THE GREAT RIVER AMAZON RAFT RACE 2007 - Page 2
BY A.J. Rivera
Day 2.
The Faint of Heart Need not Apply!!!
"The Great River Amazon Raft Race 2007 (The Faint of Heart Need not Apply!!)"
The first line of the Amazon Rafting Club’s web page says it all, but most participants overlooked it until directed to it by Mike Collis, the event promoter, usually in a response to moans and groans.
On the second day, I went into the support boat looking for Linda, and to buy a cup of coffee, for none could be found in the remote native community where we spent the night amongst water buffalo. I found Linda in a bunkbed, dazed and in pain. The strain of paddling was in her muscles but showed in her face. She wanted to continue but her body wanted to surrender--she was tottering and trotting. I had led my teammates into a competition without any training, where even the trained teams were feeling the pain, and already one complete team had succumbed and several other individuals from different teams were unable to continue into the second day.
The minute we left Iquitos, the hardships began, at first annoying, then irritating, finally maddening. Everyone expects to endure the physical hardships of rowing and unconventional primitive crafts without any comforts to speak of. But many of the foreign participants were set back by the general disorganization that is typical of emerging cultures.
Linda thanked me for coming to get her that morning and for cheering her on. She had been the lucky one, for she had slept in a bed on the support boat. Sonja and Claudine slept at the football field in a tent we borrowed, and I slept in a hammock in an empty building. Most of the foreign teams slept on the boat and the Peruvians in the community on the cement and wood floors under mosquito netting.
For breakfast we had rice porridge, but the Peruvian name for it was more descriptive, meja de arroz, rice crumbs. Boiled rice mixed with condensed milk may satisfy the need for something warm in the morning, but did nothing for our pallets and held little for nourishment.
The first day we learned to steer the log raft by using a paddle as a rudder. The raft would not track a straight line at all. The crooked logs dipped into the water at odd spots and if any one of us stopped paddling the raft would spin. We did not paddle synchronized with three new paddlers. I felt it would be better if each person paddled at their own pace and capability, so I tried to absorb the difference in order to keep us on course. By the end of the first day everyone had blisters on their hands, sore muscles, and aching bones. Claudine, our resident doctor took a survey of what muscle hurt the most. Sonja-- lower back, Linda—shoulder, Claudine--deltoids muscle, and me--gluteus maximus.
The second day we set out with clearing skies. Before the girls arrived I borrowed an axe and a machete and hewed away at the balsa in hopes of streamlining it a little more. Unlike the previous night, that evening we had been provided a wonderful meal of fish casserole with spaghetti noodles, so we had a little more energy in the morning. The foreign teams were allowed to go first because they required more time.
In the early morning we watched as the Peruvian teams passed us. By mid morning we were cramped. Sonja squirmed every few seconds but Claudine sat poised like a lotus flower in meditation, while Linda and I shifted our bodies periodically in attempts to find a comfortable spot, but we could fine none. The skies cleared and the sun began to scorch our skin. We bathed in sunblock, but the perspiration and the riverwater quickly washed it away. We drank water, but before long the sun had heated the fluid so the lukewarm liquid stopped quenching our thirst. The more we drank the more we had to urinate, and in the Rio Amazonas you dare not pee in the water for the Candirú:
“This fish is feared to attack humans and swim into an orifice (the vagina, anus, or even the penis—and deep into the urethra). Because of spines protruding from the fish, it is almost impossible to remove except through surgery. The fish locates its host by following a water flow to its source and thus urinating while bathing increases the chance of a candirú homing in on a human urethra.” --Wikipedia
While there were many hardships we all agreed we were living an experience that we would never forget and it had its moments of pleasure. For example, when we took a shortcut through a narrow channel with the jungle only a few yards away on either side, the current ran swift so it became a picnic in paradise. The birds sang all around us, the bank was alive with vegetation and flowers, Sonja swam in the river, we ate our crackers, then some young native boys threw freshly picked papayas into the water for us to eat - a gift from the jungle. Their throw was short, so I had to swim after the ripe fruit. We ravaged the fruit.
When we came out of the quebrada, (break) channel, we hit a dead spot with no current. We fought to keep the raft moving at one mile per hour. It was like paddling through mud. Our spirits started to waiver. Claudine redirected our attention by teaching us European riddles. I wanted to hide the GPS, but the ladies insisted on knowing how fast we were going, maybe to make sure we were moving at all. After an hour of struggle, we came out of it exhausted, but Sonja started to sing American pop songs from the 60's and 70's, Linda added rhythm, and I gloated feeling blessed. We passed three teams of rafters in the next half hour.
Day two was a ten-hour day, we left at seven in the morning and arrived at five in the afternoon, a half an hour before sunset. There were a couple of rafts that came in after sunset; one had to be pulled in by the Peruvian Coast Guard.
Tamshiyacu, a small town, was our second stop. There were many stalls with food, and a couple of hostels with rooms. Cloudine and Sonja took the last room in “the best” hostel, I took a room in the second best, but it had no water for showers, so I took one in the girls room. We were in seventh heaven, food, a shower, and a bed to sleep in after ten hours of hard paddling in a hot sun. The town had a ceremony for us, but most of us were only able to attend the first part before retiring to our nests.
In town several people came up to me and thanked me for the lessons on reading the river current. I am not sure my teammates appreciated me giving away our advantage, but I went ahead and gave a second lesson on river geology and interpreting the surface water. We came in seventh place the second day, but we only lost a few minutes in the overall time so we held our fifth place standing.
