Rafters battle crocs and hippos on Blue Nile
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, March 8 (Reuters) – Sunburnt, unshaven and very glad to find a hotel with clean running water, three adventurers have just conquered one of the most remote areas of Africa.
Team leader Pasquale Scaturro and fellow explorers reached Sudan’s capital of Khartoum after nearly two months of dodging hippos and crocodiles, battling uncharted waters, hiding from armed marauders and filming most of it for an IMAX movie.
The expedition to raft more than 5,400 kilometres (3,355 miles) and make the first full descent of the Blue Nile was a wild ride which began in Ethiopia last December and has paused in Khartoum where the sources of the world’s longest river merge.
Scaturro — who is no stranger to danger having climbed Mount Everest three times — says the first phase of a trip to run the whole of the Nile was one of his biggest challenges.
“For 1,400 kilometres we did not see one light,” Scaturro said. “The remoteness of the terrain was one of the most difficult obstacles.”
For 55 days he, kayaker Gordon Brown and Chilean photographer Michele L’Huillier rode some of the world’s toughest whitewater in two inflatable rafts and a kayak.
The crew told stories of frightening encounters on a trip which conquered some rapids for the first time and won’t be finished until they reach the Nile delta in April.
HUNGRY CROCS
Brown said his close proximity to the water in a kayak made him a prime target for hungry crocodiles, some of whom at eight-to-10 feet (two to three metres) long were bigger than his craft.
“Usually I would turn and charge them and they’d turn back, but there was one day when one just kept coming,” he said. “It got so close I had to smack it on the nose with my paddle.”
Hippos, one of Africa’s biggest natural killers with a cranky temperament and a bone-crushing bite were always a threat to the river craft, often popping to the surface close by.
“If a hippo surfaced under a boat, they could break it in two,” said Scaturro.
Close-up shots of a 15-foot (4.5 metres) python, Brown being lowered into the thunderous Tisissat Falls in his flimsy kayak, ancient Egyptian treasures and the Pyramids are some of the dramatic scenes they’ve captured on film. But some of the worst situations survive only as scary memories among the crew.
The cameras were not rolling on the night armed local militias raided the adventurers’ camp in what Scaturro thought was an attempt to kidnap him, Brown and L’Huillier.
“It was potentially very tense. Armed men in the pitch dark trying to force their way into the camp and everyone was shouting,” said Scaturro.
LOUSY SHOTS
Brown described another day when he had fallen behind the other two boats and heard men shouting from the river bank. Suddenly five gunshots rang out close by.
“I was just glad they were lousy shots,” he said, adding that he hurriedly took cover behind some rocks before radioing the others to come back and help him.
The team said avoiding injury was a key to their success so far. Any rescue would have required helicopters to fly in from as far as Kenya to reach the remote areas, which they have crossed using Global Positioning System (GPS) units.
They had two armed escorts to guard against attacks by local bandits called Shifta, a lesson from a 1968 expedition by John Blashford-Snell, which came under fire many times.
One member of Snell’s team drowned, a fact Scaturro and company had uppermost in their minds when L’Huillier’s boat flipped in the mile-deep Black Gorge.
“That was serious. In a gorge the whole river is crammed into this narrow area and there’s miles and miles of really fast water and hidden rocks,” said Scaturro. “If you got caught up you’d be gone.”
Traditionally a rafter who runs a rapid first gets to name it. The team named several in an area where one of their boatmen walked out rather than take on the raging whitewater.
“We called our cook Johnny Walker, not only because of his liking for the whisky, but also because after flipping with Michele, every time he saw a rapid he’d start walking,” said Brown.
Scaturro said technically the most difficult part was behind them. “But there’s still 1,993 kilometres (1,240 miles) to go.”
They expect to reach the Egyptian Mediterranean city of Alexandria and the end of their epic journey by the end of April, before another team who are by chance simultaneously attempting a similar trip on the longer White Nile.
The White Nile team began their expedition in Uganda in January and are now in south Sudan. They expect their quest to take six months.