The Paddler ezine WW kayak collection 2013 | Page 86

ThePaddler 86

After 50km

we are super happy finishing our first part of the
expedition while reaching the meeting point of
Rio Nupe. At this point Sepp has to leave the
group, to get his flight back to Germany.
Another 50km of unknown whitewater lie in
wait for us. Many Indian locals recommended
not to continue paddling the Rio Maranon
because the river disappears in a huge rock fall.
We don't understand much of the language
because the people in this area don't speak
Spanish - just Quechua.
The first five kilometres are easy whitewater class
III until a huge rock makes continuing
impossible. “This must be the huge syphon the
locals were talking about!” After rappelling the
first few metres we realized the whole dimension
of this siphon. It’s about one kilometre long and
really difficult to portage. We doubt the
possibility of continuing the Rio Maranon and
after a short discussion we decided to unload our
kayaks for easier handling whilst portaging.
After six hours of portaging we find a good camp
in a cave where totally exhausted, we cook
noodles with tuna and go to bed early. On the
next day, we have to paddle many kilometres of
whitewater. Our plan was to run the whole 50km
within two days and we hoped to find interesting
and difficult whitewater. We are also going to
trying to find the cave where Herbert Rittlinger
once left his heavy useless equipment to make
his boat lighter, although we recognized that the
cave might be buried by a rock fall.
What we didn’t plan was to paddle just six
kilometres on the first day. Still exhausted from
the day before we have to carry our boats another
hour downhill to the river, where we continue
our ride on the Rio Maranon. We have still about
45km left. In our topographic military maps we
recognized that the river is not very steep. We are
paddling 45km class II and III, with a couple
class IV rapids. A short canyon with class IV+
whitewater excites us before paddling almost flat
water to confluence of Rio Vizcara. Here, near the
small town of Pachas we're ending the first phase
of our trip and are happy finishing our project
‘descent of the most upper amazon.’
As two days ago, getting our car to the take out
takes us another six hours. At 10pm we're on our
way via Lima to Cusco, where we arrive 36 hours
and seven police controls later.
Back in Cusco we're are very happy to be sleeping
horizontal after the long drive.

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