driven exploit. The experiences we’ve shared, the real-life adventure we have lived was, and always will be, the driving force behind our leaving home shores for the remote and wild extremes of the world.     

“Triumph and disaster” are two imposters we wished to court and when seeking one it seems probable you’d find the other. To treat them the same is one thing, we’re still trying to understand the first. Why, despite failing in our aim, do we feel we’ve met with a success unimagined by us, a sense of accomplishment and pride that has little to do with mileage? Hopefully it’s that we’ve grown and matured as men and know more about the wider world and our path through it. Well that’s what we hope; told recently that our tanned and rugged selves looked professional and serious, scary and intimidating even, brought the biggest boyish grins to some very smug faces that it seems you’ll find much of what flew out of Heathrow, almost half a year ago, on our return.   

And yes, our return is imminent (for some of us). Since writing about Columbia a whirlwind of travel at speeds we are now quite unaccustomed to has taken place. I am currently sitting on a freshwater beach staring out at an Ocean, the jungle at my back and no longer surrounding me. It is the Atlantic, that sea of our dreams and for so long our aim. Sat here staring east towards home we’ve been contemplating the last 6 months and how fast the past month in particular has gone. Once the relevant hard decisions were made we applied ourselves to the tasks at hand with all the energy and enthusiasm we brought to this continent and a blur of activity ensued; a very sick monkey that needed nursing was top of the list. He gets far more love and attention than we four combined from you all on the blog so we’d probably not be so welcome home if we let anything happen to the little guy! Besides he’s been such a wonderful accomplice for nearly two months that we were generally upset when he ate something he shouldn’t have and went comatose for nearly two days. Rushed to the vet by Patch and fed medicine through a syringe he’s now absolutely fine I assure you. We left him in the capable hands of our good Swiss friend Herve who has now taken him to a monkey sanctuary to be rehabilitated in to the wild professionally, our own efforts having run out of time.   

Monkey A & E over, secondly was a frantic auction off the back of the boat, we seemed to have acquired an outstanding quantity of kit and a huge crowd of locals took the opportunity to grab a bargain or just be plain nosey. After much haggling we managed to shift everything from our dodgy generator to the chicks; Chicken and Chips. Jason could sell snow to an Eskimo. Next finding a ferry to Manaus and hectically trying to get ALL the team and equipment on it was emotional while attempting to cancel import documents for the boat. Customs are as slow and evil here as anywhere else it would appear.   

With our hammocks hanging sandwiched in between a thousand others we waved goodbye to the tri-border for the deep Amazon basin city of Manaus. A four-day nonstop journey that would try the good will and morale of the hardiest backpacker but one we thought was rather luxurious; dry, WITH running water, what more could you possibly want? Long forgotten social skills are painfully brought back to life as we engage with English speakers other than ourselves and try to participate in actual intelligent conversation (our own having run out a long time ago).   

Manaus came and went, our time spent there ponderous and strange with no odd tasks to fulfill, no tool shops visited, no supplies needing stockpiling, not even the customary tar to be bought and poured on new leaks. We try our hand at tourism and fail miserably. So on to Belem with another six-day boat journey and a new friend for the book of faces. This one though with quite a story to tell and one that we in particular were very interested in. His name is Logan, from America, he was also travelling the Amazon with another friend. Starting near Iquitos they were paddling in a local canoe to the coast 2000 miles away when serious misfortune struck close to Manaus: accosted by armed drug runners, roughed up and chained to their boat the situation started to turn really nasty when, frustrated by the difficulties of communication, Logan was threatened with a shotgun and the imminent loss of a foot if he didn’t start understanding. Well total robbery is easy to understand as that was what was taking place as the drug runners took everything. Understandably shaken Logan’s partner departed for home from Manaus which leaves yet another young man on the Amazon seeking the ocean by alternative means. Read into this encounter what you will, the implications of providence and a close avoidance of a similar, possibly worse, fate for ourselves is clearly there.   

So we arrived at the long-awaited Belem, a much bigger and more built up city than expected. Arrived and quickly departed as we’ve quickly travelled on to the island of Marajo (an island the size of Switzerland!) that plugs the mouth of the Amazon and closer to our goal of the Atlantic (which conveniently has wonderful beaches…) Currently living in a bar for free on the beach, our hammocks literally swinging 20m from the sea Rest and Relaxation is definitely the name of the game currently. Right to the very end we remain stunned by the unexpected generosity and friendship of complete strangers on our journey, be it vegetables from a poor Peruvian farmer high in the Andes to the hospitality of a family run bar on the coast that comes with free breakfast and a mountain of our kit in their kitchen.   

 In thigh deep snow and thin air we climbed to 5600 meters on Nevado Mismi. Walked over 300kms through the wild and untamed high Andes with our homes on our back. Rafted 140kms through intense white water. Cycled up and over the last bastion of mountains on the final road before coming up against a wall of jungle. Then to have paddled over 1500km on small twisting tributaries. Fought with whirlpools and narrowly escaped minus one canoe leaving us stranded. Literally ghosted past pirates and been held at arrow point to the accusation of harvesting organs. Made a boat. Nearly sunk said boat. Adopted a baby monkey and then rowed it all another 1500km to Brazil. A further 3000km on and we are stood staring out of the mouth of the greatest river on Earth, a river for which we climbed to a still, icy pool to witness being born just over  6000km away. Well, we feel rather grateful to have survived it all, grateful for all the love and support from so many who have followed us and grateful to have shared it. If you’ve enjoyed reading about it, I assure you, we have thoroughly enjoyed living it. Ladies and Gents, it’s been a pleasure.   

James   

Logan – our fellow explorer

Attempted tourism – not feeling it

Home on the River

The waterway in Manaus

Life on the beach – time to unwind

A glimmer of hope to continue paddling?

Our arrival into Belem

Buffalo – transport Marajo style

First glimpse of Belem after so long on the River

The obligatory washing sessions

Jungle homes

Peaceful early morning in a hammock

The family from Marajo that kept us – we continue to be blown away by peopoles kindness

End of expedition, the team contemplate the Atlantic

Home on the Atlantic

Life on the lancha

From the Jungle with Love

As this website draws near to the end of its days it is about time we paid a tribute to our readers. We opened this blog with little knowledge of how we would be able to convey our experiences; we simply knew that we wanted to share them. There is a question among philosophers; if a tree falls down in a forest and nobody is there to hear it does it make a sound? You have shown such great support for us as we have endeavored to draw you into the Amazon with our writing that some of you may have imagined the sound of our boat crashing through the trees in a ‘costa braba’ as you joined us on extracts of the journey.

We paid close attention to the traffic on the blog and to date there have been just under forty thousand views. I don’t know how that rates in internet terms but it feels pretty good. Every single one of those ‘hits’ spurred us on and brought a smile to our faces in some trying times – that is a hell of a lot of smiles! So this is a thank you to all those people that have read about our exploits, to those who have posted messages on the blog, emailed us and stayed in satellite phone contact. You have made it possible for this journey to be bigger than just us and added an unforeseen dimension of enjoyment.

There are so very many people to thank for making this all possible and we could never do it justice with a list of names. The Amazon source to sea team extends far beyond the four of us in South America, unfortunately you have read the vast majority of our stories but we all look forward to sharing them first hand and perhaps there are a few tales that didn’t quite make the blog we could weave for you over a drink. You know who you are and we will not quickly forget. Thank you.

If you find that you have developed an addiction to following adventures  there are many and someone in particular who has been a huge inspiration to us is Ed Stafford – have a look at his exploits as he closes in on his goal of the Atlantic.

Jason and the team

Into the Wild

The Tri border is an incredibly unique place; take three very differing countries, two languages, a manic water way, loads of soldiers and police, squash them together and put it in the middle of absolutely nowhere and that is this place. At this odd little clash of cultures at the gateway to the Brasilian Amazon you can expect to meet some interesting people; an exceptional encounter with a crazy Swiss takes the biscuit.

Six years ago I was a spotty teenager studying for my GCSE’s, the war in Iraq was in its infancy and Athens was miraculously ready to host the Olympics. Feel like a while ago? Well a young man named Hervé Neukomm got on a bike in Switzerland and started cycling.  Six years, 46,000 km later and on the other side of the world this now bearded crazy Swiss is still going. The bike (the very same!) now sits in a custom-made ‘bici-boat’ in which the bike powers water paddles. Despite a continent of flooded jungle without a road in sight he just keeps on going.

To say this man is ‘well travelled’ and world savvy is a gross understatement. His warm company and friendship through this difficult stage for us has been a God send. Ever ready with wise counsel, he’s been a constant companion for nearly three weeks and combined our boats made the oddest spectacle on the entire Amazon!

We were fortunate really that we met Hervé, for an unbalanced team we would have been as our long time guide and good friend Christian has left us and departed for a home which now stands over a thousand miles away. This remarkable man was a pleasure to travel with and learn from. For one so young his knowledge of the jungle and river was a wonder to behold. His company will be sorely missed and his friendship not quickly forgotten.

Leticia, Colombia is a fine little town, our chosen abode among the three countries here, but we are impatient to be active, faced with the insurmountable difficulties presented by the Brazilian authorities we proceeded to do what comes naturally; scrap the diplomacy and head into the wild. The Colombian jungle is as untouched as it is fabled to be unruled. Passing hugely powerful and heavily armed Naval patrol boats speaks of the countries bloody and ongoing fight to rid itself of its drug ridden world image. Happily we stumbled upon no jungle cocaine labs as we motored up and into the dense interior of this corner of the Amazon.

Told repeatedly that our aim of reaching a network of seven lakes was unfeasible due to low water and dense jungle we carried on regardless. We long ago began to take local advice with a pinch of salt as it is always negative. They love to be the bearers of bad news and get positively excited when there’s danger to report! This river though did indeed get very small and we only just managed to scrape under a local bridge, towing ‘Pura Vida’ or ‘Pure Life’ the bici-boat behind us. It was close to here that I saw Hervé dive off the back of his boat. Monkey was at this point resident on Pura Vida for the journey and had actually fallen off the back! Having scooped him up our terrified baby primate was now perched on Hervé’s head as he swam after the boats. Rapid response was quickly established and like Thunderbird 4 Andrew was dispatched on our tractor tire life boat (Now called H.M.S Shit has hit the Fan) to the rescue of the man and monkey overboard. Crisis averted and a biscuit for our foolish sodden monkey we arrived at the gateway to the first lake where the tributary reached its most narrow point. The team strained as machetes flew through the air chopping up the thick mesh of vegetation that tried so hard to deny us access, one final big push and the boat cleared the entrance with Pura Vida gracefully following.

Off the main river the water systems of the mighty Amazon are an amazingly different world. Teeming with fish and wildlife they are a paradise of nature that defy belief. We’d come to this remote place for a purpose other than sightseeing though. It was high time Nyo Nyo left us for the wild, the mighty Brazilian Amazonas being no place for a baby monkey. Though a much cherished pet we couldn’t pass up this chance to rehabilitate monkey to such a fitting environment, not when only a month remains to us on this continent. It was also a place where we could really appreciate our boat and come to terms with the fact that we would have to part with it soon.

When ‘straying off the beaten track’ you are bound to make contact with a more secluded peoples. Often scared, always wary and sometimes aggressive, understanding the psyche of such people takes a natural. Hervé is such a person. Speaking seven languages and Spanish like a native he seamlessly smoothed our arrival into these remote areas where we were quickly accosted by native representatives. He seems truly to understand people, be them Namibian, Syrian or Colombian and could write the definitive book on how to be accepted the world over. Watching him engage and control situations, swap jokes and ultimately command the respect of the locals is a far from common sight among tourists in far-flung lands, but then this man is definitively not a tourist, his home, after all is these far-flung corners of the world.

So free to venture forth having imparted some gifts to the local chief we set off to explore the system of lakes. No longer full of muddy silt, the water is a clear dark color – the fabled black water of the Amazon. So full of fish were the lakes that it didn’t take long for the team to sustain a number of Piranha bites as we swam in this idyllic place! We wreak our own revenge come dinner time though as fishing becomes childs play. Andrew is nowhere to be seen as he has disappeared into the forest, machete in hand, in pursuit of the perfect wood to carve. We are the proud owners of an exquisitely carved backgammon board minus the pieces so far.

Not forgetting our main purpose we constantly bank up against the jungle to encourage Nyo nyo to explore. Initially very scared the first ventures were en-masse to boost his confidence and also involved us actually climbing the trees with the little wimp. Having had a play, eaten everything he can get his little hands on, he’d come scurrying back for dinner time or if we all suddenly left him for the boat. This is clearly going to take some time! His diet now consists of purely fruit and water. No more tea and spaghetti! Hunting bugs on the boat with Nyo nyo is also a pleasant past time, he needs the help and we want them gone!

So monkeys’ confidence grows, as do our climbing skills, but his rehabilitation into his natural environment goes on. One wonders, as I watch four tanned, semi-naked, barefoot men jumping about the jungle canopy with a baby monkey, how long our own re-hab will last?

James

The most ridiculous sight on the Amazon

Jase calling to the monkeys

Andy practising his rapid response techniques

Nyo-nyo confused by his new housemates

Herve on his beloved bicycle

Andy

A tense game of backgammon

Nyo-nyo practises his climbing

the boat, so organised as we prepare to leave

Andy precariously poses

The bici boats propulsion system silhoueted by an amazonian sky

Herve perfecting his technique

Party time on the boat

One of Persevere Without Fears’ last journeys

The last photo with Christian before he headed back up river

Sunset on the Colombian lakes

The team huddles for dinner

James running introductions

Herve – Our much respected crazy Swiss friend

James christening the lifeboat

Patch makes a friend

Bici boat tackles a tributary

Wash time for a beard that is swiftly getting out of hand

Various tasks on the boat

Herve enjoying the rarity of a tow

Our last Peruvian home before crossing the border

Team in the trees

Team in the trees

Fun on the lakes

The crazy Swiss gets some shots of the crazy Brits and the African

Christan feeding an Amazonian Parrot

Steak! A rare treat

Nyo-nyo cleaning his teeth

A moody Amazonian Sky

Patch catching dinner or wreaking revenge for bites?

What now?

Well; the best laid plans of mice and men, as we all know, go constantly pear-shaped. And our carefully laid plans, being no different, have suffered a severe beating. Bureaucracy, the blame society, the rapidly shrinking world, many things are to blame for our misfortunes (not least a huge misunderstanding that laws and legislation DO actually exist in this far corner of the world!) Apparently the doors are closing on good old-fashioned adventure; on the freedom to risk oneself in daring greatly in the pursuit of hard-won dreams / the independence to accept the necessary dangers of falling low when aspiring to great heights. We find ourselves unaccountable for our own lives, be them destined for fortune or failure. The fear of recrimination has caused our expedition to grind to a halt here in the middle of the Amazon, not by storms, pirates or snakes but by a clerk behind a desk.

It turns out that this clerk is backed by a rather efficient Brazilian navy who controls the Amazon waterways, a navy keen to avert bad international press, who take a dim view to young adventurers and an even dimmer one to self-made boats. So averse are they to our passage that a meeting between the tri border countries took place (the obliging Peruvian navy showed us the documentation after assuring us that they had fought our corner bless them) in which the Brazilians stated that our expedition was denied access to Brazil and that Colombia and Peru were requested to deny us any help!

On the verge of slinking through we had to pause for thought, so ready to take the plunge we’d been unaware that we’d even registered on the Brazilian radar let alone caused such a fuss. What was one day a slight risk of a slap on the wrist had turned to three Marine check points all looking out for us, a possible confiscated boat, $5000 fine (each), 15 days in jail, deportation and a twenty year ban from Brazil! Wow, when did things suddenly get so serious?

We’re not averse to a bit of risk, thrive on it even, but we draw the line at a $20,000 donation that has become more a certainty than a gamble. No dear friends, it’s the end of the line for dear old Persevere Without Fear. We’ve explored many ideas and received so much good advice from many of you for which we are extremely grateful. What has finally defeated us though is the old enemy Time. With educations, careers and lives to pursue we’ve had to make our hardest “plan” yet, to proceed by alternative means to our ultimate destination; the Atlantic. Unable to play the bureaucratic game any longer it is time we acted before all hope of reaching our goal is completely lost.

We’ll still gaze out at the Atlantic having travelled from its source to the sea, all 4000 miles of it. Over 2000 of it having been walked, rafted, cycled and rowed. It’s not the number we set our hearts on and bent our bodies to but then our hearts are young and bodies strong and we find we are capable of bearing failure, besides we wouldn’t be doing this if it was easy. We’ve got a lot to learn but we like to think we do learn. We consider time spent pursuing our dreams time well spent despite the outcome and we hope you agree.

So the means have changed but the expedition lives on. More than this though our spirits remain unbowed and we hope you continue to read, enjoy and share our experiences as we plough on in pursuit of our old-fashioned adventure in this rapidly changing world.

And in that vein I’d like to leave you with a little bit of hope for the future, while waiting at the border we’ve not been idle. I said the door was closing on the strange and untamed, that the wild was being pruned and boxed in. Well it’s not shut yet, the world is still an amazing place and while there’s still passion to pursue adventure we do honestly believe it’s there to be sought. For us that meant turning our boat 180 degrees from Brazil, towards a less, well, lawful country, and with an obscure Colombian tributary to explore and a wimp of a monkey to rehabilitate into the wild we set off in search of that flighty temptress…

James

Emergency Blog – The Hardest Decisions

Iquitos was a whir of activity after our leg from Pucallpa, we knew the boat had problems (bit of an understatement?) and that if we were ever going to make it to the ocean we had to fix them. Christian spoke to me seriously saying, “That was a small test of you and the vessel, what will come next will be the proof and you have this time to prepare”. We set to it, each day dividing and prioritizing aims before dispersing into the city. Getting the generator serviced after drowning it in the river, getting a dry cell battery as the one we had couldn’t cut it, designing and fabricating steel oars as our handmade wooden ones were already broken and wearing through, extending the wave breakers to make the boat more robust in difficult conditions and fitting two powerful bilge pumps that would get water out of the hulls before it became critical – We had our hands very full for a week! All of this culminated in needing to get permission for the next leg of the journey to the Brazilian border, I tried with Christian, he tried on his own, we tried in a roundabout way through ‘some friends’ – the marines refused to give us permission to be on the river as they did not want the responsibility for us travelling through another pirate zone. We should have known this was a sign of things to come. We left anyway, we cannot wait forever and although the marines’ permission would help us, the lack thereof would not be too much of a hindrance.

