by Stafford, Ed
From here logistically the plan was very easy but everyone told us it would be flooded. We just had to handrail a small river that bordered the old plantation and it would lead us all the way out to the Amazon main channel and we would have done our 50-kilometre correction.
The following morning we started by following an embankment that must have been an old road above the flooded rice fields and we made good progress for about five kilometres with the flooded plantation on each side. Soon we were forced off the embankment into the water by thick brambles and razor grass and as we entered the reeds we were enveloped by clouds of bloodsucking mosquitoes. We pulled our way through the reeds and grasses that had replaced the rice and hoped it was too dense for caiman.
To our left we could see a strip of forest that ran adjacent to the rice field where the Raiolis River flowed. We couldn’t use the embankment any more so being in the plantation made no sense and we cut left towards the tree line making noise to deliberately scare any caiman as we went.
The bright, white sunlight of the overgrown plantation was shut out by the old, dark trees and the cool, black freshness of flooded forest surrounded us. Up to our waists in brown water, the trees soon became spaced out enough for us to walk without too much cutting. The bright channel of the river was always visible on our left as we made great progress through our dark, private world.
We found a patch of land above the water for the night and although it wasn’t much, our feet were on dry land. We strung our hammocks up between trees and knew that we were vulnerably close to the waterline but we had little option but to camp. We hoped that in the night it wouldn’t rain upriver as we were only a couple of feet above the water level. As we crawled into our sleeping bags Cho called to me that the water had risen already; this was a bad sign. The feeling of inevitability seeped in with the water as slowly the whole ground that we had camped over became a sheet of water a few centimetres deep. Sleep was out of the question and we agreed that if the water rose another foot we would need to inflate the rafts, take down our hammocks, push out on to the river and find a community in the dark. But it didn’t rise any more and at about 2 a.m. both of us slipped off to sleep in our semi-aquatic world.
The first river community on the Raiolis was Espirito do Santo. We were met by Arlindo, a chubby man with long hair and a scruffy beard. Arlindo was fishing with his son but had caught nothing. The immediately weird thing about Arlindo was that, to hold his ground on the river, he was paddling downstream. That meant that the river was either a different river that we’d mistakenly been following or it was flowing uphill, which I was pretty sure was impossible.
Arlindo took us to his house and allowed us to stay in his single-roomed hut on stilts above the floods. He had a long jetty protruding from his house out into the river and we sat in the sun and washed from the jetty with his many children playing and splashing around us.
Then the penny dropped. ‘Does the river flow uphill twice a day, Arlindo?’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, as if it were the most obvious question in the world. I smiled, happy I’d worked it out but, as a geography graduate, actually pretty ashamed I’d not done so sooner. Two months before the end of our expedition the rivers were already tidal and changed direction whenever the ocean tide came in.
Our progress had been good but I was worried about the forest on the south side of the Amazon itself. We still had to cross the neck of the whole delta and that could mean a lot of flood walking which would slow us down. We were now eleven days behind schedule, and we had flights to catch at the end of August.
The last three days of flooded forest walking were beautiful and open and we had little weight and enjoyed the beauty and the privacy of our secret domain. In the way that cavers relish the solitude and exclusiveness of their little-known, dark, subterranean universe so we had found our own unloved yet wonderful environment that we had adapted to and had grown to love. We eventually arrived at the mouth of the Raiolis and sourced a boat from the nearby houses and were whisked the 50 kilometres back upriver to Almeirim in a matter of hours. We’d now walked the estimated distance that we thought the river would drag us downstream and were ready to paddle across the main Amazon River channel for the very last time.
It was 11 and 12 June when we paddled across the Amazon from Almeirim. The total distance paddled was about 49 kilometres but I won’t make a big story out of it as it was easy and nothing to worry about. The rafts were far more stable than any canoe and they just rose over any large waves effortlessly. We stopped in a house on stilts on an island about two-thirds of the way across as it was getting dark and then continued the next day to Vilazinho, a small village on the south bank.
We then started walking across the Amazon’s jungle-covered delta towards the city of Belém, which was now just 400 kilometres away. In Vilazinho two cheerful fishermen walked the first hour with us until we found a logging path that they said would help us. It did help us greatly and over the course of the next five days we climbed to 71 metres above sea level. If you consider that Tabatinga (where we entered Brazil in April 2009, some 3,000 kilometres to our west) sat at only about 85 metres above sea level, this was unexpectedly high ground and we made excellent progress across surprisingly dry ground.
The NLP self-coaching that I had been practising worked very well. The simple knowledge that I had the power to decide what mood I was in was a revelation. I just coached myself and decided what mood would be the best for tackling the current situation. Was anger going to help? Of course not and I felt so much happier as a result. Each time I felt the onset of a period of feeling negative, low or angry I would coach myself back and I got a huge morale boost from the knowledge that I now had control over how I felt. It was self-perpetuating and I needed to coach myself less and less. Cho was no longer the focus of blame for things that went wrong. I took full responsibility for everything and focused on how positively to solve any problem.
