You are currently viewing Day 15: Like a Duck out of Water

Day 15: Like a Duck out of Water

SOMEWHERE ALONG THE RIO de SANGRE, 

VENEZUELA

I’m beginning to really hate this place.

The Rio de Sangre river basin.

The Amazon bloody rainforest.

Venez-f**king-uela.

Hell, let’s just go for it. The Americas. Not just South America but all of it, north, central, south, you name it.

Since getting here, Sid and I have faced coconut attacks, hurricanes, attempted kidnappings, storms, droughts, deadly insects, even deadlier crocodiles, and gods only know what else.

I know what you’re saying.

You’re saying, “Hey, I’ve been reading your blog since day one and, other than a couple of minor dramas, you’ve just exaggerated the threats faced in those situations. You weren’t really in any danger.”

Maybe you’re right.

But today . . . today there was definitely danger to life. My life (and Sid’s, of course).

Possibly the worst thing about all this is that I actually started the day feeling pretty chipper. To say it was a good night’s sleep would be a gross exaggeration (I don’t think that’s possible in the jungle – there is literally never a quiet moment, a moment without some creature, be it large or small, chirping, hooting, howling or wailing). Yet it was probably the most restful night since arriving in Venezuela, lacking in domestics, Hells Angels and the threat of guerrilla warfare.

We packed away the camp after a dawn breakfast, loaded the boats then headed off. Everything was going swimmingly (you know, all the flashes of wildlife, the feel of sunshine on insect-gnawed skin, the sensation of air brushing over my sweaty body as the boat powered upriver, only a few short hours from our destination).

Then things threatened to go swimmingly.

I mean, really swimmingly.

Like, if we didn’t do something fast, we would actually be swimming the rest of the way to Carimara.

One of the annoying interns noticed it first (yes, I will learn their names at some point). Proving herself to be slightly more moronic than her equally squeal-for-no-reason friend, Intern 1 had (for reasons that I can only think are somehow related to her desire to stroke a passive-aggressive Orinoco crocodile that may or may not have been trying to capsize our boat yesterday) decided to wear flip flops.

Yes, flip-flops.

In the jungle.

I say no more.

It will come as no surprise then to learn that her feet have been butchered – absolutely butchered – by every conceivable mosquito, bug and creepy crawly imaginable. She is now in too much pain to wear her boots.

Her response to this? That’s right: wear flip-flops.

Yes, flip-flops.

In the jungle.

I say no more. Again.

Anyway, the strange upshot of this is that she noticed before anyone else when water started to slosh around her swollen, red nearly-bare feet. Her response was an over-the-top screech that startled flocks of red and green birds out of the trees on the far riverbank. Nadia glared at the emotional outburst as though it was the most alien reaction to getting wet feet she had ever seen. Which, in fairness, it was.

But that was when things started to get serious. And I knew it was serious – like really serious, not just me overexaggerating to write an exciting blog post serious – when John McClane, our pilot, swore in Spanish then kissed the crucifix hanging around his neck. Not a reassuring gesture.

Yes, there was a hole in our boat. Well, not a hole per se, but a crack. A large crack letting through a significant flow of water.

The crack cut vertically down the centre of one of the hull’s planks. Unfortunately, it was one of the planks just below the waterline. Now, the weakness was unable to hold back the force of the water. My guess is it happened when hurtling up the rapids two days ago and was probably made worse when the enormous crocodile slammed into us yesterday.

We came to a stop. McClane shouted (rather manically for my liking) to the pilots in the other boats. Tom and Miguel had scouted ahead in the RIB, but one of the others radioed them. McClane, earning the right to wear his action hero vest, clambered along the outside of the boat to reach the bow in record time. The boat tipped to that side as he moved, more monkey like than Mona, along, earning another shriek of terror on the interns and a sharp order to shut up from Nadia.

Not a lot seemed to happen for a very long time, but I swear McClane made the crack worse because, suddenly, the water started to rise. We all started bailing out, using our metal mugs or simply cupping our hands. The larger boat carrying our bags and equipment moved closer and handed over some of the cooking pots and saucepans, which made faster work of our decanting efforts.