Something else we left Iquitos with is a motor. This piece of equipment needs to be explained in fair detail as it runs hard against the grain of our original ethos and though it gives us the capability we require to make the Atlantic in time each one of us after his fashion resents its presence on the boat.

Iquitos was a milestone for the team, at some of the earlier stages of the trip it felt so impossibly far away. I remember thinking how hard the acclimatization climb was, picking up my backpack on the first leg of the walk after climbing to the summit, hitting the first set of rapids, I remember all too well the mountain we had to get over on bicycles to get into the start of the jungle, the blistered hands as we paddled down the Urubamba, the sweat and frustration that went into the boat in Pucallpa, and the fear that we might lose said boat as the waves smashed us about in storms, all of this bar the pongo and the escape from Pucallpa done under our own steam.

We did a new time appreciation in Iquitos based on the speeds we had managed out of Pucallpa and we realized that it would be nigh on impossible to reach the Atlantic by the end of July which is our deadline. We sat quietly for some time, each with his thoughts, each grasping for a solution. We could get as far as the time frame allowed before heading for the airports? We could extend our time frame by a month and in doing so extend the limbo that our lives are in by missing a year of university, putting off Sandhurst further and limiting the window of work experience an architect requires? Or we could mix human power with horse power to make up a daily quota that is sufficient to get us to the Atlantic in time?

We began the adventure with such high hopes of joining the ranks of explorers that we have admired our whole lives, from Shackleton, Scott, Mallory and Hillary to their modern living breathing counterparts: Mark Kalch who completed the expedition before us under human power and has recently committed to navigating the greatest rivers on each continent under human power alone! Ed Stafford who has walked and walked – for over two years this man has walked through the jungle fighting financial pressure, time constraints, the jungle itself. The man is unstoppable and yet so down to earth that he donated some equipment to our own expedition! It felt to us like we were letting all of our credibility as professional explorers slide as we walked into a shop to buy the motor. Perhaps we take ourselves too seriously? I hope dear readers that you understand. As it stands we have not yet had cause to use the motor apart from orientating the front of the boat to break the waves as we have talked about in previous blogs, we are still toiling our way across the continent but we will have to supplement this with motorized moves if we are to arrive in time.

Onto problem and decision number two; Brazilian bureaucracy! We are a young team and we are the first to acknowledge that many of the people who attempt such things bring a lot more experience to the table but we believe in our goal and our standard response to any hiccups has been; “we will make a plan”. My word the plans we have made! From arranging the white water rafting to three of us breaking our personal altitude achievements, from the near drowning of half the team on the Urubamba to carrying everything we needed to survive and to share the experience half way across a continent on a boat we built with our bare hands. We are finally in Tabatinga – the bustling tri border between Brazil, Peru and Colombia.

Here however “we will make a plan” might not quite cut it. After three days of back and forth the Peruvian marines finally gave us the documentation we needed to get into Brazil with our boat. We thought the Peruvian documentation had been a challenge but we were met by the likes of Brazilian Customs, their Federal Police and  Marines, each with their own requirements, their hoops to jump through, their disbelief in our youth, the fact that we have built our own boat and their unwillingness to a give a green light lest we should fall prey to the same things the Peruvians have spent five months warning us about. We have persevered via different routes for ten days, even seeking the advice of a lawyer but they refuse point-blank to give us permission to navigate the waters of the Amazon in Brazil.

You have followed us for months; you know who we are and where our spirit comes from. We are happy to contend with mud, illness, stingrays, piranhas, near drowning, sinking, delays, and even the ever constant threat of pirates; We can deal with physical hardships and we can manage our fears, we are however finding it very difficult to rationalize a potential end to this expedition due to paperwork.

This was not part of the plan. “Persevere without fear” has defined this portion of our lives and believe us we will push harder. We simply decided that should things not go in our favor it would be best that all the people who have played a part in this adventure by supporting us are in the loop and it doesn’t come as a shock if the expedition no longer becomes viable.

Their main points are that because we built the boat it does not meet safety standards, because we are foreign we do not understand the dangers of the Amazonas and that we are not qualified to pilot the boat through such a shipping lane. I am not sure if they realize how we got here. In the most humble way possible we are an exceptionally competent team, we approached this professionally and it is frustrating that they don’t care. I have been driving boats since I was five years old and I have gone through licensing bodies to give this more weight but it means nothing to the Brazilian authorities and we are running out of ideas.

And so this is both a warning order and an appeal for help and advice, we have emailed embassies, tour operators, expedition management companies, visited the lawyer and discussed possible ways forward. There is a poll here and I ask that you leave your ideas should you have any on how we might get round this particular hiccup.

Jason and the team

Cast your vote on the situation below!

The Race to Iquitos

You may find this hard to believe dear readers but as yet, we had not actually reached ‘The Amazon’. No the actual big moment when we would finally pass into the area of which our entire expedition was named after (and took four months to get to) would pass us by too, In the dark with two of the team members asleep. It is signified by the meeting of two great rivers, our beloved Ucayali and the Maranon. When dusk would finally arrive three very startled gringos would find themselves in the middle of what appeared to be an ocean. The Amazon is HUGE!

For the next couple of days progress went well. The weather was good, we were maintaining a steady pace as Iquitos drew closer and closer. Eventually river traffic would slowly pick up, as we attracted more gaping stares and curious glances from passing boats. All no doubt on their way towards Iquitos as well. Some pretty crucial navigation was also needed around this point, as a wrong turn now would lead us straight past Iquitos taking us literally days and days out of our chosen path. And we certainly needed this port of call. The boat needed a lot of additional work after our near sinking episode and we were in dire need of a new pump.

It was about now that everything started to untangle! A storm blows in rapidly from the jungle to our right, emerging as if by magic out of the dense Amazonian jungle. We are swept over to the left bank by the now blowing winds and the mounting waves. We are getting déjà vu!

The Rain is now lashing down in torrents. Using the rudder soon becomes pointless as the wind is too strong. Before long Patch, the right oarsman is out of action due to our proximity to the bank, Next moment we have hit the side and we aren’t going anywhere. My oar is now useless too.

Now stuck we are in a tricky position to be in because the boat is taking hits by the waves from the side and is unable to roll with them due to it being pinned to the bank, Sin Miedo starts taking on water rapidly. Pump is still out of action. We’ve learnt our lesson, this time we were going to move fast.  As Jase, myself and Christian try desperately to push the boat around and lever off from the bank so that our prow is facing the oncoming waves, James and Patch rapidly open up Sins hold and start bailing fast. Likewise is done with Perseverance afterwards. To no avail however have we been able to turn the boat around to tackle the storm in the way it was designed to. Face on. We could not weather the storm out like this. Continuously pinned and continuously taking on water.

We had to separate ourselves from the land, make it twenty or so meters back in to the river and claw along the bank trying to find a suitable inlet to weather this storm out in. With Supreme effort we all together managed to desperately coax our boat away from the unforgiving bank. And with every man jack at an oar or a paddle we began tediously to fight our way along down the river. Visibility was low. The storm was pretty thick around us and we had no idea whether we would come across an inlet or a calm eddy soon or not. Again the boat began to list slightly as Sin starts taking on more water.

Then quite suddenly; Calm. Beautiful, tranquil calm. With a powerful gust of wind she had passed us by. Relatively unscathed too! The weather can change so abruptly out here that it never fails to leave you feeling rather humbled and awed. By our calculations Iquitos was now no further than nine kilometers away. The time was about four o’clock. So we hoped to make it before nightfall. We couldn’t believe that we were so close to Iquitos. We had talked about this city forever. It is just over the half way mark of our entire journey and we could almost taste that fried chicken! However she wasn’t going to let us off easy. Behind us in the distance we could see yet another almighty hell brewing up! And it was coming right towards us. The real race towards Iquitos had begun.

Patch and I began rowing for all we worth, ever with our eyes on the rapidly approaching storm.  It was about now that we also realized that we were in fact rowing furiously towards another completely new ‘tormenta’ or storm. The things must be attracted to us. I looked over at Christian at this point as he excitedly exclaimed that we were going to be stuck in the meeting of them. I think he was enjoying this.

As the kilometers closed in so did the storms. We were going to get pinned. And what’s more in one of the busiest water ways on this continent. (Iquitos completely relies upon its waterways. It is in fact the biggest city in the world without a road running to it).

Abruptly our boat ground to a halt, we had grounded. I turned around expecting trouble to instead behold for the first time a city long-awaited.  Iquitos was sitting there. On the opposite bank, right where the river turned a sharp almost 90 degree corner on an enormous T-junction to finally reveal our goal. 

Our problems didn’t end there of course. If we tried to cross this enormous inlet over to Iquitos in our sluggish vessel we would undoubtedly get swept down and towards the major shipping docks. We had to get motor towed across.

With only minutes to spare before the almighty clash of the tormentas our savior appeared in the form of an old rickety boat and a grinning little toothless man. Who cared as long as it had an engine. She towed us to safety in the nick of time. As we moored up and gratefully paid our rescuer, nothing was at the forefront of our minds more than the very strong desire to get of our boat and into a hostel for the night. Dark had set in by this point and the storm was raging. In the ensuing madness of packing up our home (literally nothing can be left behind, even the string that we use to lash down the plastic tarp in foul weather would get stolen) Somehow, someone accidentally packed Nyo-nyo our pet spider monkey.  We didn’t know this for sure of course, and we searched high and low for the poor little fella to no avail. We could only assume he had copped it during the first storm, blown overboard perhaps?

I won’t go into the details, but basically the rain was torrential, and we had landed ourselves in the logging district of Iquitos which means no roads, only boggy tracks continuously being churned up by the constant dragging of huge logs. This meant no motor taxis. So with our no small amount of kit we marched it the mile or so to the closest road. Eventually arriving at our hostel as five very pathetic, over burdened and dripping, filthy individuals. We had been on the go night and day for 15 days and we were all physically and mentally shattered.  What we didn’t want to find now was an asphyxiated dead monkey stuffed somewhere into a backpack!  As I searched again through the mounds of mud caked baggage I came eventually to the boot bag! Low and behold a very startled and rather disgruntled monkey dropped out of a boot on to the floor. It seems that like us, he had survived again to fight another day.

Andrew

Christian

Turtle shell on a deserted beach

James at his work station

Keeping tools sharp

Jase perfecting the backwards sommersault

Taking a break for a bbq

Brew time

A Day in the Life

This trip has been pretty hectic so far, when we do manage to update the blog images seem to whirr, life changing (and all too frequently life-threatening!) experiences fly past. But we’ve been on this continent for four months now and very little of our daily lives is apparent to our readers. So with no reference to sinking boats and trigger happy Peruvians here’s a day in a life on the Amazon;

Morning is a hazy affair, with no real bed time the five man crew having worked three-hour shifts through the night the only really rested crew member is Nyo-nyo, our spider monkey, who will curl into the nearest armpit he can find for sleep.

Mosquito nets go up and the kettle goes on. If we’re recently out of a town there are eggs for breakfast and if we’re really lucky we’ll have that tea that Andrew guards like a pot of gold. Toilet training for monkey goes on as we hopelessly try to cajole what is actually a baby not to poo on the Med Kits.

Locals stare, as you would at five men rowing a cross between a Chinese Junk and house boat. We used to ask where El Dorado is but this produced  even stonier stares, we now just ask to buy some fish. This simple everyday transaction puts them enormously at ease and often results in some prime catch. We do our own fishing as well, stopping on sandy islands mid river to throw our tarrafa net which weighs 15 kilos and involves everything from your teeth down. Eight limbs would hardly be enough to launch this net of death effectively but with a simple 37 point preparation Christian hauls them in. Needless to say we’re still learning. The catch can involve anything from electric eels to fish with teeth and barbs that make Piranhas look quaint and cuddly.

Rowing, once such a new, awkward and painful affair for most of the team, is now second nature though still painful on the bum. All new sports with such repetition take time for the body to adjust. We have that time. Two hour shifts pass by in a breeze with the help of such conversations as how best to dunk your biscuit and then the usual standard insults for more brews.

While not rowing and avoiding making brews ‘down time’ is spent in a mix of leisure and work. The hatches need to be opened and bailed (yes we still leak despite all that diligent rubber and tar) food prepared, machetes sharpened, generator tinkered with, tools cleaned, mozzi nets repaired and constantly, constantly, kit dried. Nothing stays dry in this place. Kit seems to get wet from within side their dry bags out, regardless of rain. One could watch rust grow if at a loss for five minutes and mold pops up where even we hardened students find it hard to believe. The “permanently” stashed away winter kit has seen more light of day in the Jungle than in the snow-capped mountains. Ice axes and wooly hats only help to thicken the mystery surrounding our passing by, I suppose.

There is time for indulgence, wood work and carving is popular especially when working the tiller; it’s been carved all over by sloppy helmsman making hard work for the rowers as they zig-zag on an already windy river. This is ok though as they can’t see where they’re going as in good English rowing fashion they’re facing the wrong way. Reading in a hammock and writing ones diary are also pleasant pastimes offered on this luxury cruise.

“La Selva” slides on by, a continuous and unbroken jungle of such varied fauna and flora it’s hard to comprehend the magnitude of living organisms in this part of the world. Not just greenery but a wall of noise greets us as well. Such strange animal calls that you can only wonder what on God’s green earth is making such strangled, screeching war cries. Sometimes the river gets so wide the green wall recedes to a small skirting on the magnificence that is the tropical sky which never fails to delight. Every day, sunset or sunrise, is better than a Turner painting. That or a complete Iron grey blanket that bodes ill for yours truly. Dolphins accompany us often and their close by blowing is a welcome sound as they play about the boat up to five meters’ away. Two types live on the Amazon, a scaled down version of the Flipper we all know and love, and the famous Pink Dolphin which is rather mutant like (and honestly Pink!) and fabled locally to come alive as  men at night to woo the local pretty girls.

Pockets are now kept uniformly empty. One never knows when a dearly held friend and team-mate will victoriously and unceremoniously creep up and shove you overboard, cackling evilly as they scurry to safety. This normally hails bath time (and more clothes drying) and despite the water being more reminiscent of moving mud than H2O we come out feeling rather clean and pleased with ourselves.

Occasionally a quick tropical storm passes over (this normally coincides when we’ve almost finished drying the winter kit.) It’s pre-cursed with the usual mal-predictions; “it’s going in the opposite direction, no wait it’ll pass us bye, it’s only a little one and DEFFINATELY moving away….. Oh crap its huge and heading right for us”. These things always take us by surprise and are greeted with us scurrying all over the boat dropping our waterproof sheets as it slams home. String, despite being everywhere normally, can never be found at these critical moments of lashing down. I think monkey hides it. Rain inevitably seeps into every corner and down every finger of those thermal winter gloves.

A new phenomenon, unique to the big rivers, is the very occasional passing boat full of tourists. Sometimes dining in an air conditioned viewing cabin on a 5 star jungle experience that comes with an onboard masseuse, they gawp at us and we gawp at them as we all slowly raise our cameras. Each other the strangest thing we’ll ever see in this Rainforest.

Christian and Andrew both love to cook and fraternization between the pair often results in a silent struggle to control the course of the meal; Peruvian or English. It’s amazing what can be achieved with such simple ingredients and how varied our palettes are. Peruvians for instance LOVE salt and unless watched closely half a kilo of it would disappear into the spaghetti. English Pancakes would mysteriously evolve into savory omelettes and banana’s work their way into EVERYTHING, literally, be it a stew or fish and rice.

At five the Mosquito nets come down, those little buggers really aren’t that little anymore and come screaming out of hell bang on dusk to circle us ominously all night. Those that are trained in guerrilla warfare WILL find a way in to the gringo buffet that awaits and a mosquito eating monkey that’s sure to be dead asleep come sunset and no use at all.

If moving at night the centre of the river provides some glorious escape from these pests but movement is not always an option. In the worst areas, small boats moving at night, apparently travelling covertly without a motor, arouse a lot of suspicion and invite shotgun shells their way. When we can move (which is more often than not) a powerful light powered by a car battery is required to declare our rather slow and fragile presence on a river amongst occasional huge cargo boats that would probably not notice a small floating home disappear under their prow. These encounters so far have only resulted in some very disgruntled rowers with wet bums as huge bow waves roll over the tail of the boat.

One of the most difficult things about night navigation on this river is surprisingly orientation. When light ambiance is low it’s often impossible to figure out what direction the slow and sluggish river is moving. As the river bends constantly a thick black line surrounds us in 360 degrees, offering no depth perspective. Careful consideration is required before making the rowers work upstream for an hour: Good exercise but not great for morale. Bends are actually our biggest worry; the river is constantly shifting by gauging away at the outside edge and depositing silt on the inside. This results in the “Costa Braba” or what we know as bloody-dangerous-trees-in-the-middle-of-the-river-where-last-season-there-was-a-bank. Maintaining a centre line becomes very important.

Row port, hold the tiller, row starboard, hit a hammock. Three hours on, one hour off. Nights move slowly but then; so do we. If we’re ever to reach the Atlantic perpetual motion is the name of the game, besides, it’s not a bad life.

James

Christian bringing in the dinner

James writing the next blog on the boat

Jase thinking deep thoughts

The sacred biscuits that have got us this far

Patch rowing away

Jase engraving the now longest surviving paddle

keeping the boat moving (We are at her whim 24/7)

Patch thinking deep thoughts

The twins getting stuck in

Jase perfecting the turtle

Andy works forever on his beloved paddle

James expanding his reading (on to Rosy & Tim now)

Andy thinking deep thoughts

Monkey thinking deep thoughts

The Incident – Time to Abandon Ship?

