the great amazon raft race . . . part 2

Hi there. I've been nursing some sort of fun GI bug (thanks a lot, CH), sorry it's been a while . . .

I should mention our team name was Brains over Prawn. Neatly won out over our #2 option: the Malarones . . . We were hoping that being smart would help us given that we didn't exactly . . . train.


So where were we? Oh yeah, so we set out from the beach in Nauta, birthplace of the Amazon, underwater. We quickly decided that floating took precedence over sunshade and ditched our sticks and shade. Adios, sunshade. Hello, sunburn. We were still quasi-U boat (see photo of Javier) but it was as good as it got.

Turns out Javier is such a strong paddler that with the 3 of us paddling on the opposite side as him, the boat still veered away from him. So we had to keep saying "cambio" and all of us changed paddle sides, as we zig-zagged our way down the rio Amazonas.

By the time we'd sorted ourselves out most of the rafts were teeny weeny dots on the horizon and we were in last place. We kind of took our sweet time on day 1, paddling and hanging out, figuring out how it all worked. Also figuring out where to go (directions were minimalistic). A very steep learning curve. Turns out the river flows way faster than you could ever paddle and the key is to be in the current. The hard bit is finding the current. You can be 10 feet in any direction and have a different current. And it always looks faster at the bank, even though that is rarely true. We spent lots of time arguing about visual perception, optical illusions, and apparent speed. Remember vector problems from high school? That was us.

Luckily we had planned some good raft food: bread, canned tunafish, peanuts, melon, etc. Only bad call: canned hotdogs in brine. Possibly the worst foodstuff I have ever had. We fed them to the pirañas. (See the photo of Catherine pretending to eat them.)

Anyhow we finally arrived at Porvenir, having caught a bunch of rafts, about 60k later. Porvenir is a little speck of a pueblo (town) based on subsistence living. Its main advantages: a shower, and a distillery. Very strong stuff. Also the pigs live under the latrine, eating poop. Awesome. After a mystery is-this-fish-or-meat dinner, we ate tootsie roll pops (yumster). After dark, we hung out in our tents (bedtime: 9 pm), listening to a few of Colin's friends being silly and laughing our butts off.

Day 2 we were up at 5 to perform some raft modification. This day was the longest, about 68k we were told. When we started off at 7, we were actually in the mix, doing well. We were focused on beating The Sisterhood, this group of british women who were pretty hard core. They had done some english channel crossing by paddling and had set a record. They brought carbon fiber paddles and . . . some brought silicone, if you know what I mean. Quite bionic-looking. We were told that after this little "creek" shortcut we only had 45 min left . . . which actually was about 3 hours. The race organization was somewhat haphazard. Saw the tail of a pink dolphin but sadly not more. We were muertos when we arrived at the town of Tamshiyacu. It was 8 hours of paddling with about 10 min of break for eating . . . and peeing. It was hard to motivate to move to shower, brush teeth or do, well, anything.

It promptly poured rain when we arrived, and we took advantage to cool off. By this point a british lady and a peruvian man had already quit the race from heat stroke. We went through about 8L of water a day, just on the river. After eating our roast chicken lunch (extra mayo, please!) we were off to find a hostel. The Sisterhood and The Brotherhood had already scammed the two best in town, but we found a little one at the edge of town for 12 soles a night. Bed, rainwater shower, and it felt like the lap of luxury. Minus the bat flying around . . . of course.

And then, off to dinner. Colin H and Amie got to enjoy some patacones (aka tostones - yummy disks of fried, salted unripe plantain). Afterwards the town threw us a little dance festival of native dance. Pretty cool. It included teenage girls running around in bras. Some of the older male rowers were huge fans.

Catherine, Colin and Scott got in the mix when they invited the crowd, doing flips and generally getting sweaty. After some late nite hostel hallway antics from Alden, Colin (H) and Scott, some fous rires, we passed out again.





Day 3 dawned stormy, and we were missing supplies off our raft. After scurrying about to find them, everyone was thrilled to be off for the last day (almost done!!). Total chaos at the start, as per usual (can you spot us in the photo?). For much of day 3 we were neck and neck with a group of Kaiser docs, a Brotherhood raft, and a guys raft where we knew one of them as "South Africa" (never could remember his name). Day 3 was all-out as we were all psyched to get to the finish . . .

We rowed our hearts out on day 3 (7 hours, all told). There was a long stretch of super-wide river where we felt we were going very slowly. Lots of locals stood on the side of the river, waving at us and watching us go by (probably thinking "que gringos locos"). We were given directions to take the 2nd left fork upriver at the Nanay river. No one told us that the river forked before Iquitos and we were to take the left fork. So once we realized other groups were going left, we killed ourselves getting to the left shore and had to backtrack a ways, running our raft along the shore. After this we had about another hour or so of rowing, full steam, with other rafts nearby. I started getting a little too overheated and confused, and couldn't wait to be done.

We finally got to the river Nanay and had a quarter mile upriver to row. The Amazon, I should mention was 2 meters higher than normal and flowing fast! So upriver was hard work, but we could see a giant crowd gathered at the finish line. Thankfully between Javi's counting out strokes and Colin's motivational words, we cleared ahead of a boat of 4 big guys to beat them right at the finish. Upon which, we all fell off the raft from exhaustion and heat while a few local boys took care of our raft (never saw it again, good riddance!).


Our cumulative time over 3 days for 180 kilometers was 19 hours. Here's an NPR story about the winners. We finished 21 out of 57 overall, 12th of the international group (about 30 rafts) and 4th in the mixed men's and women's division. Hot stuff!! It was so fun . . . I'm not sure that I would ever do it again. It's a once-in-a-lifetime race, and I mean that.

The race made the front page of the national newspaper, El Comercio. We could make out Aime in one of the shots. Luckily we all had a lovely take-home souvenir: a nasty rash from contact with the water, so we got to remember the Amazon for a few more days. good times!

After a rejuvenating dinner in Iquitos, (yummy fish) a few more moto taxi near-death experiences, we were done. Back to Lima, lovable pollution, Chuqui, and all. I was never so happy to be home!


If you get inspired, the raft race is yearly in September, and I can give you advice. And again, thank you all for your support for LimaKids. Sincerely appreciated.

Couple more great pics:
Our team in a moto taxi and the "before" team pic.




N.B. To those who want to do this in the future: the key is straight logs, thick ones (for flotation). The catamaran design is good for not having to switch positions all the time, but it probably has more drag. We had to work a lot harder than many other rafts. This year's winning design, a long version of 4 + 4 logs, is now illegal. Also, light paddles (the opposite of ours) wouldn't kill you. Loads more advice where that came from . .
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