Tom and Miguel arrived soon after and took charge, investigating the crack and trying to help McClane repair it. When someone asked why we were not pulling into the shore, Tom explained that there wasn’t anywhere safe to do so for at least another four miles. The river banks were thick, impenetrable vegetation, with roots and vines extending into the water to mix with river weed. If the worst happened and the boat went down there, we could get tangled and trapped. It was much better to stay in the deeper water in the middle of the channel.

Of course, our crocodile friend from yesterday probably felt the same way.

After some time, they managed to slow the flow of water but not stop it. Tom was brutally honest – their botch job wouldn’t last long, and the crack in the plank could give out at any moment. Then there wouldn’t be a crack in the boat. There would be a hole, and no amount of bailing would stop us from going the way of the Titanic. We had life jackets, and the water was quite warm, so we didn’t have to worry about succumbing to Leo DiCaprio’s fate. But Leo didn’t have to worry about giant crocodiles, anacondas, piranhas, electric eels, stingrays, or any of the other deadly creatures I knew were in there.

If we ended up in the river, we would be in serious trouble.

Tom used a sat phone to call ahead to Carimara while Miguel directed the other boats into us one at a time.

We were abandoning ship.

But, in the immortal words of Kate Winslet – “There are not enough boats. Not enough by half.”

Well, we did get over half our number to relative safety, each of the other canoes, the RIB and the baggage boat taking a couple of us. But, now over capacity, they all sat low in the water. Too low.

Me, Sid, Nadia, Karen, Juan and, of course, John McClane (who was having a very bad day) were still aboard the newly Christened Titanic II. The only option was to throw our gear off the baggage boat, but that would have significant implications for the expedition as we advanced. So we voted to chance it, to stay on board, bailing out while proceeding slowly and cautiously towards the point upriver where Tom said we could put ashore.

He sent the other boats ahead faster, hoping one could offload and head back for us. But, overloaded, they had to proceed slowly too.

Tom and the RIB stayed with us, with some extra passengers after juggling people around in a needless waste of time. Of course, as expedition leader, Juliet McKinney claimed she had a responsibility to remain with us . . . though I didn’t hear her volunteer to swap with any of us. It made for good TV though, which was precisely why the Adventure Channel cameraman had also joined her in the RIB, filming our slow progress upriver.

For nearly an hour, everything seemed to be going okay. McClane kept us slow and steady; Juan sat in the bow, keeping pressure on a folded tarp covering the crack. The rest of us bailed out water, keeping it to a low pool around our ankles.

For a time there, we thought we were going to make it.

Then a loud crack tore through the air as the strained plank wrenched apart. Water no longer flowed but gushed into the boat. Cursing and swearing accompanied huffs and grunts as we manically scooped water into saucepans and hurled it overboard.

But it soon became apparent that our efforts were in vain.

Mere moments after the plank broke apart, enough water had filled the bow to drop it down to the waterline. A second later, it went under, and no amount of bailing could save us.

Faster than I had expected, the Titanic II sank, and we half-jumped, half-fell into the Blood River.

Tom shouted for everyone to remain calm – easier said than done … he hadn’t seen a four-metre-long crocodile yesterday. Nevertheless, calm we stayed. On the outside, at least. We allowed our life jackets to do the work and resisted the urge to kick or thrash, not wanting to draw unwanted attention.

The current swept us back the way we had come with surprising speed. Tom and Co. kept pace in the RIB. McKinney gave a running commentary to the camera, loving the limelight as she explained the deadly creatures that could be hunting us as she spoke.

In a moment of panic, I accidentally splashed her.

Oops.

Thinking fast, Tom ordered all of us to take hold of the webbing on the RIB’s sides but be careful not to add our weight to it as the two-person boat was already low in the water. Then, painstakingly slowly, he guided us back downriver to a long, low branch. It extended out over the river, well beyond the bank and, after far too much attention-grabbing, thrashing and kicking, Juan and I managed to hoist McClane up onto it. He proceeded to help pull the rest of us up until, eventually, we all straddled the branch, wet, scared and hungry (it was well past lunchtime by now).

