The Peru Paddlers
Andy McLaughlin shares his Peru story, after 4 GKC members travelled to take on the mighty Maranon river.
Writing this about a week after returning from Peru, and just about recovered from what turned out to be the most physically and mentally demanding adventure I have done since leaving the Royal Marines.
Where to start?
The river Maronon is in North East Peru, the principal source of the Amazon river and a beast. Times the Tay by 4 at high water to get a rough idea. It runs through the stunning Maranon gorge in the Andes, going from Canyon to jungle and is home to almost 200 endemic species only found there.. It takes 3 flights and a 12 hour mini bus ride from hell to get there (80 % of the roads in Peru are dirt track, not tarmac and rather than use traffic police to control traffic they use speed bumps, roughly one speed bump every 75 mtrs). The novelty of bouncing over speed bumps very quickly wears off.
The section we paddled was over 250km long, and took 10 days to complete. We were told it was a grade 3 river with a bit of grade 4. However as the river was huge due to an early start of the rainy season. Not a high water mark in sight, one of our guides too that to be around twice the norm for the time of year. At high levels it’s unpredictable, powerful with big waves and big holes and definitely in the grade 4 and 5 category. I have paddled the Grand Canyon, then the Karnali in Nepal last year and the Maranon was a very big step up from both of them.
It will take some time to put the weight we lost back on and bite scars to heal. In the first 2 days I attracted 150 sand fly bites, before realising that covering up from head to toe 24/7 to avoid being eaten alive. It was 35 degrees and 100% humidity day and night, so having to be fully clothed in our tents at night put a new spin on boil in the bag.
We thought that this was going to be a catered trip i.e the guides did the cooking with the rest of us helping out, but no we all had to take turns of cooking.
There were 4 of us from GKC paddling and 11 x young raft guides from Alaska running the 4 support rafts and our 2 paddling guides making up the rest of the group. A fun bunch, although cooking was not their forte. The food wasn’t the best and there was not enough of it. Drinking water was sourced from rivers and streams as we went along and then filtered. Everyone had (let me put this mildly an upset tummy for the 10 days on the water), also sometimes the instructions for rigging your tent can be used in other emergencies, say no more. Even now a week on we don’t like to be too far from the nearest toilet.
With the exception of 3 x of the rapids all the rapids were read and run, regardless of size or grade, reading and running huge grade 4 and some 5 rapids was very scary. The waves, holes and stoppers were far bigger than anything I have encountered. If any of us had ended up in them it could have had very serious consequences. One of the Raft guides exited his raft on the first “grade 3” and ended up having a bad swim; he was in shock for quite some time after that.
After 3 x days of paddling we came to the first rapid that we were going to scout. It was instantly clear that no one was going anywhere near it, not even the rafts. Not only could the rafts not run it, they could not be lined/roped down the rapid. This meant we had to portage the rapid, which was over half a mile long. Now if you have ever been on a long multi day trip with 17 people you will realise how much food and equipment you have to take with you for 10 days on the river. For example each raft has 2 x coolers/ice boxes equivalent to large fridges, full of fresh food which need carried. The rafts (4 off) take 6 people to carry each one. The portage in 35 degree heat (remember still fully clothed) carrying boats, rafts and all the kit over a huge boulder field and a tributary to the main river equivalent to the Leny took over a day and a half. This was a brutal couple of days.
Eventually we were finally back on the move, the river now steepened and picked up pace. Which allowed us to make up some of the time lost with the portage. We were paddling 5 to 6 hours each day, this left little energy for doing anything but eating and sleeping once of the water at night.
The weather itself was a real challenge. Peru is on the equator, with the sun directly over head. The gorge creates its own weather systems with strong Anabatic and Katabatic winds every day. These often turned into huge down pours and on one occasion a storm so strong, Tonys tent, everyones dinner for that night and lots of other kit were blown away, never to be seen again. Luckily Tony was not in the tent at the time.
The gorge itself was stunning, huge mountains on either side with impenetrable jungle as far as the eye could see, there was not much wildlife, although some beautiful birds. People were few and far between. There were no roads into the gorge, and transport out if you could find any would have been on horseback. Further into the gorge there were lots of wild fruit trees Banana, Oranges, Coconut, mango, etc, which were great to eat straight from the tree.
The bigger rapids were insane. Being read and run, we had to put our faith in our guide, Luigi. If I’m being honest, if we had been able to scout them, I doubt we would have chosen to run. Huge pulsating, unpredictable and powerful hydraulics made for huge, confused waves and holes I don’t want to even think about. There was no sanctuary in eddies - they were ferocious boiling cauldrons waiting to trip you up.
We were told towards the end of the trip that Aug/sept is the best time to go as the river is much lower, and weather more clement, so if you are planning on paddling the Maranon I would go then.
To sum up, much as I want to say this was a great trip and I would love to go back, I cant. Memorable definitely. Certainly for Nadine and I not a fun trip, with the heat, the humidity, flies, poor food, very long hard days and with “naughty word” big rapids every day, it was a trip to be endured as opposed to being enjoyed. One of the big take away’s for me was the GKC team spirit with members paddling out of their skins, Nadine isn’t a fan if Pinkston is on 3 pumps, I can assure you the Maranon was on an awful lot more than 3 pumps, but she and the rest of us paddled virtually everything going, and survived, somehow. I still can’t believe some of the stuff we paddled blind, for example, from our guide Luigi “next rapid is round the corner, the line is middle, middle right and paddle through and enjoy the big waves” so off we go to find Armageddon round the corner, more “naughty words” but still in our boats. We had 2 minor swims not in any of the big stuff ,which says so much about the fighting spirit and will to survive by the 4 of us. Even minor swims take a while to recover from due to the speed of the river. A big swim did not bear thinking about. Well done the GKC Maranon 4, proud to have been part of this trip.
We have already planned next years trip. The Teith on low.