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Written by Adam Craig
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Wednesday, 30 November 2005 |
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Page 1 of 2 
This report may be a little bit delayed due to various fall recreational activities (Motard/Dirt Bike riding, kayaking, skiing, good singletrack, shoveling snow, etc) distracting me, but it definitely needs to be filed. Definitely the best trip of the year for me on many fronts. Simply being on a new continent was amazing, getting to explore it from many angles with some local knowledge was even better, and checking out a new type of race and competition environment in general was the icing on the cake for this kid.
Things started off with meeting (for the first time) Jamie Simon of Red Bull US at the gate in the Atlanta airport for the long flight to Johannesburg. I began by thanking her profusely for thinking of inviting me on this trip as the Mountain Biker for the four person relay team Red Bull US was fielding for the event (the rest of the athletes were: Tim Deboom, Mountain Run, Othar Lawrence, Paragliding and Adam Koch, Kite Surfing). I think I actually spent more time thanking her for setting up the first leg of our trip, to Livingstone, Zambia to kayak the Zambezi river for five days and check out some sub-saharan culture. Soon enough we were on the first eight hour leg of our flight before a fuel/crew change stopover in Isle de Sal in the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Dakar. After a bit of a bumpy landing we learned that the Airbus we were aboard has blown it’s hydraulics and wouldn’t be going anywhere, as the Airbus store on the tiny island was closed for the night… We retired to the tiny, airport bar where we found some fellow travelers with cards, volunteered to buy them drinks if they’d play cards with us and found a table in the open air courtyard for a few (hours of) games of rummy. After a goodly while busses arrived, we got swimwear out of our luggage and were delivered to a hotel (more like bungalows on th! e beach) for the night with instructions to “check in” on the status of the flight, meaning a day long delay was probable. Fortunately we woke the next afternoon on the beach, went for a swim and cruised around checking out a desert island paradise that we would otherwise never have discovered. Our only regret was that we didn’t awake early enough to take advantage of the surfboard rentals that my run down the beach discovered. Maybe next time…
After some serious airport struggling we arrived in Livingstone a day late (and a dollar short for me, turns out ATMs aren’t exactly on every corner in Zambia, or anywhere for that matter…) but excited to be there. One of Jamie’s old friends and a Red Bull kayaking athlete, Steve Fisher and his girlfriend Desere Pickers were already at our backbackers lodge, Fawlty Towers, unloading boats and gear from their epic drive up from their home country of South Africa. We helped unload and soon were on our way to the gorge rim above Rapid #7 for sundowners and discussing the coming days. Watching the sun set and the moon rise above the second biggest rapid on the river was an amazing way to start off our trip and made the travel struggling disappear altogether. We then went out to celebrate Jamie’s birthday with an authentic African barbecue buffet style dinner. Turn! s out cow tail is pretty tasty when done right.
The next day was day one on the extremely large Zambezi river. Steve basically grew up paddling here, so we figured we were in good hands and, after some basic instruction, followed him into the maw of each and every rapid, from #1-13. Huge haystacking waves, immense holes ! and general chaos abounded in the larger rapids, with the smaller ones giving us a chance to keep our eyes open and get a feel for the volume of water (which was actually relatively low at 25,000 cubic feet per second) on hand. I made it to number eight without incident, then was given instructions to paddle as hard as I could then “tuck and duck” (make yourself as small as possible) through the massive hole. Turns out I was a bit far right and not tucked or ducked enough, resulting in getting stopped by the hole and tossed back upstream like the human in a small kayak I was. Upon reentering the water my borrowed paddle promptly broke in half and both pieces left my hands. This put me in the precarious position of rolling using my hands (large hole followed by large waves, didn’t happen) or exiting my! kayak and going for a little swim. Turns out warm water, and big waves make for a fairly entertaining swim and Steve assured me that there were no crocs or hippos in this particular pool (if I were in another pool I might want to swim harder). We gathered my gear and Steve kept to his decade old code of taking the broken paddle of a newbie and running the rest of the river with it while the unfortunate soul used his intact stick. After a short portage around the immense rapid we arrived at one of the great surf waves of the world, the infamous 12B. Steve confessed that this was a “trashy” level and proceeded to make it look easy, encouraging Jamie and I to try it out. I was skeptical but was happy to observe Jamie (the ’95 freestyle kayaking world champion) f! ire it up and promptly flip, a couple times, lose her paddle and swim for it… I took this as fair warning and we moved downstream through the huge waves of #13 to our takeout, where our porters were eagerly awaiting to carry our boats the couple hundred meters up the gorge wall to the truck. It cost $1 per boat for them to get carried up and it is respected custom to hire porters and support the struggling local economy (85% unemployment after the textile industry shut down in Livingstone). I was a feeling a bit lazy about not carrying my boat until about halfway up the black walled gorge in triple digit heat. Instead I rode my bike the 20k back to the lodge everyday. We ran the river three times in four days and gradually got more comfortable with the size and w! eight of the water, I eventually even saddled up and ran number nine, properly… The time on the river was amazing, but it turned out to be only one small aspect of an amazing time.
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