But at least we were out of the water. What’s more, even though the branch vanished into impenetrable vegetation on the bank, it held our collective weight.

It felt like hours went by as we hung there. Forced small talk and attempts at humour gave way to exhausted silence, broken only by the occasional thrum of the RIB’s engine as Tom or Miguel made some adjustment or other. Eventually, though, the noise of another engine cut through the jungle cacophony. It wasn’t one of our canoes, however,  but a different watercraft. It took me a moment to realise it was a WWII-era Duck coming towards us with surprising speed.

The need for speed became evident when I recognised the man behind the Duck’s controls: the cocky American expedition helicopter pilot, Nathan Raine. Something about him tells me the man couldn’t ride a pushbike below Mach 3, all part of his manlier-than-a-caveman persona. Sure enough, he kept the Duck’s engines crying out as if in pain as he hurtled down the river and then, right under us, spun the amphibious vehicle in a wide arc. The boat’s bow wave sluiced out in a wide circle. Just as I knew he would, he looked up at me, removing his ridiculously oversized mirrored aviators and let rip with that oh-so-annoying grin.

“Hey Benny, quit hanging around.”

Like that was an original joke.

I can’t say I wasn’t thankful to be out of the water, off the tree branch and safely aboard something that hopefully wasn’t about to go all Poseidon-Adventurey on me. But, for the next two hours, as we continued upriver and through a rainstorm, all anyone did was laugh and gush about Raine’s daring rescue, calling him our hero.

I want to know what the hell he was doing in the middle of the jungle on a Duck. It had been less than two hours since Tom had sat-phoned Carimara for help, yet it took us over three hours to get there following the so-called rescue.

“Just running an errand for a guy I know,” was his only explanation when I politely enquired.

Uh-huh.

All I can say is that I couldn’t be happier to set eyes on what has to be the lousiest, skankiest shithole of a town imaginable. Little more than breezeblock walls adorned with graffiti and held together by scaffolding and corrugated metal roofs, Carimara, at that moment, might as well have been the capital of the world. After days of battling through the rainforest, it was civilisation, even in its most veiled form.

The guys who had gone ahead in the canoes had already set up camp. It was a surprisingly picturesque spot on the side of the river (apparently without consideration of the danger of things climbing, crawling or slithering out during the night). At that point, though, I didn’t care. Sid and I crashed out in our tent for a well-earned nap on what were now the most amazingly comfortable blow-up sleeping mats in the world.

When we woke up, we ate (more pasta and passata boiled over the fire), then relaxed with a couple of beers that Karen picked up from what passes for the town’s supermarket (oh Zulia, how I missed you).

That’s the worst of it over, apparently. The final step of our journey is a helicopter flight to Sarisariñama itself, which we’ll be making in small groups over the next few days. No more minibuses. No more Hells Angels, guerrillas, droughts, crocodiles or sinking boats.

Or at least that was McKinney’s promise as she gave a surprisingly good-natured toast after dinner. She thanked us all for our efforts so far and apologised for the unexpectedly challenging journey we had so far faced.

“It’s all smooth sailing from here on,” she promised.

Uh-huh.

Benjamin King

My name is Dr Benjamin King, and I am an archaeologist working on the UNESCO Sarisariñama Expedition. Join me on my epic journey to one of the most remote places on the planet – a tabletop mountain towering above the Venezuelan rainforest. This will be my home for six months as my colleagues and I attempt to unravel the mystery of the ancient ruins that lie buried within an enormous sinkhole. Not only do I blog updates about the project, but also the trials and tribulations of life in the jungle. Something tells me that the danger of the jungle’s predators is nothing compared to the perils of being trapped with the same group of people for the next six months! Don’t miss out on a single moment of this extraordinary adventure - follow me on social media @benking1209 Benjamin King is also the fictional hero of the action-packed adventure series ‘The Xibalba Saga’ by James Richardson. Read it now https://amzn.to/3dD9wZW Stay up to date on new releases and exclusive free content at www.moonmask.net and @worldofmoonmask

Leave a Reply