The Great Adventure: Part III The Journey Home

We set off for Diitabiki from our campsite near Apetina on December 8th, around noon. As the Endurance was the widest and sturdiest of the three dugout canoes, she took on the majority of the cargo. Loaded far heavier than the other boats and very top-heavy, steering my canoe felt like piloting the Exxon Valdez. The Endurance lived up to her name, crashing into rocks but surviving without a leak. Though after four swampings, Taylor gave her the nickname, “the submarine.”

We traveled about six miles that first day and camped on an island, facing the narrow side of the river. Raphael caught a huge Lowie, a type of catfish, and we stayed up late cleaning and cooking our catch. There was very little downtime during our journey. We would canoe until about four, set up camp, fish until dusk, build a fire, clean, cook and eat fish until about eleven, sleep, eat breakfast, tear down camp, and set out again. Survival and a steady pace made for little rest.

On the second day of our on our own we stayed on a massive island, most of which is underwater during most of the year. An ethereal landscape of sand, pools, and huge boulders separated two groves of trees that stand permanently above water. Howler monkeys filled the air with their hollow, eerie, and inexplicably resounding roar. The roar of the howler monkey can be heard up to seven miles away. It is the archetypical sound of the deep Amazon, and not at all what you would expect any primate to be capable of making. In hearing it for the first time, one can only imagine some terrible creature out on the hunt. In this setting, surrounded by water and truly impenetrable jungle with the roar of a hundred monkeys surrounding us, I felt very remote. While exploring the island as a possible campsite, we discovered an abandoned Amerindian hunting post in the smaller of the groves, with fames perfect for hanging hammocks. Raphael and I stayed on the island to fish and caught seven piranha between us. I was on cleaning duty that night and pulling out fish guts until about ten o’clock made me wish we had not caught quite so many.

That evening, Taylor saw a single, red eye of an animal in the grove where we had tied our hammocks. Ignoring thoughts of jaguars, Charles took his shotgun and, unable to see any other part of the animal, shot at its eye. It turned out to be a Hay, a small deer-like creature. How it came to live on an island, I do not know, but it was delicious with brown beans and rice.

On the river we encountered innumerable challenges. As we had no guide, we would stop to ascertain the safest passage downriver when we came to major rapids. Carving our way through the rainforest took time, and we made between five and eight miles progress each day.

At one point, Charles and Taylor, believing the upcoming rapids to be mild, told us to wait as they went ahead. Both Ryan and I assumed that if the passage was indeed easy, we were to follow in a few minutes. After a few small rapids, we saw Charles at the edge of a gigantic rapid yelling over the rushing water, “what are you doing!” As the current was too strong for us to get the Endurance to the bank, Charles told us to keep right to avoid a huge submerged stone. We, as Charles had, navigated the monster successfully, but the sheer height of the waves filled both canoes with water over the seats.

At another rapid, we slid onto a submerged rock, but the current was too strong to push the Endurance back, so I let the water twist us off the rock by turning the boat backwards, and Ryan and I turned sideways to navigate. We found ourselves whitewater rafting in an overloaded dugout canoe, going backwards. I directed the front of the canoe with my paddle, while Ryan poled from the rear, until it was safe to turn back around.

It rained every day, and all but two nights, challenging our ability to keep clothes and hammocks dry. The rainy season had officially begun while we were in the depths of the jungle. Late at night, while enjoying filets of massive peacock bass on a rocky hill, a couple of us walked down to the sand, where all three canoes had been dragged on shore. They shouted, “the boats are gone!” and we ran down to the beach just in time to see the last boat floating away, carried by the current of a nearby rapid. Heavy rains had caused the river to rise by about a foot in an incredibly short amount of time. We found all the boats but resolved to keep them tied the rest of the time.

The next day we passed Gaanboli and began to see an occasional boatman. The river was so full of rapids that we made only four miles that day. Ted and Raphael needed to fly out of Diitabiki by the 16th, and we had planned to arrive in Godolo by the day before and secure a ride for them to Diitabiki. But on the 13th, and only halfway to our destination, we found an Ndjuka boatman to take them to Pashtone, the mining camp to find another boat from there back home. We bid them farewell, and the four of us continued on our journey.

We made phenomenal time during the next two days. Based on our average of five miles a day, we estimated that it would take three days from Pashtone to Godolo. Charles, Taylor, Ryan, and I made thirteen miles the day we left Ted and Raphael. The next day, we met an incredibly long series of shallow but challenging rapids, which Ryan and I navigated expertly…up until the very last significant rapid of our adventure, when I hit a rock and swamped the boat. As I bailed and retrieved our floating cargo, Taylor celebrated the event with a rousing chorus of The Yellow Submarine. Despite the rapids and the spill, we made about twelve miles that day, passing Gololo and camping at Doo Wataa, the widest part of the Tapanahony River and on the home stretch.

The next morning we were greeted by Kate, one of my Peace Corps colleagues, traveling with a UNICEF worker and some donors to Godolo. Having been greeted in English, and in familiar territory, Charles decided that our excursion should be over rather than spending an extra night at Doo Wataa as we had planned. After lunch we took the last five miles to the Lon Wataa archipelago and Diitabiki on Wednesday, December 16th, arriving merely hours after Ted and Raphael had flown back to the city. It had taken two days to arrive at Apetina, and a full week of canoeing to return the sixty-five miles home through the unknown.

It was a relief to arrive back home in Diitabiki. We had traveled into the depths of the Amazon, and survived without guides, catching and hunting our food, and carving our way through the bush. Based on our pace during the excursion, home was still two weeks away from the first village to employ any means of transportation other than dugout canoe.