The Great Adventure: Part II Ascent to Apetina*

On December 6th, we rose at four in the morning to begin our adventure to Apetina and back again. We loaded Charles’ large motorized canoe, the Pilot, with trunks, fishing tackle, and camping equipment, and then lifted two heavy dugout canoes, side by side, upside down, on top of our luggage. Charles drove to Loabi to pick up our friends Ba Djapin and Mi Sa Libi, who had agreed to take us to Apetina, leave us there, and bring the Pilot back to Diitabiki ahead of us.

When we reached Pashtone, the mining town marking the beginning of the trail into the goldbush, we picked up the third dugout canoe, which we had previously arranged to rent for Ted and Raphael. The third canoe fit upside down on top of the others. I had never seen a dugout canoe carry three others before.

With the extremely low water level and heavily loaded boat, we often needed to swing over the sides of the Pilot to ascend the rapids. At one point, all of us, save Djapin, who was driving, needed to exert every ounce of energy simultaneously to pull the boat up the rushing water. At a monstrous, fifteen foot high, multistage, class four rapid known as Lolo Sula (Rolling Rapid), we disembarked and climbed to the top of the first stage, as the Pilot took a running start. When the boat hit the rushing water, the bow shot into the air, at least four feet above our heads when Mi Sa Libi threw a rope to the five of us. The force of the water, however, was too great for us to even hold the canoe in place. We needed to unload all three dugout canoes and practically every piece of cargo to conquer Lolo. After hauling the Pilot, the three smaller boats, and all of our equipment up Lolo, we stopped for the night, exhausted, at Gaanboli, the last Ndjuka village.

On our second day, we continued to ascend the Tapanahony. A few intense rapids slowed us down in the morning, but after we crossed the border into Amerindian territory, the water became smoother. The virgin rainforest, populated only by tiny villages many miles apart was overwhelmingly beautiful. The dry season had exposed part of the sandy riverbed and massive stones marked with lines of water up to three meters high, rose above us.

In the afternoon, fifteen minutes before Apetina we encountered an insurmountable obstacle. Another massive rapid of a nearly thirty-degree grade stood in our path. The water was only a few inches deep, and even with the boat unloaded and the help of an Amerindian, we could not pull the Pilot up the rocks. We made camp, therefore, on an island at the base of the rapids.

We fished that evening, catching a peacock bass and an anumara (an-nu-mara). The peacock bass is one of the premier sporting fishes in the world. They fight hard and seem to possess uncanny intelligence, often darting in between rocks to dislodge a lure. I am by no means a fisherman, for I did not know even how to cast before last year, but I have caught one peacock. Anumara, like peacock bass, fight hard. They like to dive to the bottom and stay still when hooked, making the angler think the lure is stuck. Anumara can grow up to forty pounds and love deep water close to the shore. The anumara that Taylor caught that second night, after being brought on shore, literally spit the lure at Taylor, lodging two treble hooks in his forearm. We ate the fish for revenge. They are not one of the better tasting Amazon fish, but we needed to catch enough fish for dinner before becoming too picky. We had to eat the fish the next day, unfortunately, because a heavy storm forced us to retreat to our hammocks before they were finished cooking. We waited for a while under our tarpaulin tents, but the rain persisted and we went to bed.

In the morning, a chief from Apetina took us to his village. Ted knew some of the villagers, and I was surprised to find that some of the Amerindians listen to me on the radio. When we returned to camp, and our Ndjuka friends had preceded us back to Diitabiki in the Pilot, we packed, loaded the three canoes and began our journey home.

*For a trailer of the documentary of our journey, see this video.