It all started after a rainy night banked up by the shore of a small indigenous town. The weather had been brutal and we spent much of the night out in the driving rain, lashing down the tarp roof. The storm raged on, only subsiding at around 10 o’clock the next morning. Having lost so much time we set off immediately to try to regain the distance lost, despite conditions still being far from perfect.

So into a grey choppy river we rowed, still confident of a day’s decent progress despite adverse conditions. Besides we were the proud owners of a generator powered water pump, what could go wrong?  Almost at the first bend we met trouble; the current is a tricky and fickle beast here in the Amazon and the corners are worse. If one is not careful the boat will be whipped round the outside edge of these mighty bends and through a minefield of half sunken trees, all positioned lovingly to spear our gallant vessel, these outside edges of the river constantly collapse on themselves from the water undercutting the banks and are commonly referred to as ‘costa brabas’ – needless to say they are to be avoided! Today was different; it became clear it wasn’t just the current that we were contending with but a rapidly growing gale. We found ourselves being pushed mercilessly towards this costa braba and with a rapidly growing head wind we were almost powerless to stop it, despite the rowers working at full-steam and the rest of the crew manning paddles for extra power.

It was at this critical stage that things really started to go wrong when an ominous crack came from Andrews oar. The shaft had split where the oar meets its supporting frame. Andrews oar, structurally ruined, its strength compromised, was now almost useless. By supporting the fracture with one hand and pulling with the other he maintained some pulling power. Not enough it turned out…

 Thus powered (or not) H.M.S Perseverar Sin Miedo plunged into the sunken debris of a flooded forest, the remnants of the old bank now torn away, with all souls aboard. All hands fended trees off with oars until Christian was ripped off the back of the boat as we scraped under another partially submerged tree.  A quick oar for reach and we were five men again though it quickly became apparent we were five men with no control over the situation; in falling Christian had tumbled over the tiller, twisting it into a useless warped piece of metal and wood.

Despite the havoc and loss of control we had managed to escape the clutches of the Costa Braba into a large straight stretch of river. Looking out at it we’d rather have gone back for round two with the bend; with no shelter the wind was whipping the usually so tranquil water into a pitching torrent of grey waves. We headed inexorably on but with no control over our orientation the boat was now sideways to the oncoming waves, our purpose-built wave breakers were of no use with the boat getting hit side on. 

Water was going everywhere, coming right over the boat. Immediate action was needed to stop the hulls from flooding. Though reasonably water tight when sitting in tranquil water she’s rather unreliable at stopping access at higher levels, especially when water is on the deck! It was obvious that water was getting in somehow; we just weren’t sure how fast? When one of the hulls started to dip it became urgent that we hit land and bail. We were 200 meters from the bank with our hull seeming to be filling with lead. Something had to be done rapido. By this point Patch was packing away loose and valuable kit to protect it from the water so Jase fired into action with our water pump.

Problem; recently purchased we had not drilled holes to feed the hoses of the pump into the rapidly flooding hulls. Solutions; we have a drill so let’s drill some (it’s never too late…)

So Jase, with his feet lapping in water, grabs the electric drill and goes for the generator. With a tug of the cord it chokes into life and drilling commences. Then at the most untimely cue, it runs out of fuel. “Bugger, get the fuel!” cried Jason, “It’s 100 meters downstream” came the answer. At this point Andrew, who’s diligently still working his station with a broken oar, points out he’s now actually sitting in water, his whole side having sunk: “I think it’s about time we started packing fellas…” It was clear we could no longer control the boat and even though it was so close we were unable to fight our way to the bank.  It’s strange, but none of us can place the moment when the situation went from bad to critical, when we stopped fighting a struggling boat to the side and instead were faced with the very real and immediate possibility that we would shortly be swimming.

But that moment had come and gone, with one hull completely flooded half the boat was now fully in the water and the other half had risen to a precarious angle. Abandoning oars we hastily scrambled over to put together a pile of things needed for survival on the bank of the Jungle, namely food, dry clothes, communication equipment, boots, med kits etc. By this point a lot of our kit was starting to float off, anything on deck being washed off and floating away. The water around us full of cups, pots, fuel bottles, anything had not been lashed down!

Life jackets were now on, so certain that we were about to sink, bags hastily tied to our car inner tubes for buoyancy. We were scuttling around on a deck that sat at 35 degrees into the river, at one point it seemed likely that it was going to capsize as it moved to 45, a terrifying moment made worse with Andrew dangerously still inside the living area salvaging kit. In a scene reminiscent of Titanic, he scrambled up a near vertical deck with a hand from James as we all rushed to counter balance the near death of our boat.

None of us could believe what was happening; This boat that we had slaved away to create with our bare hands. This boat that we had hemorrhaged time and money into for a month. This boat that represents an investment from the team that would mean the end of the expedition if it were lost. This boat was sinking! The adrenaline was mixed with a primal desperation to save the vessel that had taken us a month to build, there was no time for contemplation but it felt more like a surreal dream than reality.

With all the crew and equipment acting as counterbalance we managed to restore some stability. Though this wouldn’t last long. We were only still afloat because, being a catamaran, one hull (old Perseverance) still had air in her and was holding our other sunken hull up. She, though was also filling up. We didn’t have long.

It was time to make a last effort to save our floating home; we would not lose her, so lovingly made, without a fight.  The bank was now fractionally closer, about 150m, so James dived into the water with a rope that was attached to the catamaran and furiously swam towards the bank. Soon joined by Patch, their aim was to anchor the boat to the shore so as to swing it in. Andrew, Christian and Jason paddling towards them. Unfortunately the rope was 30 meters too short resulting in the two swimmers vainly trying to shift a boat that by now probably weighed in excess of six tons.

Despite being short, with two men at the end of the rope acting like an anchor, enough turning power was created so as the boat did start to swing towards the shore in a slow arc. Hope glimmered slightly. If we could get the boat to the shore we could, possibly, save it. With the help of the three paddlers the shore was actually within reach, the swimmers approaching the sunken trees usually so dangerous to us but now our only hope. Here the trees became our point of safety as we tied the rope securely to one and swung the boat around fully. Andrew working furiously with a machete to free us from old branches clawing at the boat.

Finally H.M.S Perseverar Sin Miedo came to rest against a steep mud bank of the jungle, densely growing with bamboo. Although full of water and partly submerged part of here hull was now resting on land. She could no longer sink. Relief surged through the team. Adrenaline had been high; being on a sinking vessel does that. But we’d won that battle. Now we were faced with a different one; we still needed to salvage the boat. This wasn’t going to be an easy task with only five men, rapidly decreasing energy and fading light, we now had to restore the boat to boat like behavior; namely to float.

Two hours later; Chests in water, thighs in mud. Large levers at work, a rope pulley system rigged up and all men straining the boat was still in the water. Adrenaline gone. We were clearly not going to lose this boat anymore but we were now faced with the oncoming dark, a tide of mosquito’s and a very cold, wet and uncomfortable night. We desperately wanted to finish. With one last huge effort and a furiously bailing Jason the sunken side came up. It’s a very fine line; a boat can be completely filled with water but as long as a slight unbroken lip is showing, separating this body of water from the river, you can bail. If any part of this lip is submerged the two bodies are actually one making bailing completely useless. With huge effort we’d bodily lifted this submerged boat clear, just fractionally, of the water enabling Jase, like a man possessed, to bail madly and restore the balance.  

At last, we crawled onto the boat, an untidy heap of soaked kit everywhere, and dropped the netting. Nyo-nyo, a complete softy, had escaped and already come back. He’s a sucker for biscuits. Our seventh crew member Milo, a chicken, was not so lucky. He’d been tied to a part of the deck so submerged he’d drowned. So with Milo on the menu we set about hungrily making dinner. All our pots, pans, cutlery, everything barring one metal mug, had been washed away (our washing up drills could be better…) So with one cooker and a mug Andy cooked a whole chicken, fried chips, boiled rice and made noodles for five of us. A culinary miracle even if it did take three and a half hours.

So, exhausted, we climbed into our wet hammocks with our wet blankets amid our ruin of a wet boat and went to sleep five very happy (wet) men.

Watch the interview below for a first hand account!

The creation of the boat – a series of videos

Phase one: Design

The digital birth of Persevere Without Fear as James Ellis put together a CAD video – strange thing to do on an expedition yes but we had the time in Pucallpa and it was incredibly helpful to communicate ideas across language barriers and to make sure that everyone was working off the same page.

.com

Phase 2: The Build

I think that these videos more than ever show how much fun we have on this voyage - we worked hard in Pucallpa as the end result demonstrates but we also played hard and enjoyed every second of creating the boat! It was an incredible opportunity to create something so tangible with our hands.

Part 1

Part 2

Enjoy the videos!

Jason

Escape from Pucallpa!

This blog; covering the leg between Pucallpa and Iquitos, happens to be the longest leg of our journey and successfully arriving in Iquitos will mean we are halfway in terms of mileage. I am now writing this back on the river at night with a blanket over my head to reduce the light (we are still trawling through the pirate zones).

Having spent a month in Pucallpa toiling over our catamaran we had got to know the city very well and were on first name terms with most of the people we daily came into contact with. One day Alex (our hotel owner) informed us that being in Pucallpa so long, we had stirred some interest with a few unsavory characters. Having been in Peru for nearly 4 months now we’ve gotten used to people describing all the imaginative ways we might get killed, be it whirlpools or bandits, everyone has something to say. So we wrote it off to the usual scare mongering that tends to happen. However a few days later, when working on the boat up our tucked away tributary, Christian (our guide) spotted a dug out canoe that seemed to be going up and down without any apparent reason, they were just looking at us. This happened repeatedly, it became clear that Alex was right, we were being reconnoitered.  Although we are always at risk of being confronted with piracy on the river, we never had such blatant proof of their interest in us, therefore we decided not to tell folks home about this. It was time to make a plan of escape. Initially we thought it best to leave tactically in the dead of night, then proposing the plan to our guide he simply rejected it with “no bueno” or “not good”. As it turns out this would have been god’s gift to the asaltantes who perform the vast majority of their careers nocturnally. An alternative arrangement was made, we would lash our catamaran to a tug boat and steam our way to the next town under the protection of a huge engine and the 40 passengers onboard. Although this isn’t something that agreed with the expedition ethos, if it meant that we weren’t going to get robbed of our much needed equipment, it certainly was the wiser option!

The subsequent week in Pucallpa we told nobody of our plans. Upon being questioned about dates and destinations all of us robotically said “no se” (I don’t know). In truth none of us even knew the date of our departure, we left when Christian frantically burst into our room one morning and said “be ready to go in ten minutes”! The packing that ensued was carnage but everything got sorted in the time given. Having hired an army of tuc tucs to take our equipment down to the port, Jason and Christian shot off to prepare our boat for the tow. Seeing all the perplexed local faces gorping at four gringo’s hastily tieing an alien looking vessel to the rusty old cargo ship was very amusing. Within two minutes the majority of passengers on Discovery (our tow boat) were standing by and watching us.

Having an engine tow us along didn’t turn out to be all that pleasant. The proceeding night consisted of us bailing the two hulls in a frenzied fashion at 3 in the morning as a tropical downpour attempted to sink our catamaran. None of us got much sleep. We pulled into Contamana shattered, cold and hungry at six in the morning. Once safely dropped off and moored up we then shot off to buy up all the stores we needed. An hour later we were all returning to the boat to find Christian with a new team member sitting on his shoulder, a baby spider monkey called Nyo-nyo (slang for fat). A present given to him by a local uncle. Morale obviously went through the roof as we all played with this creature that you could hardly believe had evolved for the harsh jungle environment. All it seemed to do was pathetically hug people for body heat and poo everywhere.

Over the next few days we were all getting to grips with the new boat. Weighing easily over a ton I wouldn’t say that she is hugely agile, when thinking of an analogy for her hydrodynamics, slow landslide springs to mind rather than sleek catamaran. Thankfully however she does bear the weight of 5 men and 160kg of kit with notable ease. After two days all our kit (right down to those forgotten winter ice axes) had a place. We had also developed a feel for rowing thanks to James who taught us the tricks of the trade acquired from his former rowing days at Manchester University. A complex rowing timetable was even developed, two hours on, two hours off. All seemed well, no near death experiences thus far on the river, everything was at last going smoothly.

Things started to unravel a little when Andrew was fishing with Christian on the bank. As usual Christian was catching a large haul of fish while Andrew watched to learn the relatively intricate technique needed to utilize the cast net. He was about 15 meters further along the beach standing close to the water’s edge, Christian turned to speak but before uttering anything he went pale. Dropping the net he shouted at Andrew to run. Confused Andrew obliged, especially when Christian started sprinting off as well. Upon asking what the problem had been, Christian in his spanglish described the water snake Andrew had obliviously been standing a meter away from and, the death he would have endured from it if he’d been bitten. It really is incredible how people bought up in the jungle have adapted to see things that we as westerners are blind to. Christian managed to spot a water snake 15 meters away that Andrew had been completely unaware of. We are rapidly realizing the advantages to having a guide far outweigh the costs, especially in such a location.

The next scare we had was at night. Having just had supper, we were amiably using our down time for reading, playing board games or talking. Then in the near vicinity a shot-gun went off. We went tactical. No light of any kind, hushed whispers and careful movements so as to reduce noise. A motor about 300 meters off choked to life and started making its way in our direction. “Asaltantes” Christian whispered while keeping his eyes fixed on the darkened water. We all kicked into life and frantically got the boat ready to be boarded. Having scoured the deck for anything valuable, satellite equipment, passports, cash etc, it was then chucked into a dry sack, whereupon Jason ran it out to the back of the boat and started nailing a rope to the bottom of the catamaran, the rope was then tied around our dry sack and brutally dumped into the water with the intention of sinking it under the muddy water of the Ucalayli. Back in the cabin we prepared ourselves for as many eventualities as possible, Jungle boots were put on, survival kits made ready, expensive items hidden, all with the background noise of Christian feverantly whispering “RAPIDO, RAPIDO!!”. All our drills were done in 2 minutes flat, after that we simply lay down to hide behind the shields we’d built. We anxiously waited so silently that mosquitoes could be heard hovering over us. The noise of the engine grew, we braved a look at the boat approaching and realized that it was behaving erratically. It past us and happily rumbled away into the distance. It was then that we remembered the nearby village was having its fiesta, perhaps they had just been drunken late night revelers going home (playing with a shotgun?!) It certainly let us breathe a sigh of relief as we then tried to get some shut eye in pirate zone.

In fact it isn’t only us who are constantly on the look out for these illustrious buccaneers. The next day at around lunch time, a speed boat came careering down the river, such a rapid pace around here is somewhat unusual, so yet again it provoked us to reanimate the piracy drills. Mid preparation, Christian, wielding his “dummy shot-gun” looked through the binoculars towards the speed boat. After half a minute he burst out laughing and informed us that out of the four people on the speed boat, two hid, one defensively held a gun while the other was watching us through binoculars while they sped on, obviously under the impression we were the assaltantes. Paranoia is rife on this stretch of water which sadly leads to most people arming themselves. Although we have had many discussions about the suitability of buying a weapon for ourselves, instead we’ve settled for our fake home made shot-gun that is displayed when needed. After all, employing our fire and maneuver drills in a 10 x 4 meter boat with one shot gun would be tough.

Having been through so much bandit malarkie over the last couple of weeks, we thought we’d had our share of excitement for the fortnight. We were sorely wrong after an “incident” happened with the boat. As this “incident” was a rather major event, I am leaving it for the next blog which will be up shortly (this time).

Patch

Nyo-nyo post bath

Dinner

Andy takes his daily bath

Strange fish encountered on the beach

Patch learning to use the cast net

Jase chilling in the evening

Andy looking for a good piece of wood to carve

Cielo is spanish for heaven

Christian with perfect form

Jase with strange fish

Patch & Jase

Andy rowing in a storm

Leap of faith

happily rowing away as the heavens pour down

Andy & Darwin

Jase & Darwin

Time off on the boat

Nyo-nyo warming himself on James

Christian takes a break

Life on the boat

Patch

Jase on tiller duty in the rain

Taking a break on a well administrated boat

Persevere without fear

Patch

The days catch

Jase rowing in a storm

Getting low in the water

Sorry readers, but no great distances to report. We are still in Pucullpa. Frustratingly on a number of occasions (4 to be precise) we would return to our half dried out boats to discover that the water level had risen again and our boats were now calmly bobbing around in five feet of water (upside down!). So we would be forced to redo the whole painful process of re-righting, bailing and rolling the boats up on to a higher bank before turning the cumbersome things over again. Again and again we did this until eventually we literally ran out of bank to use. The water had risen so much in the last week that the landscape around us was almost unrecognizable! Whatever was happening up river, it was bad. The quantity of flotsam and debris floating down the Ucayali was impressive. I’m glad we weren’t in that weather but at the same time we are losing valuable time and accumulating needless costs staying here with no work getting done. The boats simply had to be bone dry so that we could tar and paint their keels afresh. So we had to think quick, the opposite bank of the inlet tributary that we were at the mouth of looked like a viable option; dry and firm with grass on its banks denoting that the water rarely rose that high. The problem is that it’s a hundred meters across and we’d pretty much just gutted and scrubbed our boats of all the old rotten wood to a point where they were more like sieves than boats. Paddling them across was out of the question. We’d have to swim them across and pray to God they didn’t sink mid river. Precariously dodging an enormous 250ft log raft being towed past and the mutant like brown dolphins that frequent the Ucuyali we eventually arrived to the other side like five drowned rats. Once again we began our now very slick drills of rolling the boats up individually and turning them over again. The boats had so much water in them that when we flipped them we counted no less than six fish in Perseverance and three in Sin Miedo. Now all we needed was two clear days of sun, so that we could really begin work on the boats. Needles to say, it rained all that night and the next day.

