Travel, Photography, Life.
Bamboo Raft Experiment
Craig and I built a raft out of bamboo and attempted to float down a tidally-influenced river.
Another Day in Siparuta
Jan 11th
December 29, 2006
Day 399
Bamboo Raft Experiment Day 4
We spent another full day in Siparuta. A lot of interesting people came and talked to us, including the captain (mayor) of the village. One guy invited us to go fishing with him in his boat in the afternoon, but he didn’t show up. He returned later in the evening with a bagful of bananas and oranges as an apology.
Craig caught some more big piranhas for us, and we learned about a kid in the village who recently lost three fingers to the vicious fish. His mom was cleaning a fish, so there were guts in the water, and her kid was splashing around in the water, which attracted a huge piranha. Before anyone saw it coming, it had bitten off the boy’s index, middle, and ring fingers. Today I made sure to be extra careful when handling the piranhas as a result.
Several people assured us today that two boats for sure would pass the village in the middle of the night. For insurance, I decided to sleep on the jetty so I could signal any incoming boat with my head lamp well before it passed us. About 2:00 AM, a boat came toward us. I flashed my light at it over and over again, but for some reason, it didn’t stop. The boats don’t normally stop at Siparuta, so I really had my work cut out for me. A few hours later, the second boat came, and thankfully it stopped.
The boat, known as the “Washabo Boat,” was much shorter and narrower than the boat we originally road in on. It was so overloaded with people and cargo, there was barely enough room on it to sit, let alone lay down. On top of that, the overloaded boat constantly swayed violently back and forth. At one point, we went around a corner, the boat leaned to the right, and never corrected itself. The boat had to stop and everyone had to move as far to the left as possible for it to stand straight again. It was a bit scary for me, but we made it back in one piece shortly after dawn.
Large Guyanese Piranha
Jan 11th
December 28, 2006
Day 398
Bamboo Raft Experiment Day 3
We awoke in the small Guyanese village of Siparuta. We learned that there would be a boat passing in the middle of the night, so we spent the day chilling out. It’s a picturesque place with lots of mangoes and cashews to munch on. Being in Guyana, there’s no electricity in town, so it’s a much quieter place than Apoera. Craig went fishing from the huge jetty and caught two large piranha, so we had no problem getting dinner despite being back in Guyana with only Suriname money.
The only thing we were told about the timing of tonight’s boat was that it would pass about twelve hours after the afternoon’s low tide, but as far as we knew, it could’ve passed us at any time of the night. As it turned out, no boat came all night, so we would have to wait another day to try to leave Siparuta.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Made it (Almost)!
Jan 11th
December 27, 2006
Day 397
Bamboo Raft Experiment Day 2
Craig and I got up at 4:00 and checked the river. Sure enough, the tide was just starting to go out. We quickly packed up and left. Once again, we slowly drifted down the river under the crystal-clear nighttime sky. We got to Wakay at about 9:00, just before low tide.
Wakay is a government-run outpost at the end of a canal that goes all the way back to Nickerie. This time of year, it rains enough that the huge rice fields get enough water on their own, so the machinery used to pump the water from the river into the canal wasn’t running. Still, we had a few hours to kill, so the friendly employee showed us the site. We had to go back and forth between the living quarters on a tractor because of the vicious attack dogs that protected it. We got a little bit of sleep, cooked all of our food, and stuck around until 3:00, when we got on the tied-up raft and waited for the water to change direction.
The rest of the day consisted of a lot of slow drifting. We had two paddles with us, but it’s much more difficult to paddle a raft than a canoe because of the greater surface area and the logs sticking out of the sides. In a bamboo raft, you’re really at the mercy of the river.
From the advice given at Wakay, we thought we’d easily make it to Siparuta, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. At dark, we knew we only had a couple hours left with the tide on our side, so we tried to find any sign of civilization. Eventually, we spotted three large sand banks, where ships load up with sand to be turned into concrete and sold. We made it there after what seemed like an eternity, but then we got caught in an eddy and started going backwards. As far as we knew, we could’ve been going backwards because the tide changed though, so we paddled out to the center of the river, and sure enough we started moving in the right direction again. However, we were so far out that we couldn’t paddle back to the shore in time to make it to the sand banks, so we had no choice but to continue.
We finally saw the lights of Siparuta and started heading there. However, the fiasco in the eddy consumed so much precious time that the tide was already starting to come back in. It was very frustrating because we were within 300 meters of our goal but couldn’t get there. We were just about to look for a spot on the shore to tie up and wait for six hours when a boat full of Dutch tourists passed us. The raft was starting to fall apart, so we thought it best to flag them down. They already knew all about us from the gossip on the river and gladly drove us the short distance to shore. We didn’t quite make it as far as we wanted to, but it was still an interesting way to go down the river. Now we just had to figure out how to get back to Apoera.
The photo album for this entry is here.
Slow Raft Floating
Jan 11th
December 26, 2006
Day 396
Bamboo Raft Experiment Day 1
The idea of building a raft being fresh in Craig’s mind after the Kaieteur experiment, he thought we should try again on the Corentine River, this time using bamboo as the material. Germaine scrounged up some machetes from his relatives and the three of us spent the morning chopping down bamboo trees in preparation for building the raft. Bamboo is better for building a raft than most wood because not only is it light and hollow, but it’s also compartmentalized, so if part of it cracks open and gets flooded, the rest will still remain airtight.
After a few hours, everyone in the village was watching us and calling us crazy. In the end, some of them actually helped us chop, and someone even found some Styrofoam to put underneath. We bought 200 meters of thin rope, cut it up, and tied the pieces together. Eventually, we had something resembling a raft.
We had to hurry because the Corentine empties into the ocean relatively close to Apoera, so its current is directed by the tides. We went back to Germaine’s for some final packing (I only took waterproof stuff, and nothing of any value), and were ready to go just as the tide started going out at 3:00. We were told that it would take one tide to get to Wakay, one more to Siparuta, and two more to get to the next town, beyond which the river gets to wide and choppy to support a bamboo raft. Of course, we knew that none of the time estimates would be even remotely accurate because nobody doing the guessing had ever gone down the river on a bamboo raft, so we’ll just have to play it by ear.
Germaine, Craig, and I jumped on the raft with our minimal gear, and this time it only sank an inch or two before stopping. A bunch of kids watched us leave, and soon the village returned to normal after the morning’s excitement. The raft moved very slowly at first, but then it picked up speed. We passed Washabo and got to Hog Landing (the last village with road access) just before dark. Progress was slow, but at least it was progress. Unfortunately, Germaine was feeling too sick from his malaria to continue, so he went back to Apoera. Craig and I will have to get up early to catch the next tide down the river.