I started to dream again of future expeditions. The idea at the time was to paddle the entire length of the Congo River, an extremely dangerous and exciting expedition that I was sure no one had done. I was wrong; an Englishman called Phil Harwood paddled the length in 2008 (with a little help from a sail) while I was beginning my expedition but the dream kept my brain focused on something positive for weeks.
The open, dry forest allowed us to stretch out and not just catch up our lost days but actually to get ahead of schedule.
In late June we were dragged back to a realistic pace by kilometres and kilometres of beautiful flooded forest. We were wading through water the colour of black tea that tasted acidic – vaguely lemony.
The Atlantic was still a fair way off in jungle miles but we exchanged childishly exuberant ideas for the future as if we were arriving home tomorrow. My head was wrapped up in future expeditions and Cho had his sights on being a demon winger on the rugby pitch on his arrival in Leicestershire.
It was great to be doing this last leg in real jungle. Our routine was restored, rice and beans were our staple, and the weight was dropping off us once more. We felt fit and healthy and had thrown off the sluggish monotony of the cattle-ranching roads.
We were still covered in ticks, my pack was still broken, Cho’s boots were held together by threads and the BGAN had been repaired with duct tape and cable ties – but none of this seemed to matter any more. There was now a quiet feeling of accomplishment growing in both of us that would be very hard to knock. We still had over a month to go; could we keep up this positive momentum?
We crossed lakes and rivers at right angles as we cut south-east across the delta. On lakesides our mosquito nets would billow in the wind off the lake and our backs would be chilled through the thin hammock material.
I had a small botfly living in my head. I’d had them before and they were just a slight inconvenience, nothing more. Their eggs are laid on the underside of mosquitoes by the adult female botfly and then when the mosquito bites you the eggs fall off, stimulated by the warmth of your bod
y. The parasites then grow inside your flesh, forming larvae that grow by eating your flesh. The sensation is just like a pinprick and it could be irritating, especially when I wanted to sleep.
To get a botfly out you have to kill it as the spines make it almost impossible to squeeze out alive. Suffocation was the simplest method. I had a small tube of superglue that I used to mend things and Cho simply dabbed a bit over the opening that the botfly breathed out of and the botfly was dead in a matter of hours. After breaking the skin with a tree spine the next day, as it had grown over, Cho simply squeezed and then gently pulled at the larva until it came out whole. That part was extremely satisfying.
After we hit Lake Caxiuana we broke for a rest in the small town of Portel but we could hardly sit still. We weren’t tired and didn’t feel the need to stay. We just wanted to walk.
By 24 June the going had been so fast that I brought the flights forward by three weeks, to 10 August. With only forty-seven days to go we powered through all types of jungle with momentum and purpose.
Often when we broke out on to a river there was no shop and so we could buy only what families were prepared to sell us. Normally this was just farine or rice but by then Cho and I were running on pure excitement and were happy with anything. We drank ice-cold acai by the bucket-load whenever we got the opportunity. This thick, purple drink is freshly ground from the locally harvested acai berry. It was abundant and the main staple when in season and it seemed to be packed with nutritional goodness.
Typically, after I changed the dates of the flights the forest became worse again and we spent many days in semi-swamp trying to keep the mileage up while our feet were being sucked down by the mud.
More than ever before we seemed to be able to ride out tough bits of jungle and maintain our humour. This far east in Brazil none of the rainforest we walked through was untouched. Most was brutally butchered – all the large trees had been removed and secondary growth was rampant. Deranged logging paths tempted us in different directions but we moved faster, sticking to a straight-line compass bearing and taking our chances with our machetes.
We crossed the River Camairapi and picked up a huge stretch of what appeared to be natural grassland as we headed east towards the Jacundá River. On 10 June we made 23 kilometres in one day but were being cooked by the sun again and would hide under the smallest scrub bushes when we breaked.
We had been using an electricity power line to move quicker but soon it altered direction and we were forced back into jungle. The following day was one of the worst in the whole two and a half years.
We wanted to reach the Jacundá River – just 11 kilometres from the electricity power line. A logging track started us off in roughly our direction but soon, as often happens, the path started to veer away from our course so we took a bearing for the river and plunged into the undergrowth.
At first it was just tangled and slow, like working our way through a giant barbed-wire obstacle. Then the ground sank away and we were cutting through swamp.
Our sense of humour failed us at this point – something to do with the easy days before seemed to have lessened our tolerance. Cho hated going back, so when I suggested regressing to the path and finding another route around the swamp he refused. I grudgingly agreed to continue.
But I was dumb to do so. After another hour of swamp we still had over four kilometres to go and we were completely committed.
We began snapping at each other, looking at one another to cast the blame. It was poor expedition behaviour but we’d lost perspective and I was immediately too far gone to self-coach myself back. ‘Great decision, Cho – thanks,’ I childishly provoked him as he tried to free his leg from sucking mud. Both of us were fuming and had lost our usual ability to lift ourselves and see the positives. He just glared back at me.