With work on the boats at a standstill over all this time of continuous set backs the team set its self to a multitude of other activities and jobs needed doing. We crafted a beautiful new rudder, aptly named A-tiller the Hun, the two oars and a spare were lovingly and back breakingly planed down and painted for further protection (actually to disguise the smell!) We had procured a small workshop of carpentry tools around us and we were putting them to full effect. Christian was shooting all over town for us getting everything we needed, it’s impossible to shop with him as, being foreigners, we are guaranteed to get a dishonest price. We call this the Gringo Tax. So it’s more economical if Christian is solo or just accompanied by one of the twins, who by this point are so dark from the sun that providing as James puts it ‘we keep our very English traps shut’ in the shop, we pass as Peruvians (our Spanish isn’t quite what it should be!)

Finally the Sun arrived in full blistering force and we speedily took advantage to pour molten hot tar into all the boats cracks, warps and gaps (which had first been packed with lengths of hemp rope) using a purpose bought kettle for the task. Now come rain or shine, we could continue with the rest of the boat building. As ever we are lucky to have Christian, the guy really knows his stuff and has built boats before. These may be rather archaic methods but they are still being employed here today effectively and it’s wonderful to learn them first hand.

Well we finally fixed the two boats together and the catamaran slowly started to take shape. Interestingly the three enormous pieces of wood we used for attaching the two boats are so heavy and hard that a) They sink like lead and b) They turn nails away. Pretty impressive stuff. Thankfully the rest of the boat is made out of the more conventional floating variety. Well next up where the giant supports for the roof. I say giant because the roof structure will have to hold four rapidly expanding gringos in hammocks. (actually we are really running out of cheap restaurants in Pucullpa. And yes food poisoning is rife!) After four days our work resembled more a floating climbing frame than a sea worthy boat. But it was progress and the team was just deliriously happy to dive into any form of work with tangible results.

The real visual progress came when the decking finally went down. For the first time we really began to see what we had only been able to imagine all that time ago back in England . This would be our home for the next three months and however many thousands of miles to the Atlantic. The good news is: its ruddy enormous. Four hammocks abreast no problem, this thing could birth twenty people and still have room for deck tennis. We somehow managed to magic twenty square feet into about seventy square feet of deck space. The bad news about all this wonderful progress would be the very obvious factor; will the thing shift? Well we can only hope at the moment and trust in the sheer size and length of our new oars and the oar frames to help bear the burden. The old girl is certainly sitting a hell of a lot lower in the water after all the work.

Another factor the team has had to battle daily with while we have been here is the constant strain on our morale. Needless to say we are all incredibly anxious to get going. Every delay here is one more day in this accursed city. And each of those days is felt like a physical blow to this team. No matter how hard or long we work on the boat each day (often returning to our hotel so shattered we can barely be bothered to go in search of somewhere to eat) the work and energy spent just doesn’t quench our thirst properly. Hard work whilst stationary just isn’t the same as hard work and miles gained. Well certainly not on an expedition like this.

However despite all the mishaps, the budget going slightly AWOL , our thinning patience, with hands in tatters and backs severely burnt, the end is almost in sight (well of the build). The boat is ready and there are only a few land based tasks needing seeing to before we are off again into the unknown. The sense of anticipation and excitement in the team could be cut with a knife.
Once again I am proud to look around me and be astonished as to what this team is capable of turning its mind to and getting done. There really isn’t anything four very resolute men can’t do when needs must and a common goal is in our minds. Even if that goal is one hell of a way off!

Andrew

Kids inspecting our handiwork

Our home away from home while we were in Pucallpa

Transport on the Ucuyali

Teamwork sealing the hull

Andy in the Ucuyali

Jase precariously drills into the vertical supports

James making the roof supports

The boat slowly comes together

Kids in the mud

Lunch on the Rositas

The rear decking ready to go down

Working on the roof frame

Andy takes a break

Jase looking pensive

Jase and Andy drawing out the lines for the front

Working hard

Dramatic clouds

James and Patch enjoy the new deck

James working on the roof

Jason and a near completed boat

Interesting perspective on a sunken boat

Jason and Christian confer over designs

James

Persevere without fear completed

Persevere withoout fear complete as the sun sets

A barge smashes into Rositas balsa

Oar fabrication video

Sorry about the technical glitch guys! hopefully this will work – no idea why it didn´t block previous videos?

A short clip that shows the oars being put together by the Amazon team from the wood acquisition through the basic shape cutting, on to planing, sanding and painting! Enjoy. The video of our boat being put together to follow soon!

Building the ark

Well we left you in the last blog having just arrived at the bustling Jungle port-town of Pucullpa. We are still in that town and it’s looking increasingly likely we will be for the next blog as well. Pucullpa is its usual dusty, over crowded exciting self. The hoards of vultures circle ominously over the three mile length of reeking ports. In which thousands of people night and day amass to sell and buy everything the giant rainforest can provide.  The smell of drying and salted fish is first to hit your sense of smell like a physical blow, as you weave in and out of the tumultuous stalls and shops selling papayas, skins, cast nets, engine parts (for boats of course) and all types of other related sundries. If you find an inch to sit on then you can watch the hundreds of lean, sun blackened men. Bent double as they haul their heavy burden of un-ripened bananas  from the solid mass of waiting boats. It doesn’t take long to realize that the vultures are doing good business. Fish guts, rotten fruit, open sewage, dodgy cooking and litter is thrown indiscriminately anywhere anyone pleases. Luckily though, as vibrant and chaotic as this scene is, our boats are moored a good kilometer up river (where thankfully the smell can’t reach). To get there every day from our Hostel we jump in any little empty dug-out motorized canoe and after a few sols are exchanged we set off for the floating shanty town that plays host to HMS Sin Miedo and HMS Perseverance.  It’s on this twice daily journey that it becomes immediately obvious what else is big business around these parts.

Logging, both illegal and legal is big money round here. Pucullpa is the sole possessor, on the whole of the mighty Rio Ucayali, with a sealed road running direct to Lima 800km away. It’s here that the enormous floating rafts of logs meet.  Unless you’ve seen it you can’t actually fathom the sheer size of some of these ‘logs’. Often with their enormous bellies deep below the brown water line they are like the ice bergs of the Rainforest. That is until they are lifted bodily from the water by crane and you begin to comprehend their enormity.  It’s both saddening and exciting to see. You can’t bring yourself to blame these people, well not the lowly logger sweating it out in the bush. This industry wouldn’t even exist if we the consumers weren’t so demanding. Many is the time in the workshop back at my college that I didn’t think twice about using a good cut of teak or mahogany for an ungraded piece. Being here and seeing it in the flesh,   genuinely makes me want to change my own wastefulness and its direct consequences on this planet.  I truly love working with wood (in fact it’s why I have the honour of writing this blog- the Carpentry phase) But when you see the huge extractors spewing out rising clouds of  saw dust into the sky from the cutting and processing factories on the banks of the Amazon. Then you have a feeling that something really must change. 

So it is with a slight twinge of guilt now that I’m going to relate to you the wonderous and exotic materials we have been using to ‘modify’ our boats. Into what has been dubbed by the boys as ‘megatron’. Sorry if you’ve never watched transformers before, because this reference will be wasted on you. Basically our two boats are slowly (and very painfully I might add!) transforming into one hell of a big sea going vessel.  This is a very necessary and time consuming phase of our expedition that we always knew would occur when the river simply got too big for our little canoes. You may not know that what we are up against from here on in is almost sea like swells on a river that can be wider than the English Channel and is completely un-bridged for the next 3000 miles to the Atlantic due to its vast size. 

So the order of the day is to completely seal the hulls of our two boats into two air tight cocoons and join them into a bigger more stable catamaran design, fully decked and roofed to deal with the future elements.  A couple of snags in this plan I see you thinking? Yes this won’t be a vessel than one can project forward with small indigenous paddles for 10 hours a day without four untimely deaths at the end of it. So we’ve had to hand make our own 10ft oars complete with custom made steel oar frames. I can tell you ladies and gents; this was no pickle. With James’ knowledge from his sculling days for Manchester University rowing club we quickly came up with a design and presented it to our trusty and extremely capable guide Christian. He whisked us off to acquire the appropriate timber. I must state here that I haven’t a clue what wood this actually is, but it’s one of only a few that can sustain being submerged in water for long periods at a time and therefore completely necessary for this task. 

Oh but we did not know what had we let ourselves in for! It took myself and my twin brother an entire day to cut, by hand, three 10ft lengths for the shafts, In mud up to our thighs on the banks (by our own beached and upturned boats drying in the sun after a full days brushing and sanding down) We were eventually victorious as the sun set in attaining the rudimentary shapes, it only cost us every sap of our strength, about a dozen new blisters and very burnt backs).  Christian later communicated to us by interlocking his fingers together that the grain of this wood travels both across and down, changing direction whenever it pleases to! In fact not only does it cut like diamond but the accursed thing weighs a ton, oddly smells like pig manure when you cut it (Honestly, later when we moved to working on the roof of our hostel, the owners would complain that the smell was so bad that we had to relocate!) Has thorns on it in its natural state that look like throw backs from the Jurassic era. And of course, it is poisonous! “Why wouldn’t it be?” James exasperatedly exclaimed as Christian very seriously informed us not to chew on the wood, to which we very seriously replied in turn that we would not. Strange really, because after this, those wood chippings started to look curiously appetizing. 

Another event that has taken occurred during th past week was the 22^nd birthday of the twins. We royally celebrated in the style we had become accustomed to over our combined years at Uni and got really very intoxicated. 

 In the early hours of the morning as we left  a club into a torrential tropical downpour,  Christian decided to inform us that we would have to travel back into Pucullpa through an area notorious for criminals and yes, you guessed it, more bleeding asaltantes. Except this lot are based on terra firma and they take shots at returning early morning revelers! ‘Great’ I sarcastically exclaimed as I climbed on to the back of a dirt motorbike and the rest of the lads all magically bundled into the last remaining tuc tuc, which now had 5 grown men in it might I add. We would be travelling in convoy for safety!  By this point the dirt road was a veritable lake. Three minutes later the entire tuc tuc had rolled over in said lake with all souls still inside, completely drenched and in a pretzel like tangle of limbs with poor Patrick nearly drowned at the bottom. Well having escaped the wreck and re-righted the sorry vehicle we then searched in the dark for our bruised and befuddled drivers lost shoe. If bandits were close they probably left us alone out of pity. We unanimously gave up the search after ten minutes and were driven home by our shoeless driver. 

Andrew 

Providing the muscle to help a friend get his car out of a ditch

Jase

Lunch

A-tiller the hun

Tarrring the boats

James preparing to paint the oars

Scrubbing the hulls

Jason’s improvised electrical socket

Enormous logs on the final leg of their journey

Andy

James designs the oar frames

The oars – finished as the sun sets

Enormous boat is pulled from the river for repair

The tar kettle, wont be making any tea in this..

View across as a group of men battle some logs up a tributary

A boy on a boat…

Perseverance being gutted and tarred

Working on the inside of the boats

Pulling the boats up to dry – again

The sun sets on Pucallpa

Sunset as we prepare to leave the boats

one of Pucallpas many wood workshops

Tough work in the sun

Patch prepares some tar to waterproof the boats

One oar finished – one to go

Oars, sanded and ready to paint

Christian

Journeys into the interior, the feral life CH2 VIDEO!

A video of the second leg taking us from Atalaya to Pucallpa, Continuing our lessons in the high jungle, fighting tributaries and living on the boat!

Please leave some feedback as it is difficult for us to put videos together from an unbiased perspective and we are only just getting to grips with the editing program! Does Anybody work with video a lot? Please leave some pointers.

Journeys into the interior, the feral life CH1 VIDEO!

Just a short clip to give you a better feel for life over the last few weeks, more to follow soon!

Journeys into the interior, the feral life – Chapter two

This is the second chapter of “Journeys into the interior, the feral life”, It follows on directly from the first so if you haven´t logged on for a few days please read chapter one (previous post) else this wont entirely make sense! 

Bolognesi sits at the top of another fast flowing tributary and after one of the boats ‘missed the boat’ and got swept quite a way downstream we were presented with a problem. We needed to get their boat back up to the mouth of the tributary where we could start fighting our way up to Bolognesi. Ever a solutions man Christian moored our boat and donned one of the life jackets gesturing for me to do the same. We grabbed our paddles and jumped into the powerful current of the Ucayali to swim down to the stranded boat. It was incredibly liberating to be swimming in a river that at times feels like treacle slowly running off a table and it reminded me that it does actually flow quite fast! We then paddled as one and managed to beat the current getting the stranded boat to the tributary mouth. We still had to actually get up the tributary though and it would have been too exhausting to try paddle so the rest of the team donned their life vests and together we jumped into the river once more to pull the boats for over two kilometers through thigh deep mud! It was hard work and at times a little nerve-racking as we recognized patterns in the mud that showed where a caiman had been basking  in the afternoon sun but it was worth it and as the tributary widened the current slowed and we were able to jump back in to paddle. The sun was slowly sinking at this stage and the mosquitoes came out with a vengeance on the final kilometer to Bolognesi. We were hungry, exhausted and parched by the time we were done unloading the boats in the port but we dragged ourselves into town to get dinner and meet up with Gimo (Christians cousin who took us fishing) as promised. It was Gimos’ birthday and after a big dinner he insisted that we join him for a few beers. We all know what happens next and about six hours later another new friend called George stumbles through the foyer of his hotel to let us into our rooms – he insisted that we sleep there for free! We were very grateful as we had intended to sleep in the port which sitting on a still lake had a horrendous mosquito problem (Patch was already on track for some sort of mosquito bite record!). We had breakfast the next day and rapidly got the documentation we required for the next leg requesting that they radio ahead to the communities so that they could expect some gringos to randomly drift by them at some stage and wouldn’t have to turn everything inside out looking for limbs! 

 We had been warned by various people including the police that the leg from Bolognesi to Pucalpa was one of the most dangerous on the river and we geared up to get through it as fast as possible. We left Bolognesi and immediately went firm for a few hours fixing shade over the boats and fastening them together so that we would be able to travel faster using the rivers current and not get separated in the night. Christian briefed us on the fact that a lot of people drink heavily on the weekends and it was a bad idea to stop – at all! Once the boats were ready to set off we would not stop again for four days! 

It was strange having fixed the boats together, it made the vessel more difficult to control and to paddle but it does help to utilize the rivers current more. We enjoyed another sunset after having eaten Trevor, our pet chicken for dinner and settled in for the night, as did the mosquitoes. They are incredibly annoying but as a man said in Bolognesi “you have to learn to live with them.” We rotated through lookout/guide duty through the evening trying to keep the boat in the center of the river where the current is fastest (only at night interestingly, the movement of the moon means it is faster on the sides during the day). We cooked before sun down and we didn’t use light at night, we kept talking to a minimum and when it was necessary it was whispered – the sound travels unbelievably on the water! There were a few tense moments that evening. Sometimes it is hard to rationalize – are we being completely paranoid about this? In the very early hours (about 2am) a motorized boat could be heard in the distance and we could see a powerful spotlight searching for something, we kept low in the boat not wanting to advertise the gringos floating down the river. The motor boat drew up uncomfortably close and the spotlight settled on us. The engine stopped. The spotlight swept back and forth over our boat. Back and forth. The motor powered up and it cruised on a short distance before stopping again and doing another sweep of our craft. Back and forth. We are not sure what this incident was about but I’m glad they didn’t give us any trouble. 

The sunrise was obscured by clouds the following morning when we assumed our positions to try to paddle into a wind that was gaining ridiculous strength. The clouds drew in and the rain began to fall – big, heavy raindrops that fell on the team as scales began to tip in the winds favour. We swiftly realized we weren’t going to make any forward progress fast and moored up on the bank to wait it out. Christian took his shirt off and jumped off the boat into the mud, actively working himself deeper. “What are you doing?” we asked. “It is warmer in the mud” freezing cold we looked at each other,Then immediately jumped in to join the fun We were like little hippos rolling about in the mud laughing while a storm raged about us. It really was very warm as the mud retains the heat and apparently it’s good for your skin too. I would recommend it! 

Following on from the fun in the mud we set about closing some of the distance between us and Pucalpa, we cooked on the boat, washed on the boat, wrote in our journals, attempted to fish and tried every sleeping/sitting position one could possibly imagine on two cramped crafts! Another day passed as they began to blur into each other and again we prepared for the evening. Things went a lot slicker that night as we all knew our roles. This was the evening where we strayed a bit close to the bank and heard the pirates debating whether to come out for our small boat or not. At the time it was tense; we knew they were discussing something but the Spanish was difficult to understand, it was only later after having spoken to Christian that we realized how lucky we had been. Apparently we have a lot of “milk” Peruvian slang for luck! At 3am, halfway through my shift I spotted a sandbank to our front, I swung the boat to the left and we missed it but a few seconds later we were firmly grounded and weren’t moving anywhere! I tried to shift the boat with my paddle but it wouldn’t budge! The rest of the guys were thoroughly unimpressed when I woke them up and we all had to get into river in the pitch dark to push our boat off a sandbank in the middle of the Ucayali! 

Pirates and natives concerned about organ snatchers are not our only worries on the river, in the pitch dark as James and I sat together gently guiding the boat we heard the surface of the water break close to the us and there was what can only be described as very, very deep breathing sound. We couldn´t see what it was in the darkness and we flicked worried glances at each other – whatever it was it sounded big and it appeared to be following us, possibly even circling us! There was nothing we could do and we eventually we started to get used to it. As the first rays of sun broke through the Peruvian rainforest and illuminated the river the surface was broken in four places simultaneously accompanied by the strange breathing sound – we had a school of freshwater dolphins following us! They seemed curious about our boat and literally followed us for over one hundred kilometres, getting closer as their confidence grew – it was a very welcome distraction. 

There were a few more tense moments the next day, Christian would advise us to get down in the boats if we went past a town that had a particularly bad reputation or if it was suspected of harboring assaultantes (Pirates). We took his advice and given the events of the previous evening I don’t think we were being too cautious. It must sound like we were on a knife-edge the whole time but we had a great four days, we set out almost three months ago to pursue adventure and my word have we found it! We fished and worked on our Spanish, we spoke to Christian more and found out about where he is from and what he does. He left school when he was sixteen and went travelling with his brother around the border lands of Peru. He is only twenty-two but can recount endless tales of his own adventures. Like when they came across a crashed aeroplane in the jungle on the border near Columbia, there were three bodies inside it rotted to the bone. They buried the bodies out of respect and on closer inspection found a trunk full of money inside the plane! It was too rotten to be of value but what a story none the less! He works in the wood industry, his family always has and it means that he knows the river like the back of his hand. He has a scar on his back from being stabbed with a spear and by all accounts seems to have no financial interest in accompanying us although we are paying him, he just wanted to go on another adventure. He is the embodiment of the spirit of adventure that brought us here and we are lucky to have come across him. 

We finally arrived into Pucalpa having come some two hundred and seventy kilometers as the crow flies, given the huge curves and bends in the river I wouldn’t be surprised if it was close to double that distance! It has been tough learning to live on the boat and dealing with the mental and physical intensity of the past ten days but we made it, the bustling port is the busiest we have seen and we look now to modifying our boats in preparation for the growing swell as the river gorges itself on more tributaries. 

Jason 

Persevere without fear… 

Jase on the bow

A short break at a clear, high jungle stream

Christians wonderful uncle with family in tow

Jase looking completely feral

Logging path – ridiculously hard work

The mud bath – can you tell who is who?

Taking a break on the rubber tires

The clouds gather

Hard life in a high jungle stream

River of glass

James with a mountain of gifted supplies in tow

Jase helping pull the boats

Jase practicing his paddling

Jase having a quick wash

Patching demonstrating the teams sentiments

The mud bath keeps our skin smoothe

Trevor – the pet chicken had a great two days on the boat then joined us for dinner

James by the high jungle stream

Butterfly cocoons in the jungle

Persevere without fear joined at the hip

Sunset as we get ready to go tactical

Pulling the boats upstream to Pucalpa

The beautiful homestead that housed us on junge excursions

Journeys into the interior, the feral life – Chapter one

It is 10pm and we are fully tactical, no light and no sound, the jungles’ symphony surrounds us. We glide silently over the water under the starry Amazonian sky about twenty meters from the bank. Suddenly to our right a rough voice echoes over the water “Hey, Mohico, there is a boat on the river!” Our guide makes a hasty handgun gesture to James and noticeably tenses.. Mohico strolls over to have a look at the Chinese junk that is passing his lair. “Shall we go get them now?” The question hung in the air like the thick smell of death. “It’s just a fishing boat, we’ll wait for something bigger and make it worth our while…”

This is the reality of what has been referred to as one of the most dangerous stretches on our voyage from source to sea. The events leading up to this strange scenario follow in two chapters as it would make a terribly long read in a oner! The second chapter will be posted tomorrow.

We left you having just slogged our way upstream into Atalaya, a well established city at the meeting of the Tambo and Urubamba rivers. The encounter with the village that had searched all of our kit left us a little shaken and wondering how to maintain our security on the next section of the river – reportedly more dangerous, rife with ‘Assaultantes’, or pirates. Our search for a guide led us all over Pucalpa and we finally encountered a young man called Christian who at first glance seemed a tad nervous but we were assured that he had extensive experience with the jungle and the peoples therein. His worth would prove immeasurable later on. 

The value of having a guide immediately became apparent as within two hours we had amassed a ridiculous amount of fruits (all of which were intriguing as we had never seen before!) from various friends and family of Christians as well as had a dip in a stunning clear water tributary that feeds the Ucuyali. We swiftly realized that if we were ever going to make it to Pucalpa some two hundred and seventy kilometers away we couldn’t agree to take every opportunity the guide presented! Shoring up that night we slung our hammocks and our jungle instruction continued with Christian introducing us to a series of nuts and fruits as well as how to prepare them.

Early the following morning the head of the nearest village arrived on the beach with entourage and shotguns in tow to enquire as to our intentions and find out who was in their territory. We presented our documentation and made small talk for a few minutes which satisfied him and made us realize how fast word travels on the river. We set off aiming to get to Christians´ Aunts house by nightfall; we were making good progress until a man began shouting at us from the bank; my heart rate sped up – why was this scenario so familiar? It turns out the warnings about bows and arrows were true, we had four pointed at us in addition to the two shotguns as we were hailed to the bank!

There was a lot of excitement on the bank as a the whole village, many carrying shotguns or bows and arrows, gathered round.  Christian tried hard to explain that we were students travelling on the river but it was to no avail, you could feel the tension and taste fear in the air, they insisted on searching everything.  Again. Unfortunately our luck from the first encounter did not hold and the first bag plucked from the boat held the med pack with the scalpels, syringes, scissors, dressings and all manner of things that one might imagine are required to remove some organs. My mind was going at a thousand miles an hour as I tried to focus their attention on other shiny bits of kit, photos of family and loved ones, anything to try to humanize us more in their eyes but the med kit was removed from the dry bag and opened for all to examine. They didn’t appear to register any interest. This is it – they are going to go mental any second now! Still nothing, they did a cursory check of some of the pockets then placed it in the ‘searched’ pile. That was when it dawned on me – they were genuinely looking for body parts! You can’t make this stuff up.

It would be easy to be annoyed but you could feel the fear in the air. When we first heard about organ trafficking we thought it was ridiculous to the point of mild amusement. “When last did someone go missing here?” I asked the head of the village “We had a child go missing six days ago.” Six days ago! The reality of what these people are trying to deal with dawned on us and we certainly didn’t have any organs to hide, my heart went out to them and two hours of our time is absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. Whether the child was lost in a fishing accident on the river or taken from the shore by people with mal intent we will never know. A woman shouted out “My nephew escaped from them!” as she pointed to a boy who can’t have been more than fourteen stood in the crowd. He was slightly to the rear and looking on with fear in his eyes, they recounted the story of how he had managed to fight his way off the boat and get to the shore. He must have been terrified.

The women are far more dangerous to us in such scenarios, they foment fear and suspicion like a plague; “That’s for taking off heads!”, “No, really – it is for climbing ice in the mountains!” We think we’ve found the last of the fabled warrior  Amazonians except these are rather small and wrinkly. Everything is suspect; “That is to shine in people’s eyes to hypnotize them before they attack!” She was talking about a small head torch. They didn’t leave a single pocket unsearched, even boots were searched for wayward kidneys!

We carried on from that encounter with a slightly different perspective of the river and a deeper appreciation of some of the dangers. The setback had cost us a few hours and we had to work hard for the rest of the afternoon. As the sun set we had our first introduction to paddling at night-time, it was incredibly serene, the jungle sends up a cacophony of sounds that haphazardly form a symphony for the river that is lit by the moon and framed by the dense jungle on either side.

We arrived at the small homestead in the early evening and we were greeted warmly by a complete stranger as he embraced the nephew he hadn’t seen for over a year. They fed us two full meals and plied us with questions about our trip, laughing as we recounted the canoe sinking and listening with bated breath as we explained some of our difficulties with local tribes. Christians’ uncle then proudly produced a DVD player and insisted that we watch a film with him. It was a Jet Li flick dubbed in Spanish which made for hilarious if slightly surreal viewing. It was a wonderful family environment and we fell asleep in our hammocks very content.

The sound of chickens being chased by screaming children who were in turn being chased  by a family of pigs woke us up in a not so tranquil manner the next morning. James and I had opted to sleep in one of the houses but Patch slung his hammock a bit further out in some papaya trees. Patch asked me “Jase, have I got any bites on my back?” I didn’t reply for a few minutes as I counted them… “Patch – you have sixty-five bites on your back!” He slept on his jungle blanket the next night as this confirmed that the mosquitoes can indeed bite through the hammocks! We had not fully appreciated our surroundings as it had all been shrouded in darkness the previous night but the morning sun revealed a well-kept patch of jungle with orchards of banana and papaya tress, trimmed fenced gardens for vegetables and medicinal plants, tidy thatched houses that were filled with various extensions of a smiling family as well as a myriad of animals that contentedly sauntered about the place pecking or snuffling as they went. Christian informed us that his uncle had caught a tortoise that morning and that we would eat well before we left. We didn’t quite put two and two together but tortoise makes for incredibly good soup!

The mystery of what lies behind the emerald green walls that frame the edge of the river were as yet largely undiscovered by us and that is why we took two days out to learn about it with our guide. It would be possible to complete our trip without delving into the jungle too much but it was another one of our aims to learn as much about the “la Selva” (the jungle) as possible. “There are two main types of jungle here.” Christian explained, ‘monte alto’ – the high jungle in the mountains and ‘monte bajo’ the low jungle. “On your trip you will see the last of the high jungle quite soon before it is all flat and all the same”. “What do we need?” I asked, “Just bring your machete.” He replied.

The first day would be spent in ‘monte bajo’, the low rainforest. We motored out with Christian and his uncle and inserted into the dense bush on the shore. Christians knowledge really came to the fore as he lead us from tree to tree explaining that this one could clear parasites from your stomach, that one would fetch nine thousand dollars, this one produces fruits that are very good for fishing – to the untutored eye they all look the same! And so it went on for five hours, we watched huge mosquitoes dancing in a beam of light under one of the biggest trees we have ever seen, drank water out of vines that we cut off trees, ate palm nuts and other fruits I will never be able to remember the names of and I raised my eye brow as Christians’ uncle pointed out a tree that “helps to treat cancer..” We sat still for a few minutes poised like statues searching jungle ponds for any sign of movement that may indicate a caiman or tortoise, we watched the ants in fascination and accidentally hovered that moment too long as they rapidly crawled up our legs and bit us! It is hot hard work in the jungle, we were there for six hours not working particularly hard or carrying anything but still it was incredibly sapping. At some points I felt like a child wandering about following Christain, we know so very little about this environment – this was not helped by him telling me not to scratch my mosquito bites!

That night after going fishing with Gimo, Christians cousin, we enjoyed the great company of the family and ate well again, they had agreed to provide a base for us to work out of on our jungle excursions. We chatted long into the night and they were particularly intrigued as we explained Ed Staffords’ expedition to them. Ed is walking the entire length of the Amazon River, set to finish in August he has been on the ground for over two years now! We are humbled by his exploits and the Peruvian family we were staying with read Eds’ blog in amazement when we got it up on the laptop and BGAN.

It was time for monte alto the next day and we struck out having acquired another guide called Eduardo who knew the area well and would help Christian. He motored us as far up a small tributary of the Ucayali as far as the boat would go before we set off on a small path. We saw our first caiman that morning but it shot off incredibly quickly! Heading through the jungle it initially looked the same as the previous day but having encountered a few small homesteads and crossed some streams it quickly changed. The differences are subtle but combined they make for a different world,! Different shades of green, more numerous and bigger trees, more spaces and a different type of canopy. It is difficult to describe but it was wholly beautiful. We climbed up into the hills (which let’s be honest, we have a bit of a sadistic addiction to) and drank from beautiful clear mountain streams. There were less fruit bearing plants here, more bamboo and a whole range of small creatures we hadn’t encountered the previous day. Eduardo pointed out frogs that camouflaged perfectly with the forest floor and a spider whose bite apparently causes excessive bleeding. At one point the narrow track opened up into a wide channel that had been cut through the jungle. This was an insight into the world of illegal logging in the Amazon; the reality of it is incredibly hard work! Trees need to be felled and cut into four meter segments before being hauled overland on tracks cut through the jungle to get to the river. Some of these tracks go up hill and we stopped to examine a makeshift winch that requires six people to operate! The whole operation takes four months from felling the tree and getting it to the river to transporting it down the river and selling it in Pucalpa. We trudged on for five hours before we got to a stunning clear mountain pool fed by a stream and teeming with fish that made the perfect place to stop before we returned to base. We swam for an hour and ate lunch soaking up the sun that is so sparse under the thick jungle canopy. The return journey was equally interesting and as we made our way back through one of the homesteads Christian pointed out that the family had been afraid of our camera though we are not sure why. We had asked permission to take a photo as these were the first people we had encountered that wore the traditional face paint the jungle is famous for. We returned to the farm feeling like we were overflowing with all the knowledge Christian had tried to impart, we will need a lot more experience before it sinks in but it will make a huge difference to how we operate in the jungle in the future.

The next waypoint was Bolognesi, the only establishes town between Atalaya and Pucalpa. We said our goodbyes at the farm having bought a load of supplies and been plied with bananas, papayas and a chicken that we christened Trevor. We worked hard that day to make up for time lost on jungle excursions and thankfully there wasn’t much to report until later that afternoon…

Chapter 2 wil follow tomorrow.

Jason

 

Jungle skin

Enormous tree felled for the wood trade

Enormous tree, Patch and Christian

Spot the frog

Getting to grips with cooking on the boat

Jase & Patch about 5 hours into a jungle excursion

Spider – apparently causes excessive bleeding

The feral life – Jase drinks water from a vine

Christian

Taking a dip in a tributary

A parasitic vine engulfs its host tree

Swamp in the low jungle

Fishing on the Ucuyali

James

A glimpse of sky through the canopy

Jungle instruction “this sap is poisonous”

Turtle soup?

Hunting kit in the jungle

Freshwater stream in the high jungle

Another swamp in the low jungle

Sunset on the Ucuyali

River crossing

Persevere without fear

 

Well after the last blog I’d really liked to report some good steady progress and some pleasant acclimatization to our new surroundings, basically a bit of the quiet life for a change. Unfortunately the jungle seems to have different plans. Apparently when you leave the map things get a bit, well, dodgy. Wild West springs to mind and we’ve been exposed to a not so pleasant side of Peru.

This is all contrasted greatly as we cast off at midday from lovely Sepuhua, waving goodbye to our wonderful adopted family (twin girls and all) who’d given us so much fish and oranges. It was HMS Sin Miedo’s (Without Fear) maiden voyage and it felt great to be setting out as a complete team and with a brand new boat, especially after all the setbacks.

The afternoon was spent serenely canoeing down the beautiful Rio Urubamba amid a silent and peaceful rainforest. Peaceful until rent with the sound of angry shouting echoing across the water. We ignored it and attempted to continue. Ignoring it became much harder when motorized canoes waylaid us midstream and dragged us to the shore, Andrew and Jase preceding myself and Patch. When we hit the bank the severity of the situation dawned on us as shotguns appeared and Jason said the unnerving words “they think we’re face peelers” oh dear.

“Stay Calm, lets de-escalate the situation” quickly become company policy as more boats and more shotguns arrived. Slow movements, warm smiles and a general air of openness and honesty were all adopted as we strove to get control of a worsening predicament. We greeted people, tried to shake hands, make conversation. Anything to remove the oh so violent charge from the air. Being held at gun point by drunken natives tends to make small talk rather strained though!

It rapidly became obvious that the antagonist was one man, the alpha male of the group, and a very angry one at that. He started tearing our kit out of the boats and searching through it all (a job made much harder by Patch’s super hi-tech backpack which I can barely open and the many, many layers of waterproofing we smother everything in!) Having tried to search Patrick’s kit the poor man was exhausted and confused and didn’t even manage to open my rucksack. He was searching for signs of organ harvesting, the incredibly dark and disgusting world of snatching indigenous natives for selling their parts on the black market. “That’s what they keep the bodies in!” exclaimed one woman excitedly when they saw a bivvi bag; exhaustive explanations were required for almost everything. By this point we were all thinking one thing; the med kits.  When a wash kit generated keen interest we could only wonder and fear what they were going to make of scalpels, sutures, syringes and the myriad of medicines and medical paraphernalia we carry. Angry Man though was running out of steam, and support, it was becoming clear that for most, fear and hostility were being replaced by mild interest. When he left the rucksacks´ and hit the slightly more user-friendly canoe sacks, he unearthed (luckily) our mountain equipment. Mild Interest turned to out-right curiosity as we acted out climbing with ice axes in the steep and snowy world of the high Andes, a world so completely apart from this one yet still the same country.

Having searched four out of seven bags, fortuitously avoiding the three that almost comprise a field hospital, Angry man decided to turn his hand at outright robbery as he informed us all of our possessions were now confiscated and that we had to pay a “tax” for passing on (the tax being all the money we had…) Well it surprised him to know that he was robbing the poorest gringo’s on the continent as we scraped together 30 soles for the pot (about 6 pounds!) Luckily we were at the end of a long and expensive leg between banks and all our money was used to buy boats and invested in food. The kit and retention of, was becoming a problem though as our possessions were strewn across a beach. Equipment was everywhere, so were locals as nearly a whole village was now milling about as more and more boats arrived. We’d done a fairly good job of persuading them we were “students of tourism” and not here to steal their kidneys. So the situation was eventually becoming defused, instead it was changing to a race to persuade/ cajole our kit back off them and back on to our boats before it all walked off (a lot of it did!) We only managed this as Andrew distracted a large crowd by dealing out top quality fishing line, which is precious stuff out here, and glow sticks (anything shiny really)

We then perversely thanked our perpetrators, all smiles still, and I was helpfully and just a tad ironically, told by one local “Be careful down river, it’s dangerous, the locals have bows and arrows!” as he pointed his gun at me (which though it looked like an antique was still rather unnerving, I think I’d prefer the arrows.) We climbed onboard and got merry hell out of there before the village brain cell decided they actually wanted everything.

It was now 5:15 and we paddled like fury till dark before heading up a small tributary for the night. We hadn’t been there long when, having hacked our way into a dense thicket of bamboo, we heard a canoe pass us by. Travelling in the dark and on so quiet a back water was strange. Our boats made our whereabouts painfully obvious and, understandably, we become worried that they’d had that change of heart and did want everything. Well, in Jason’s words “the civilians switched off and the soldiers switched on.” Our defense plan involved a 1.3 million candle powered torch for the element of surprise and our machetes (lovingly honed to samurai qualities) for, well, the other bit of a good strategic plan. It all, thankfully, came to nothing, just a rather sleepless night with no light as we rotated through sentry duty and listened to the unsettling sounds of the jungle which honestly sounds like a herd of cows thrashing about in the throes of agonizing death only meters away. Hearing the occasional shotgun shells being fired in the near vicinity is no lullaby either, I can assure you.