Our bad moods made the going worse – hour after hour of miserable work at a painfully slow pace. About a kilometre from the target river the swamp got deeper and we were swimming between clumps of gnarled trees.
The jungle became so thick that we had to take off our packs, hang them in trees above the water and cut a path ahead with our machetes. At 6 p.m. the already fading light was cut out by a storm cloud – lightning and thunder announced an almighty tropical storm. When the rain arrived it bit into us and we had to get out our head torches to continue.
Our bad moods evaporated. As much as we let ourselves slip into negativity we knew that things had become serious and we now needed to work together. For me the frustration was replaced by a real and chilling fear of spending the night shivering in a clump of reeds, rain cutting into our bodies through our thin, grimy clothes. We weren’t panicking but we badly wanted to get out.
Camping was impossible. No trees big enough to tie hammocks to, and no hard ground. With small fire ants biting constantly and horseflies adding to our joy, we tried to keep our head torches out of the rain under our cap peaks and kept moving forward.
As it became really dark the jungle gave way to reeds and we knew we didn’t have far to go. It was 7 p.m. by the time we inflated the rafts and with enormous relief were discharged on to the inflamed river. We had to scream at each other in the dark to be heard above the noise of the rain and wind.
With no idea if there would be people living close by, I marked our exit point to return to in the morning. A dim twinkle of light about a kilometre upriver gave us new energy and we paddled desperately towards it.
The occupants of the houses on stilts were scared of us at first and a man told me to keep paddling. Arriving after dark is a bad idea as communities shut themselves away and think badly of people who travel at night. I persisted (and slightly begged) and he gave way and let us climb up into his dry, warm house. Shivering, we thanked him over and over again and he informed us that Spain had just won the World Cup. Normality had returned – we washed, put on dry clothes and drank coffee.
It was at times like this that I doubted I would ever be able truly to convey how elated I was to have on a pair of dry shorts and hold a cup of sweet coffee on my hands. Cho and I never needed to apologise to each other – we had become almost like brothers and understood these testing times strained our behaviour; if it was mentioned at all we just laughed at ourselves for letting things get to us.
Completely content, as perhaps you can be only after feeling truly desperate, we slung our hammocks in a small wooden boxroom and fell asleep to the sound of the flowing water below us.
From the Jacundá River we needed to cut across to a highway that ran to Cametá. It was the last stretch of jungle of the whole expedition and we were now bound by quite a tight schedule. We had to host a journalist from the London newspaper Metro to come in for a few days’ walking, and then make our way as fast as possible to the road.
I was now almost exclusively using Google Earth to navigate and I found a clear track that had been cut recently that would link us up with the Cametá highway. We arrived at the track, ready to kick off our jungle boots and slip on our road shoes when I saw my mistake. The white, thin line running north–south was an abandoned and overgrown telegraph line. The going was twice as slow as walking straight through secondary jungle. It had at one stage been a proposed road, but plans had been abandoned after Indians burned a bridge in protest against the intrusive infrastructure. The power line had once supplied the town of Oeiras with electricity but many of the posts had since toppled and the cables now lay knotted and interwoven with vines. Light had flooded into the linear space in the years of abandonment to form a 30-foot-wide, 30-foot-high, 50-mile-long razor grass bramble bush.
With just thirteen days to go, Cho and I settled into the challenge of speed walking through this green mess. There is nice rainforest and there is nasty rainforest. We were in the latter. It was a black sense of humour that was driving us now. Breaks were punctuated by knowing glances and a shared sense of amused self-pity that fate had handed us extra jungle time just when we thought we’d finished. The outcome was that we needed to incre
ase the daily mileage when we hit the road network through and beyond Belém.
Surreal doesn’t begin to describe the bizarre juxtaposition between crashing through the undergrowth in a concerted effort to make good ground and then doing a streamed video call with Cho to CNN in Atlanta. It was the first of many. The expedition’s amazing publicist, Vikki Rimmer, had organised for them to interview me daily from that point from the side of the track or road until we reached the Atlantic. Until we broke free of the jungle the half-hour before these interviews was a time of panic as we tried to find a hole in the jungle canopy large enough to get a signal through.
There was a bit of us both that was actually quite pleased that the road didn’t materialise and turned into more jungle days. The renewed urgency and the need to focus completely on our task had given us renewed zeal. ‘There is no option,’ said Cho with a smile. ‘We have to get there.’
On 31 July the day started mutely at 5 a.m. when I silently fanned the embers of the fire into life and boiled rice in the dark. As the gloom lifted, we broke camp and tried to make some headway down the disused power line. The forest to the side was razor grass one minute, dense bamboo the next. We weaved between the two, searching for the fastest escape.
For most of the day we were aware of a river off to our left and we encountered local people regularly. At 9.30 we passed a house that gave us the sunny news that the bridge we’d been aiming for (the one that marked the beginning of civilisation) was only an hour away. We naively allowed our spirits to soar and our scepticism to doze.
After two disillusioned hours a kind man fixing a dugout canoe said that we’d be there in half an hour. An hour later a short, round lady told us exactly the same thing.