Well we rose before dawn and put as much distance between us and the Wickerman village as possible, nearly 70km in fact (wow, what we can achieve with an early rise!) It turned into a very smooth and pleasant day on the river and we found ourselves sleeping near a truly lovely family who even gave us breakfast the following day and plied us with bananas. Fortunate timing really as our good will to Jungle people was at an ebb and their generosity and warmth have done much to restore our faith.

And so on to Atalaya, a fairly large town found at the meeting of two rivers; the Tambo and Urubamba. Our river ends here as they both become the mighty Ucayali which eventually becomes the Rio Amazonas nearly 2000km away. I say ‘found at the meeting’ but strangely (perversely we think) the town is actually located slightly up the Tambo which meant your four favourite adventurers, heroically spurning all engines and common sense, had to drag the boats through thigh deep mud and chest high water along the banks for over a kilometer to get to this bustling little town just before nightfall.

Lessons learned recently; better communication is vital and so we’ve acquired a good guide for the next leg, one notorious for piracy. We’ve forged some documents which hold a great deal of sway over a population who has no access and little exposure to anything official. We’ve learnt a lot in the last couple of weeks, about ourselves and this fascinating country. About what we can deal with and what’s out there; the first has been pleasing, the second not so much but we’re stronger all the same.

James

Adopted family in Sepuhau

Andy being taught how to tie on the flag..

Safety first!

A bit of down time on the river

Jase & Andy on H.M.S. Perseverance

Patch washing dishes

Jase & Andy

Friends made on the river

Jase paddling on a hot day

Sunrise on the Urubamba after a long night of sentry duty

A stunning morning on the Urubamba

Friendly jungle family feeds us breakfast

James at sunrise

Early morning view from a hammock

Grounded on a wrong channel

Wrong path leads to grounded boats and hard work (but good photos)

Buttress roots dwarfing James

Silhouete against a river of stars (Patch and James)

Patch silhoueted at sunrise

Provisions!

You learn fast in the jungle!

It felt strange to be zipping so fast through the Pongo de Mainique after 800 km of human powered travel. It was the only scheduled motor of the Amazon expedition, the reason being that the currents were far too powerful for us to successfully raft through; especially given that it’s still the rainy season. We had arranged a motorized canoe from Ivachote to Quitaparaya, a distance of 15km. It was one of the most incredible 15km of the trip so far, the Pongo de Mainique turned out to be truly stunning, although we weren’t able to stop (due to whirlpools) we looked in awe at the 1.5 km high gorge with its bizarre rock formations and waterfalls that sprayed down unbelievably fine droplets of water. It was without doubt one of the most striking untouched natural beauties that we had ever seen, it wasn’t hard to believe that it is the most bio-diverse spot on the planet.

We arrived at Quitaparaya, where hidden behind the trees on the bank of the river was a small thatched village, with all the houses made on stilts. We asked around for boats there, but quickly discovered that they had none to sell. We haggled with our boatman until he agreed to take us up to a small town nearby called Timpia, here we hoped to find some canoes. We got to Timpia rearing to arrange two small boats for ourselves, but found that there was a village football competition going on, so we had to wait till it ended before business. The football went on for 4 hours. It was then too dark to do business….apparently. So we settled down for the night in an abandoned building. Comically James’ hammock proved too much of a burden on a load bearing pillar in the building, resulting in the architectural student being sprawled out on the floor with a very sore back.

The next morning we were directed to a man called the Jefe (village chief) to buy boats, however he turned out to be fishing for the day. We settled down for a second night. On the third day we met the “Jefe”, told him of our position, and after much talk he finally said “I don’t know why you were told to come here, I don’t have any boats”. (Blood pressure rises). We settle down for a third night. The next morning another football competition is going, this time they all want to talk business, and we purchase ourselves one dugout canoe (we christen H.M.S. Nemisis) and one fabricated canoe (we christen H.M.S. Perseverance).

We immediately set ourselves up to leave, and 2 hours later we are happy as Larry in our newly purchased boats, blissfully paddling our way through the Amazon Jungle. 25 minutes later we are staring at rapids which in a raft would be a doddle, but in two long thin overburdened canoes it almost made us feel the need for a nappy. James and I went in first, and after some frantic paddling we managed to skirt around the worst of the rapids, only taking on a bit of water. Jason and Andrew were next and unfortunately for them things did not go quite to plan…

The following is a first hand account written by Jason;

Initially Andy and I had quite enjoyed the dug out canoe, we were moving fast and playing in small rapids. James and Patch were slightly behind, getting to grips with their boat which was both longer and heavier, we waited for them in the eddies created by the river, chuckling as we went.

We had run river left in order to get ourselves onto a sandbank and bail some water out of the canoe whilst waiting for James and Patch but they caught up with us faster than we had anticipated so we didn’t have time to empty the boat. We looked ahead to a set of rapids that we hadn’t seen and shouted back to the others to run river right to try avoid them, they struggled with a heavy boat but hit the right hand side of rapids fairly square on. Andrew and I fought to get our canoe over to the right to avoid the worst of the rapids but we were too heavy and too close. I turned the nose of the canoe to attack them  – we were committed.

We took on water as we smashed through the first wave. The canoe filled as we smashed through the second wave. We rode through the third wave then we tipped. Initially I stayed calm but it didn’t last. Not expecting rapids we were wearing our jungle boots, trousers, hats and glasses. The life jackets were attached to the bags in front of us. It was stupid.

The water pulled me down, I fought against it but the world swiftly went a muddy brown followed by complete darkness. Which way was up? I was fighting, fighting to get to a surface that I couldn’t locate. I wanted to get my boots off and I kept thinking how stupid it all was – I didn’t want to die like this, not here and not now! I broke the surface and breathed, tried to breathe deeply but I was panicking. My first thought was for Andy and I shouted to him, he shouted back. Relief. “Andy, come back for me.” He couldn’t, I knew but I was terrified. The water sucked us both down as we entered another huge hydraulic. The awesome power of the water felt almost inevitable as it pulled us down. Down and around and around.  Darkness, confusion, whirlpools, gasping – so close. “Andy!” I shouted as I broke the surface again. No response. Panic. Not here, not now! I grabbed the buoyant kit I had been fighting towards and clung to it for dear life.  “Andy!” I screamed again. He had been under for such a long time. “Jase! Jase! “ Relief. “Grab the kit!”. The water fought hard, Andy fought harder and he managed to get hold of the tires that we use to keep the kit buoyant “Don’t let go of these Andy, no matter what.” The canoe was long gone as two semi drowned men crawled onto the shore.

James and I watched completely helpless from further downstream. We found a beach and pulled the boat up, Where Jason and Andrew eventually joined us. We scanned around the beach looking for a way out. There wasn’t, just a cliff face with Jungle so dense it would be impossible to move through. Time to reassess our situation. Yep, we were royally screwed. The one boat we had was only for two men, not four (and certainly not the additional 200kg of equipment). We set up camp on the beach fully aware of the fact that a flash flood was possible. What else was there to do? We were completely stranded; all there was was to wait for a boat and hope we could call it in. At that point both our primus stoves packed in, we had to search for fire wood for half an hour before being able to prepare supper. We finally got our heads down well into the night.

The next morning was overcast and grey, Morale was obviously pretty low. We had our breakfast and slowly packed our kit away, then sat and waited for a boat. We heard one come around the corner at about 1030, we shouted and waved him down. It was a small fishing boat, not much bigger than our own. We discussed with him the cost of taking two team members and equipment up to Camisea (the nearest town). The guy knew our predicament and therefore decided to charge the four gringos a hefty price, something we could only afford with our backup dollars. He had us by the balls and he knew it. After a quick discussion of who should go on the motor boat, Andrew and I (the least experienced team members at paddling) jumped on, while James and Jason paddled on in Perseverance.

By 2 o’clock we were reunited in Camisea, and all feeling a sense of De’javu as we once again went around town with our pigeon Spanish trying to buy a boat (this time with severely limited funds). After asking the village chief for permission to stay in the town, we then proceeded to ask “is it possible to buy boats here?”, not understanding he replied “No we only have one telephone”. We didn’t press the matter with him.

The search in Camisea  was unfruitful mainly due to their indifference to selling much prized boats. In the end we decided that we had to put three men in H.M.S. Perseverance along with a streamlined version of our kit, and one man (James) would have to motor it to the next town, Sepahua, with the rest of the kit. We were assured that there we could buy our second boat.

So the three of us set off on what we estimated to be a two-day paddle to Sepahua. The water was still fairly rough, and we passed some dramatic siphons but generally speaking we handled it fine. On the first night we decided to camp out on the island in the middle of the river. It turned out to be a banana plantation; it also turned out to be a very bad idea. It became evident that Banana trees are very weak, and after slinging up our hammocks and jumping in, the story went like this: Three seconds later, you were moving. Two seconds later your back hits the ground. One second later a 1000kg banana tree crashes down right next to you. You have to learn fast in the Jungle. We also discovered that the banana plantations harbor some nasty little beasties that really aren’t that little. This resulted in Andrew and I running around under the moonlight machetteing any spiders we deemed ugly. Most spiders over three inches are ugly. We later found out that the banana spider (/wandering spider) can kill humans. As I said before, we are learning fast.

So we slept another night on the beach and got ravaged by sand flies and mosquitoes all night, and the next morning, after a quick breakfast we were paddling again. We went nonstop for the whole day, we even had lunch drifting downriver, and by the evening we pulled our boat in at a village to get our usual evening drink. By this point we were a long way from anywhere, including the law. This became evident when we found shotgun shells being sold next to lollipops in the shop. The guy working there told us he had a friend that sold guns if we were interested, when we declined he said, “OK, if you change your mind there are guns in Sepaua, many guns there”.

We paddled on for another half hour before pulling our boat in at a hamlet which our GPS told us was called ‘Texas’. The locals there (all on horseback) welcomed us and invited us to sleep in their barn, a little luxury. They were genuinely interested in us when we told them our story so far (a small smile flashing across their face when they heard about HMS Nemisis), then one of them, as convenient as hailing a taxi in a Hollywood film said “I make boats”. He led us to the river and presented a brand spanking new boat, exactly the same as HMS Perseverance!! He started haggling for it at a low price, we bought it for even lower, and he even accepted US dollars!! Couldn’t have gone smoother!! The next day he even motored it to Sepehua so we didn’t have to tow it. The new addition to the team has been christened H.M.S ´Sin miedo¨, pronounced sin me.ay.doe it translates into ´without fear´.

In Sephaua we were reunited with James and we spent a well deserved rest day there. In general we are holding up fine in Peru with no illnesses or even bad stomach upsets, the only issues being bites from mosquitoes and sandflies. I also had a small incident with the largest ant I’d ever seen, it bit me twice and I very nearly cried like a little girl over James’ shoulder it was so painful. There are also now two bone fractures, Andrew’s hand is still screwed from the mountain, and my foot that is also possibly fractured, we don’t know how. We do have problems with kit however, it is said that one-third of your kit fails every 3 months in the jungle, it’s actually a bit faster than that. Both our stoves are incredibly temperamental, our food rots as soon as we buy it regardless of attempts to preserve it. Even sealed goods mould inside packets. Our clothes are moulding slowly in dry bags. We have to become quite dynamic to sustain ourselves out here.

On the next stage of the trip, rapids become less of a problem, but other dangers present themselves. From here the river becomes far more isolated and tribal, there are said to be pirates (wielding RPG’s rather than cutlasses), as well as drug lords and perhaps the most terrifying ones, the organ harvesters who literally kill locals to steal livers and kidneys etc (affectionately known in the area as “face peelers”, touching stuff).

Onwards and Upwards

Patrick

Tour de Peru – the last road VIDEO

A short clip outlining the trials and tribulations of the cycling phase as we left the Andes and dropped down towards the jungle!!

The team is currently in Timpia – a very Isolated town in the jungle. We are awaiting an audience with the head of the village who, it is rumoured will be able to put us in touch with the people who will sell us our boats!

Tour de Peru – The last road

Well we gave it a day after the white water phase to begin punishing our bodies again! Our aim; to cycle up and out of the Andes and deep into the jungle on what really is Peru’s last road before this continent rapidly turns into dense and unpopulated rainforest navigable only by boat. We all knew we’d bear witness to some dramatic changes in scenery and climate but how staggering the differences would actually become we could not have guessed. In just four days of incredibly intense cycling our bodies would go from having the hairs on our arms and legs frozen to dripping in sweat as we slogged it through the wet, muddy and humid tracks of the high rainforest.

Intense would be a good adjective to describe the last five days! We set off on what I can only hoped to have described as a bright morning on Thursday from Ollantaytambo. In reality it was a very wet and miserable day. As ever the weather had no dampening effect upon the teams’ spirits and we attacked the immediate 2 km vertical climb on our bikes with buckets full of energy. I only wish our bikes were more up to the challenge; Don’t get us wrong ladies and gents, these bikes look the business and no doubt, once upon a time; they where! It’s just rather like rental cars they have a habit of being absolutely abused by part time owners who couldn’t give a tuppeny for them. It’s rather disconcerting to be cycling along and hearing my brother chuckling behind me as bits and pieces just spontaneously drop of my bike. The team had a grand total of three to four working brakes and probably a fifth of the available gears! The road wound ever up and up like mad spaghetti draped drunkenly by giants across this impressive mountain range. So up we went, deeper into the clouds until everything but the road immediately in front and behind could be seen. To put it as politely as possible the climb was horrendous! The road wound so much that literally 50% of our struggle was spent painfully cycling inch by inch up mountains in the complete opposite direction to our actual goal. Ollayatatambo lies at 2500m, at the height of this climb we were at approximately 4400 meters. We had gained this height in under four hours and our bodies where physically exhausted. What we didn’t know however was that our knackered and burning muscles where in for a real treat!

After a horrendously strong coffee in a blind ladies shack at what we were tentatively hoping was the top we once again slowly edged our bikes in to the mist, I probably pedaled a total of 3 times over the next 30km. This wasn’t just a “down section” this was a whole glorious mountain of just one great big “DOWN”. With Patch leading the descent and James following up at the back the team rocketed down in perfect line formation. Amongst the mist and so high up James aptly described the sensation as like to spitfires hurtling through the clouds. It was literally pure bliss to finally escape the ever upwards torture, even if our bodies where frozen from being buffeted by icy winds, we didn’t care, this was living. We had earned this, every meter of descent had been paid for, painstakingly and none too quickly in our efforts the previous month as we slogged it through the Andes. Needless to say, in the odd magical moments when the clouds decided to part for us we were treated to some truly spectacular sights, with some equally spectacular drops as well I might add. Sometimes ignorance is best I guess! Hurtling down at speeds of 55kmph was exhilarating, made more so by the lack of brakes. It was rather aptly about now that the team discovered an effective method was to ram our right boot on to the front tire just behind the fork. Mad maybe, but effective definitely. A curious side effect would be the ever present smell of burning rubber down the mountain and curved shaped ridges burned into the soles of our boots.

Eventually we made it to the city of Quillabamba where, over a month and a half ago, we had stashed our jungle kit and equipment. After an unhealthy amount of fried chicken we made some friends in an internet café. Which ultimately led to an unadvisable heavy night on the town in Quillabambas finest club; Don diablo’s or D D’s as the locals call it. We would sorely pay the price for this the next day. But as Jason rightly pointed out it would have been inappropriate of us as ambassadors of our own fine Countries to decline such a generous invitation to share these peoples culture. So we got smashed. The next morning would prove a sore trial for our equally sore heads. But I guess you learn something about the team around you when on the bike in front, your mate throws up, yet he never stops cycling. You know he wants to, he wants to but not a word is said of it. We cycled 65km that day. By this point the contents of our support vehicle (one very battered old rental taxi) had magically swelled in size. Pablo, our ever reliable and dependable support driver, had some how conjured up his family one morning, from where and how will I guess remain a mystery. But his 15 month daughter was delightful entertainment in the evenings even if she was terrified of the 4 giant muddy gringo’s. So with a Peruvian family in tow we continued to tackle the road as it rapidly became nothing like a road at all. In fact Jungle roads have a lot akin to something like the Somme 1916. At times we ended up supporting the support vehicle that was supporting us. Quite a bit of supporting was going on.

On the 4th day all attempt at care and repair of our clapped out bikes had died a thousand deaths. We weren’t going to gently coax our bikes over the finish line, we were thrashing them with all the conviction of four men hell bent upon one goal: Finishing. I might also add at this juncture a geographical phenomena of the lower Andes, we KNOW that they descend, our altitude suggested so, we were no longer freezing and surrounded in clouds. In fact we where now sweating and getting bitten profusely yet somehow, after only one perfect half day of down hill, all we seemed to be doing was climbing up and up. Leading us to alter the famous saying; that in Peru: what goes down must come back up again! Eventually; caked in mud, sweat and grit with four flat tires, inner tubes like patch work quilts, barely a brake left in the team, knackered gears, knees in supports and four very sore bums, we jubilantly rumbled, rattled and gracelessly slid into Ivachote (to the smell of burning rubber of course!) on the very last road this great country has to offer. We had done it, we had literally reached the end of the line. But this certainly isn’t the end of our journey. Far from it, no this was only the end of the beginning!

Andrew

“These rocks are like knives”

The team struck out confidently from Sicuani on the final leg of our walking phase. Our injuries had somewhat subsided after the rest days and Andy covering the back of the group prevented anymore dog incidents! Upon asking permission to sleep in a field we received a nonchalant shrug and a “sleep wherever you like.” We did and shortly after sunset two jovial neighborhood watchmen turned up slightly inebriated and shared a coffee over some broken Spanish, they helped to expand our repertoire of Quechua words (currently a total of five). Quechua will become increasingly important as we descend deeper into the jungle!

The following day we made it in into Combapata which was our pre-arranged ‘put in’ to the Vilcanota River. We laid out a plan with Will for the following morning and thereafter took full advantage facilities at the rafting lodge enjoying a sauna and a hot shower (we never know when the next one is coming!).

A very excited team put into the Vilcanota River as the sun rose on Monday morning to run a three hour set. The geography of the lower Andes is such that a valley will roll for many kilometers with the water dropping little in altitude and therefore flowing very slowly. This makes for difficult paddling as you force the raft (which is not renowned for its’ hydrodynamics) downstream. It is when the water is channeled into narrow canyons that drop significantly in altitude that things get interesting.

As in a sport like parachuting once you enter a rapid you are fully committed to it. The aim is to befriend the water, to use it to your best advantage, not to fight it or be at its’ whim. Once you commit to the rapid there are two possible outcomes – you either run it successfully or you swim. There are many terms used to describe the mechanics of white water. It tumbles back onto itself in a re-circulating action creating ‘holes’, strange ‘eddy lines’, ‘keepers’ that will take in a swimmer or even an entire raft and spin them in the powerful undercurrent indefinitely. Terms like ‘the washing machine of death’ have been used to describe such water mechanics..

An exciting day ensued on the Vilcanota with some hair raising moments. The raft smashed through standing waves with the nose rising into the air un-unnervingly and the water crashing down onto the team. The rapids peaked at grade 4 – we passed through unbelievably tight gaps in rocks then plunged down into the next set of violent waves and we had to paddle with all our strength to escape the ‘tow back action’ of the water as it tumbled over the drops into massive hydraulics. “Why is this rapid called the knife edge Will?” “Because these rocks are like knives!” Thankfully we managed to successfully navigate the furious water even with everything it threw at us. Will shouted commands such as ‘forward’ or ‘hard back’, we obeyed and the raft glided on pummeled by the raging torrent.

This continued for fifty kilometers as we passed through towns both ancient and modern, the weather also closed in ensuring that we were soaked through whether on wild rapids or flat water. Will imparted his knowledge of the area’s history onto us as we paddled along and talked about the Apirumac River a great deal.

Many months ago when the Amazon plan was in its’ infancy we spoke of the Apirumac – another Amazon tributary. Apirumac translates into ‘the voice of god’ and it is the route that has been used by the few teams that have pulled off a source to sea expedition before us. After many hours of debate we conceded that we had neither the training nor the experience to commit ourselves to the white water fury that is the Apirumac. Will has run the Apirumac in the drier months of the year and having heard his stories as well as listened to Mark Kalchs’ fond reflections of his teams time on the Apirumac the seeds have been sown – the Amazon tributaries have not seen the last of our team! This also means that our team will be the first to attempt a source to sea expedition via the Urubamba.

 Our final port of call for the day was Urcos, famous for Tupac Amaru who led a rebellion against the Spanish in Peru. As an example to the country he was hung drawn and quartered, his remains were sent to different parts of Peru as a warning to anymore would be revolutionaries.

We were braced for a long day when we woke with the sun rising over the lake in Urcos and we hastily ate our scrambled eggs. There was a lot of flat water which made for very hard work. We witnessed the real power of the river as we swept along, the recent flooding had deposited tons of rubbish onto the banks, shredded farmers fields, proved too much for local aqueducts, torn down bridges and carved new channels into the beautiful Andean surroundings, at one point Will even exclaimed “Wow, that rapid definitely did not used to be there!” It was a stark reminder to us water borne pseudo philosophers that nothing is forever. We were now well beyond the reach of the commercial rafting runs and our tailor made voyage was oh so much more novel than walking!

We passed Cuzco – the ancient capital of the Inca empire, descended into the sacred valley of the Incas that holds Machu Piccu and watched as the last of the Andean forest disappeared in our wake to be replaced by more tropical flora and fauna. We watched in awe as the geography rapidly changed around us and the river expanded as more tributaries joined it changing name from the Vilcanota to the Urubamba, a real milestone for us.

We approached our final run of rapids as darkness was falling having paddled over one hundred and forty kilometers in two days. Ever reliable, Will expertly guided us through and gently deposited us onto a bank where we packed down the raft and dragged ourselves into Ollantaytambo, the historic town where the Incas made one of their last stands before the empire was crushed by the Spanish conquistadors.

We have taken another day to recuperate and tomorrow we will be heading out of Ollantaytambo on bicylcles bound for Quillabamba, this will take us through the eastern edge of the Andes and one final time we will be at high altitude to climb out of the basin we are in before we descend into the jungle.

Jason

The leg of long legs!

Well we´ve got to Sicuani, in slightly ridiculous time as well. Our daily aim was initially 12km, as our legs got used to it we thought 12km was too little so we extended it to 14km which swiftly became 15km.. Having reached 18km one day we decided; well that wasn´t so bad, so we did 20 the next day. That went well so we did 22 the following day. Clearly common sense does not have a kick-in point and the following days count hit 30km and the town of Sicuani two and a half days early!

 The teams bodies are now having a very well deserved rest in this bustling little city, they need it. Various states of disrepair are evident: Jason´s left thigh has no feeling, he´s eagerly planning a field operation on Patch´s hip, Andrew is nursing the nastiest foot known to man minus a big toenail whilst also sporting some impressive bites on both legs from a pack of farmers dogs who took a liking to gringo (Don´t worry, they weren´t rabid, Jasons’ wound treatment appeared more painful than the actual bites and, well Andrew hasn´t started biting us yet though he has taken to fighting re-guard actions with a catapult with overly nasty dogs which are in abundance!!) We´ve recently discovered that, despite owning canines that definitely do not want to be your best friend, the locals are only too happy to let four mad white men sleep in their barn or outhouse and brokenly interact over a very sweet coffee. They really are lovely and warm people who like to help even though they can´t understand our aversion to perfectly good vehicles (which often stop and enquire if we are ok? The conversation normally goes; “where are you going? You realize that´s very far….it´s going to rain…..it really is very far!” We smile, wave, trudge on and invariably get wet!

We´ve covered over 260km on foot over some seriously impressive mountain ranges and are now itching to take to the water which is only 30km away in a small town called Combapata. The chance to travel whilst sitting down fills us with excitement and taking such a big step towards the jungle, which looms closer and closer every day, is a magnetic prospect.

James

Stunning scenery

James taking refuge in a barn

Descending into the valley

Horrendous weather closing in across the lake

Crossing rapids

Jase with rapids in background

Cozy mud hut for an evening

Massive boulder in the road

Caylloma – Yauri

Well we are about halfway through our Andes road slog, we started this leg on a new, smaller dirt road, however it swiftly became apparent that the road had more in common with a canal as huge sections of it were submerged in water.  We battled through it doing our best not to water log our boots, thankfully the road descended in altitude and the road dried up significantly. After 25 km´s or so of trekking we found ourselves in a canyon walking alongside the Rio Apurimac (the Amazon´s very beginnings), a much needed change in scenery to the huge sparse and relentless setting of the open Andes. The canyon offered us relatively flat dirt tracks and some bizarre overhanging (and worryingly loose looking) rock formations to pass under. Tucked away off the track we  also found an offshoot of the canyon which presented a miniature Garden of Eden, quietly boasting small trickling streams supporting rock pools hidden away in caves under a dense golden vegetation. It would have been the perfect place to stay the night, unfortunately we had not met our 18 km daily walking quota, so we trudged off in search of a more distant spot to sleep.

For the past few nights we have been roughing it out sleeping in Alpaca pens, farm yards and occasionally if we are really lucky, an abandoned house. Sometimes we ask permission, usually we rely on our camouflaged army issue “bashas” to conceal us into the surroundings. However the local children usually find us, then by morning as first light wakes us we have an audience of old and young watching our every move as we shake off our slumber. Strangely we found that the further we got from the Lonely Planet destinations, the more generous and interested people became in us. This however proved a bad thing in some circumstances where the mainstream gift happens to be “papas”, a little black Peruvian potato type vegetable which can only be described as a vile tasting hard to chew object, visually reminiscing Alpaca poo. However, the sentiment remains.

One morning we woke up to discover that a local farming family who had been sleeping rough in the field adjacent to ours,  had come over to have a spot of breakfast on our turf (literally). We had a very friendly conversation with the 6 of them in a mix of Spanish, English and Quecha over an Alpaca soup. The youngest couple  had just given birth to a baby boy (we think) whom they had not yet named, we had made such an impression on them that they asked us to name their child with an English name (including surname!!), we christened him (or her) Harry Churchill, what a fine name. They were genuinely so happy that they gave us 3 kg´s of Papas. How nice.

While walking we have been coming across all types of life, varying from truck drivers (who are now starting to recognize the 4 crazy gringos) to heritage workers on Inca/ colonial sights. We came across a group of road workers who seemed very interested in our rucksacks. When asking how much they weighed, Andrew chucked his backpack on the floor thus tempting them to pick it up, three of them tried and failed with one of them spectacularly falling over in the process.

The last day of the leg we had a 15 km distance to cover, we had agreed beforehand that we wanted to hammer it out to get as much of a rest day as possible. Subsequently, 3 hours later we were all sweating and grunting in the midday heat, stumbling into Yauri having walked an average of 5km/h for 3 straight hours wielding 85 pounds each. Admittedly we were an ugly sight anyway, with all of us having not washed for 4 days (to make things worse a stray dog had found my rucksack rather fetching and decided to pee on it) but this was something else. A very well deserved rest, a luke-warm shower and a soft bed. Life is good.

Patrick

Aviator twins

Panoramic – the beggining

Dropping into another valley

The team (delayed phtos make for a funny sight as photographer sprints to pose)

More crazy rock formations

James

Life on the road

Enjoying the view – mid morning

Patch, chilling by a bridge

Andy & mans’ best friend

Submerged, battered boot

Tough walking

James at the confluence

Team at the confluence

Jasons’ wash in the mighty Apirumac

Jason prepares the evening meal

Home for a night

Breakfast with our new found friends (and Harry Churchill)

Crazy rock formations make interesting perspectives

Clearing up after the days business

Finally at Yauri after an epic morning

The road is not endless, it just goes further than you can!

Ok all our lovely readers, you’ll be glad to know that we’ve begun the hike through the Andes in earnest! With 85lb packs (we think, …our scales don’t actually go beyond 75. This either means that they’re rubbish or most people choose not to carry the equivalent of a small person on their back!) We have been aiming towards a modest 12 km a day. Probably seems like quite a small amount back in quaint little Britain (sorry not yet been to Malawi, so can’t compare with the Mulanje Massif. It’s on the agenda though!). These mountains are definitely ANYTHING but quaint though!  We have been sleeping at 4700m at nights so actually getting some good shut eye is tough in the thin, cold air, despite our thorough acclimatization but really the weight is a little oppressive. We can’t wait to get down to warmer climates and ditch some of our (heavy) cold weather gear. But hey this certainly is adventure from its most truthful angle; it’s tough and slow work. Some days we don’t seem to step foot on a flat bit of land at all let alone a down hill section! We literally had to fight our way up and out of the pacific side of the Andes and are really just coming into the basin flowing region of these epic mountains. So in theory the water should be going down hill now and the going much easier! This is just a theory though – one that our GPS flatly contradicts.

Happily though we are all in raring spirits and the going is pretty good. We have managed most days to punch out more than our distance quota and we happily cook up a feast at the end of each day! Chapattis, tuna fish pasta, fried chorizo and carbonara being among our means (See not just four pretty faces!). In fact eating well has rapidly become a major issue for us. With each aching mile our minds turn often to the evening meal and some down time.

Tonight we are even luckier though! We’ve stumbled upon a little back-water mining town named Caylloma! (not even in the Lonely Planet – gasp, shock, horror!) And have happily booked into a tiny squat little hostel with the prospect of some alpaca and guinea pig on the menu tonight! And to say we’ve been in ´remote´ regions would be putting it lightly, nothing but the odd wet, miserable alpaca farmer and a truck passing by on these very high, lonely mountainous roads.

This town can’t have more than 1800 people in it, but it feels like Las Vegas after the solitude of the high Andes.

Our bodies are starting to show the strain a little, each day sees a little bit more zinc tape here and a little more there! Soon we’ll be a patch-work of tape and backpack sores. Have I mentioned that we don’t actually own a tent? Because we don’t! This suits us fine though, every night we pitch our two military ´bashas´ (in the rain invariably, this place rains like clock work from 4pm every evening) up against a dilapidated alpaca-pen dry stone wall (if there is one) with walking poles propping up the outer side creating a fairly water and wind proof zone that we can cook, eat and sleep in. You would be amazed at what can be considered ´home´ when one is homeless!

Needless to say you only have to lift up your gaze from the boots of the man in front and you will literally be knocked back by the incredible beauty of this glorious mountain range! I’ve seen the Himalayas and where that range was majestic and powerful, akin to a Cathedral almost, these can only be described as rather wild, chaotic and rugged. They give the impression that they have only recently exploded forth from the earth.  A “young” mountain range (by mountain range standards!) they are truly inspiring and a little intimidating to be in. We may have come 100 km so far and have a further 200km to go until our raft put in point but for now we are just getting into our stride. Routine is important, it doesn’t sound very adventurous or dangerous, but we always knew this would be a hard slog won only with equal amounts of hard work.  Countless more miles to go, a continent in fact, but like I said, morale is high and we can’t wait to get back on to the trail.

Andrew

The group with ´grandma´- she looked after us well in Tuti

First day on the road, stunning scenery

five star quisine – we eat a lot every evening to replenish lost energy

Old lady in Chivay

The view from camp in Sebayo

Sebayos ancient church

Interesting perspective during lunch

All important hygiene even if the water is freezing

On the road

The team entering the basin that would lead us to Caylloma

a rare vehicle move to obtain supplies, this ground then has to be covered on foot

The source of the mighty Amazon River and the fight for the summit

Well we’ve had a very intense three days at the heart of the Andes. We´ve been extremely remote but we are now able to relate the official start to our expedition. I refer of course to our climbing phase in search of the source. Our excursion started from the small town of Tuti, a quiet little backwater, and from a small guest house above a shop there. Striking out confidently we found we´d acquired a guide, Jesus. For how long and how far was a complete mystery but this charming man, son of the proprietress, was a welcome aid with speeding us towards the hills and the shadow of Nevado Mismi, the 5600m mountain home to the tiny source of the greatest river in the world. (We´d previously met Jesus that morning when, in a more Oliver Twist moment than you´d believe, he lowered his smallest, terrified daughter through the letterbox size window above James and Patch´s locked door with a rope tied around her waist. There to let the agape westerners back into their room. We gave the poor girl some chocolate as compensation for her ordeal!)
After 3-4 km and at the end of a huge valley we came across the crumbling remains of an entire deserted village. “Tuti Antigua” Jesus informed us as we stood beneath the ruins of an old church amidst an unbelievable piece of history that seems to have completely slipped off the tourist radar. Deserted 300 years ago a more beautiful, complete and un-spoilt piece of the past is hard to imagine. All that remains is stone (and even this is being slowly repossessed by nature) yet its alleys and streets, walled gardens, doorways and hearths are truly captivating in the memories they invoke. It was here we said goodbye to Jesus who helpfully drew us a map to the source as well as the summit. We took it gratefully but swiftly pocketed it preferring to rely on our GPS and original mapping of the area (albeit fifty years old) and took the winding path up the magnificent backdrop of hills that provide this magical place with its setting.
Our chosen path to Nevado Mismi was to be a two day ascent. Our progress was good, especially as we were now above 4000m and carrying 65lb backpacks, over the desert-like plateaus and hills that led us further and further into the wilderness. Having stopped for lunch by a small brook a simultaneously beautiful yet terrifying sight appeared as the clouds cleared and we caught our first glimpse of the mountain. It evoked deep emotions. They say you don´t conquer mountains – they allow you to briefly enjoy their summits before you have to return home. Ambition to achieve the summit burned in all of us as we stared at the cold peak in the distance.
Eventually we came upon a huge, curving valley flanked by mountains. This was to be our road to “the pass” and entry to the source and thence the mountain. For the remainder of the day though we progressed, ever up, this valley to a suitable base camp passing settlements abandoned during the “época de lluvia” or rainy season , no one comes up here at this time of year. There is a Norwegian saying “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing” – We discussed this as we walked and wondered whether it would still ring true on the higher slopes of Nevado Mismi?
An old farm ruin presented the perfect place to raise shelter and get some much needed fluids and food down our necks, we busied ourselves about the camp – the military efficiency kicking in, before settling down to a wheezing night’s sleep in the thin air. (if one is not acclimatized properly something called the Cheyne-Stokes rhythm often makes sleep elusive, your breathing pattern becomes erratic and a person can be observed to stop breathing for two to three seconds which wakes them up with a start. The twins, seemingly oblivious to this, slept fine but Jason and Patch hardly got any sleep as their bodies struggled to take on enough oxygen!)

The “Pass” turned out to be aptly named. The only break in the sheer rock wall that surrounded us, this 30m wide point is the only way out and is situated at the very end of this mighty valley. Marked with a cairn at its entrance, the pass, unlike the valley below, is covered in snow and is a good indication of what lies beyond. Foot deep snow met our passage to the source in what seemed a completely different world and an extremely inhospitable one.
Quite soon Andrew and Patch noticed a small stake stuck into the rocks a few hundred metres to our left, they headed off to investigate – could this be the source of the mighty Amazon? It wasn´t the grid that we had recorded but it certainly presented a trickle of water that flowed off the slopes to…. Somewhere.. We marked it and continued on our compass bearing for the source, struggling but determined!

The last two kilometers seemed to take forever, the weather worsened with the snow blowing in horizontally and we had to fight forward, kicking into the snow and using our walking poles to steady ourselves, finally in what seemed like a monumental moment we crested a ridge to the sight of a small lake – a small lake at this altitude! It married up perfectly with the grid reference we had researched as the source but it was far from what we expected. This lake marks a permanent store of water that flows eternally into the valley below making it the definitive source of the worlds´ mightiest river. We bathed in the moment, cold as it was this small lake at this ridiculous altitude marked the real beginning of a project nearly two years in the making.

Another pot of water went onto boil, slowly, (it takes a while at five thousand metres!) We took stock of the time, the weather, our progress so far and held a quick meeting on whether we should return to our camp with the source in the bag or whether we should push on to try and achieve the summit in the same day. Returning to camp would mean repeating all the days distance again tomorrow; the pass and climb to the source… what would you have done? We decided to power on and immediately hit a steep incline. Once up it gave us our first close up look of the towering Mismi. It dominated the ground, wreathed in cloud it rose another five hundred vertical meters above us.

The approaches along the East and West ridges looked viable but that of the East held more rocky outcrops which meant shallower snow and easier going, we set off for the base of the East ridge, breathing hard but still feeling confident. The snow deepened and it became necessary to rotate the man at the front as it was so hard to carve out a path for the others. We again took stock upon reaching the base of the East ridge exchanging walking poles for ice axes and catching our breath before setting off on a course that would see us traverse the ridge, snaking our way to our final destination. The weather continued to try and persuade us to turn back but we pushed on, the snow deepening – now up to our thighs. At such an incline progress was slow and entirely dependent on the lead man carving out a passage for the others, fighting his way through the snow until he could hardly breathe before the man to his rear replaced him. Never have I seen men’s spirits shine so brightly as on the side of that mountain.
The Snow was falling so heavily by now that we could see nothing else around us, there was the team, a path of deep footsteps disappearing to our rear and nothing else but white. It was one of the most surreal scenes I have ever experienced – a complete white out where mountain and sky seemed completely merged and the world was drained of colour. Such an alien environment instills fear in a man, couple this with an increasing gradient that meant we were literally crawling up the side of this mountain and it produces an unforgettable experience.
Being point man was hard work, we had to punch into the snow with the ice axes before trying to raise our feet alternately to kick steps into the mountain side, it was wholly exhausting! Time pressed on and each of us wondered whether we had made the right decision to attempt Mismi that day. We had decided a cut off time that allowed us enough light to return to camp, this cut off time was fast approaching.
We set our sights on a small rock, the only feature visible in the heavy snow and we fought with all our hearts to reach it. Our last recorded height was 5583m, Nevado Mismi stands at 5595m. We could have pressed on but at this stage with the elements and the altitude it was taking us one minute to make four vertical meters of progress, we were out of time and swiftly running out of light. For our part we are content that we reached the top, it was within grasp and we were proud to slump down together next to each other and unfold our flag, only disappointed that we did not have a Malawian flag to fly at the top of that great mountain for Jason and our many supporters from Malawi.
We slid down the mountain in various ungraceful fashions, having a wonderful time but grumbling about how easy it was to go down when we had fought so hard to go up! Upon reaching the base of Mismi we took a bearing for the pass and made a bee line for it, it was late, we had covered many kilometers and ascended over 1200m, taking us into the region classed as “extreme altitude”, the snow had seeped into clothing and was beginning to melt. We found those last hours a blur, we took bearings, picked reference points and headed for them as fast as our legs could carry us (not very fast!). We passed the stake that Andrew and Patch had discovered and clambered down the pass heading back to the camp. That evening we cooked another enormous meal of tuna pasta and there were less problems sleeping (apparently our exhausted bodies remembered to breathe).
We slept in the following day and enjoyed another large breakfast, trying to use as much food and fuel as possible to lighten the load. The return journey was a great deal easier with gravity on our side and the ever thickening air we had no major problems, we were back in Tuti in good time and headed for a cheap restaurant before collapsing into our beds for a great nights rest.
An incredibly exciting start to this four thousand mile journey, we are resting today before heading towards Sibayu, the first of a series of checkpoints that will lead us to our white water rafting put in on the Urubamba.

Rations for the ascent to the Source and Nevado Mismi

Tuti Antiguo2

Tuti Antiguo

The ruins of the church – Tuti Antiguo

The team with Jesus – our guide to Tuti Antiguo

Lunch on the ascent

James with Mismi in the background

Our first view of Nevdo Mismi

Team on the way up

Home for two nights

The team near the pass

Mapping

The team descends to the source

The source of the mighty Amazon

The team climbing away from the source

Ditching walking poles for Ice axes

James punching his ice axe into the snow

Andy & Jase

View down Nevado Mismi

Ascending Nevado Mismi – final recorded height was 5583m

James flies the union jack at the top of Nevdo Mismi

Jase flies the union jack at the top of Nevdo Mismi

Patch flies the union jack at the top of Nevdo Mismi

Dinner after an epic day on Nevado Mismi

Life inside the shelter, tight but comfortable

Team prepares breakfast before descent

Boggy ground makes for hard walking

The descent back to Tuti Antiguo

Acclimatization

We decided that summiting a 5600 meter mountain in the middle of nowhere should not be taken light heartedly, so an acclimatization hike was in order to get us used to the lack of oxygen (therefore avoiding conditions such as high altitude cerebral edema). Being in the middle of the Andes it wasn’t difficult to find a mountain to train on, we chose a peak that was 4750 meters high near the town we were staying in. So the next day, in a very relaxed fashion, we set off at midday after a lie in and two breakfasts.

The day started sunny, and we hammered up the first 500 meters, paying little attention to the fact that we were already 3900 meters high. Admittedly there was a bit of panting, but nothing too worrying. We had been walking about an hour and a half when we had the slightly ‘confident’ idea of leaving the path and followig the ridgeline. After a quick council of war over the map, it all seemed very achievable. The only downside being that it was a bit steeper. Then Jasons´ storm alarm on his watch went off and we watched the air pressure drop on the barometer. The fog descended on us and we started to hear the rumble of lightning creeping towards us. We pressed on determined to get to the summit. By now we were all panting like the obese kid at sports day due to the thin air. We were scrambling up a face of the mountain that was rarely ascended. There was very heavy scree sliding around under our boots, Andrew managed to dislodge a boulder which 4 men would have difficulty picking up, the three of us below him went through our standard operating procedures of taking cover as Andy shouted ´below´.  It tumbled down in our general direction, thankfully it missed. We carried on in a scattered formation to avoid each others scree and rock movements. The scree walking turned into more of a scramble up large rocks, we were nearly touching the summit by this point, all of us feeling the lethargy induced by the lack of oxygen. Andrew led up through a vertical gulley surrounded by rock that forced the team into a narrow channel, then shouted down for us to be careful of the loose holds.  James scrambled up straight after Andy having taken cover while Andy cleared the summit, Jason and I tucked ourselves out the way in a crevice (a good move). Next I went up, stepping on a large rock and gripping hand holds to the side. The rock a quarter the size of a car shifted from under my feet, time stood still briefly as it tumbled down missing Jason who was still tucked out the way by a meter leaving my legs dangling in the air frantically looking for a foot hold. I quickly managed to scramble up, feeling other rocks gently shift. Feeling very shaken and screwed up by the lack of oxygen I called down for Jason to come up. All four of us stood on the summit, looking at 7 cairns all an imposing 8 foot tall. They seemed very unsettling, somewhat ominous like tombstones. We stood on the peak for around 5 minutes before deciding to quickly descend due to the gathering storm. We headed a north easterly direction off the mountain in an attempt to find the path down while staying on the plateau. Unfortunately, the Peruvian national maps being around 50 years old had paths on which no longer existed, so we had to take a bearing and follow the compass down a lot of the way while reconfirming our position on the GPS every few hundred meters. We took a bearing down to an alternative path which did exist and followed this most of the way till we hit a dirt road and followed it back to town, enjoying the thickening air as we descended.

Patrick

The team at the base of the peak feeling confident!

A quick excursion for a photo opportunity (regretted on the climb back up to the path)

Jase & Patch taking a minute to enjoy the view (and pose)

Looking down onto Chivay

James looking out into the valley below

The mist descends forcing the team to stay close together

the view out off a spur

Jason about three quarters of the way up

James, Patch & Andy about half way there

James and Patch – minutes from the summit struggling with the gradient and altitude

The twins tired but succesful

Jason & Patch triumphant if tired and slightly shaken on the summit

Jason customarily placing another rock on top of the giant cairns

Descending through the mist – back on the path now

Post climb cups of tea on the boil!

Sherpa Patch

Jason near the bottom of the peak – beautiful colours!

Back down in Chivay after a tough day – photo with a Peruvian couple

Laying the groundwork in Peru

Day seven in South America and our nationwide admin explosion is coming to an end. Specialized kit has been stashed at the gateway to the jungle, maps secured and water conditions checked first hand. A major adaption to the second phase has also occurred (well how accurate can the predictions of four young individuals be when they are half a world away and none of them have actually been to the continent!) The change in question has actually brought us closer to our original concept of white water rafting through the Andes. An enterprising young man by the name of William has agreed to be our guide through a large section of run-able river (interestingly when we first asked around town whether this was possible a lady in a tour guide shop said, “this is impossible, if you survive then email us please” as she handed over a business card! Ouch!) Only 24, this likable and honest guy has been working the Urubamba since he was 17 and though it will be challenging he is confident of our success and has worked hard with helping us with the logistics and providing a rubber raft (our wooden canoes would never survive the high river and we couldn’t afford our own expensive raft). So with Williams help our epically long hike through the Andes has been shortened by some 100kms with some serious white water experience. Fortunate really as our original canoe put-in at Quillibamba is a raging torrent and completely insane. So an extra 80 odd mile walk to Ivochote, a tiny jungle town, is in order anyway!

On another note, tonight we journey to Arequipa and then on to Chivay which is the final acclimatization town before the climb to the source. Bus journeys up here have turned out to be a bit of a double edged gift. On one side you get to experience and ogle at the breath-taking Andes whilst on the other you are only ever inches (literally) away from hurtling off the road on some truly ridiculous cliff-top roads. Some times for ease of mind night busses are preferable, ignorance is bliss!

We have been on the receiving end of some pretty funny looks from people in the hostel at the moment. They must think we are all mad, when we aren’t turning the bar area into a map room we are outside playing with 7ft solar roles, motorbike batteries and a ridiculous amount of kit including ice axes, internet antennas and pharmaceuticals. One lady asked if we are trying to overtake the world!  We told her it had occurred to us.

Conditions on the mountain are still a bit of a mystery! No one really climbs at this time of year due to it being so wet. Strangely we don’t have any tents, just basha’s, and I think we are all slightly wishing we had! Despite the rain Cuzco appears to be a city gone slightly water fight crazy! You can’t leave the hostel for getting water bombed and squirted every 10 yards! I think this must be the lasting effects of a recent festival.

Otherwise things are all in hand at the moment surprisingly! I get the impression this is the quiet before the storm. I think the team, with true English spirit (slash Malawian too!) are just calmly writing out fears and tribulations in our respective journals at the moment, whilst outwardly just getting on with the job in hand and steadily moving closer to our goal. Ultimately we all know the pain is about to begin, but we really can’t wait. The real experiences worth remembering after this trip of four friends will be the ones we know we earned.

Oh and don’t forget lovely people you can subscribe to email updates about the blog, just click ‘yes’ to updates when you leave a message. Simples.        Andrew.

Beautiful but stressful bus rides

Crossing the Urubamba

View down into Cuzco

Jase & James – Ollantaytambo en route to Quillabamba

Cuzco – main square

Cuzco – main square

James – Quillabamba

Patch and the route card……..

James and Jase – hostal Cuzco post 30 hour bus ride

Jase in front of Urubamba

James with kit outside the Hostal

Quillabamba

Cusco

Not too much to report – just a ridiculously long coach journey and some success on the admin.

We just wanted to let everyone know that the blog is still a work in progress and we have ammended `the team` page and will be loading a great deal more onto ´the expedition´and ´kit and equipment´as soon as we have time.

Thank you for all your support so far

Team Amazon

Touch down in Lima, Peru

Today our expedition went from mere plans to the physical start of a journey. Flying here we travelled over much of the Amazon and the Andes. The distance seemed long, even in a plane. To think we will know recover over 4000 miles of that journey, without engines…. is somewhat daunting. We are displaced and very far from what we know but every mile covered brings us closer to the waypoint marked “home” on my GPS, and that’s a pretty nice thought. The thousands of miles of mountains, rainforests and deltas between though is an exciting world, one which we are impatient to explore and learn. So, after settling into our comfortable little hostel in Mira Flores (astutely aware that all comforts should be relished and enjoyed before they are gone) we have immediately begun our move to the Andes. This apparently involves, for paupers anyway, an obscenely long coach journey to Cuzco. So with a quick swim in a rather violent Pacific ocean, a good meal and some beers, we are already keen to leave Lima and get started, even if it is in a tin can for 30 hours.

Lift off!!!

Andy, Patch and James flew out of London this morning after a heartfelt goodbye from Mr. Ellis who has been so very supportive throughout and has provided Amazon HQ at the school. A lot of the people reading this will be familiar with the room we based ourselves out of as it provided the venue for our party – what a send off guys, it took me a full two days to recover but it did make all of us realize what special people we have in our lives and we can’t explain how much your support means to us! You really sent us off in style; albeit it slightly singed from the Chinese lanterns (that went on to nearly burn the ancient school building down), black eyes (probably a product of the amount of testosterone in the room), and the massive – MASSIVE headaches that ensued on Saturday morning (no idea what these are from). In summary it was awesome!

I spent today running around like a headless chicken finalizing umpteen things! As I write I am flying over the South coast of the UK, we won’t be seeing it for another 6 months. There has been very little sleep between the team over the last few weeks with endless writing, sorting and packing not to mention the parties – cough cough…

So far so good though, we managed to get our entire stack of luggage through without a hitch which we had been very concerned about, hopefully it will all arrive in Peru. Our thoughts turn now to the very different and much more tangible problems that we will be presented with in the coming months. It’s a cliché but it still doesn’t quite feel like it’s happening as everything up until now has literally been lists, numbers and individual training courses.

We fly into Lima and the initial plan is to make contact with the embassy and then get in touch with the contacts we have made who are going to help us sort out some boats (yes – before you say it this is a fairly integral part of paddling down the Amazon………). I think there will be a lot of give and take in the group plan especially seeing as Peru is experiencing its’ worst floods in about thirty years and the area most affected is the one that we intended to hike through. This is also likely to mean that given the swollen rivers we will be walking further to keep ourselves a comfortable distance from sections of white water that have traditional Peruvian names translating into things like ‘boiling water’ or ‘the voice of god’ – not keen!

We also did a ‘before’ photo of each of us as well as a weigh in, though we will be carrying as much food as we can it is inevitable that we will lose weight. One person stated that after so many months of paddling we will return with the torsos of gods but completely atrophied legs – hot or not?

I have included a selection of photos from the last few days though I have omitted the ones from the party – they will be uploaded to Facebook! It took a hell of a long time to document and pack everything and it was a big hand to have John Borley around who was happy to give his advice on kit and help out with any task! Thanks John.

We will put up lots of photos as often as we can but our internet is at a massive premium -this has kindly been sponsored by Econosat but we will still have to ration it.

T – minus 4 days!!

With only 4 days to go this expedition feels like a huge coursework deadline that, like four naughty boys, we’ve left to the last minute. Yet a year and a half in, a staggering amount of time, money and training, things are genuinely starting to take shape. Even if we are completely run of our feet;  fervently fabloning hydrography maps, shopping for obscure pieces of survival kit, desperately persuading a communications company to please unblock our SAT phone and grabbing a quick cuppa with the legend that is Mark Kalch (who was part of the last team to have travelled from source to sea 2 years ago and has just walked across Iran). So things are getting pretty hectic….yet the school boy feeling persists.

Kit, kit, kit!!!!

After hundreds of emails, phone calls and cheeky chats in kit shops we came up with……… zero sponsors! This did not deter us from buying kit though as we would rather go hungry in a few months than lack shiny things. We are on first name terms with most of the employees in Cotswolds on Piccadily Circus and Nomad at Victoria and our military discount has been thoroughly abused!

Yes – it is ridiculous but we have actually been quite cut throat about what we do and do not need. A full list will be loaded into the ‘kit and equipment’ section of this blogsite.

This is one of numerous kit sorting sessions where we commandeered the common room of Mr Ellis’ boarding house (the party venue) and promptly had a Huge admin explosion. 4 Hours later we still don’t know what this cable connects too, are no closer to packing, are all going slightly mad but having the time of our lives!! Kit junkies to the core.

Winter Mountaineering!

With a weary heart Patch dragged himself of to what he expected to be a routine course in elementary mountaineering in Scotland for 5 days. Thanks greatly to the grisly weather and an experienced training team this turned out to be a hugely beneficial, and enjoyable, experience. The rugged mountains and plenty of snow made a great environment to learn and refine winter climbing skills.

From the photos it is hard to believe this is Scotland, only Patch’s bright pink face makes us believe so.

Thank you Africa!

Arrival back in Heathrow should have been an exciting moment as we were about to reunite as a team and enter the final stages of our planning. What actually happened was that the bag with the satelite phones in it did not make the connecting flight and brought about a nail biting three day wait as we would not have been able to replace them. The bag made it through intact and a sigh of relief was heard from all.

What did arrive fully intact was a complete travel pharmacy that would make a general hospital proud. The medical kit was planned out in various stages but was only fully realized due to the dedication and diligence that Mohammed Tayub paid it in Malawi! You can have a look at some of the items under kit and equipment in our medical section.

While Jase and Mo toiled on, the rest of the team furthered their medical prowess under the skillful eye of one Dr Raj Menon. Raj has also helped greatly in bringing our medical supplies up to scratch as well as teaching us the fine art of suturing. Turns out Patrick is a fiend with a needle and can’t wait for some poor team mate to need piecing together!

To Raj and Mo, we thank you for your help, professionalism and no small amount of concern!!