Sat
Jan
12
2008
Thursday June 10th 2004
W. 93’45.20 N 16’57.65
Day six – The River worked us pretty hard yesterday. As soon as we left the cave we got stuck in some major boulders and white water. It took us all morning to get through a 300-yard section of river because we had to keep portaging our luggage and our boats. That is a lot of work, let me tell you, especially on some really slippery rocks with fast water all around. We ran into our first problem before we even started. We decided to explore the river cave one last time before we took off for the day. But before we packed up I punctured my raft. I hit the canyon wall at the right angle and put a little gouge in it. We got back to camp and supposedly the glue took 12 hours to set, but all we gave it was about 30-45minutes, and we were on the water again. After getting through the really hard portaging area, we saw a pool that was full of fish and decided to try and get a few. I threw in a chunk of granola bar, and the fishtails started flipping in the water. Woah, that was exciting. Really the hardest part about fishing that hole was getting the granola bar to stick on my hook. Very quickly we had a small stringer of six fish. They looked like some sort of carp, or white fish, it was hard to tell. A couple of the ones I caught were actually a fairly decent size.
It’s been three days now that we haven’t been able to read a GPS coordinate, and we thought for sure that yesterday we would have reached the Rio Negro river tributary. To our surprise we still aren’t there, so who knows how far there is to go still. Well the river might have started easily, but by the end of yesterday we were begging for calm floating waters, so that we wouldn’t have to do so much hard work. After being so tired from the portaging, and being wet all day long, the river had us begging for mercy. Individually the rapids are in fact not that bad, but it’s the collective effect of getting your raft constantly swamped, then constantly bailing the water out. That is what tires you out. At one spot we found a huge opening in the canyon wall, and scrambled up to it.
It was a cave that went quite a ways down to a standing pool of crystal clear, cold water. On our way back, we nonchalantly ended up taking a different shaft, and got totally disoriented. It was a huge cave and there were several ways to go. It was amazing how easy it was to take a wrong turn. After going a ways down the secondary shaft which became very low so that we had to duck for a while, we came to another water source that looked like it was flowing out to the river in a different route. But, we backtracked and found our way out. It was nice to see the light again.
On the last rapid of the day, Jason slammed into a log and blew out his raft. We had to limp along with duct tape on it and made it to a nice wide sand bar for the night’s camp. The spot was a wide sweeping circle of the river and made an excellent open and flat camp.
Barely had we got our camp set up that the sky started rolling with thunder and lightning and it rained all night. We had set up a nice little lean-to with our tarp alongside the tent, and so we were able to have some warm potatoes and bacon soup and listen to the rain pour outside. It was so nice because the rain brought some freshness with it, and some cool air. It was so soothing, and the noises all around us were terrific. We saw a black snake go across the sand earlier in the camp setup. The fireflies at night are so pretty. They light up the canyon all over the place with their little glow. Well today we had better hit the river quickly and hopefully get closer to the lake. The temperature here is always constant. At night you can just lay down on your mat and be totally comfortable with or without a sheet. If we didn’t have to have the rain flap on, we’d get a lot more of that breeze, but as it is, the few whisks we get feel quite nice.
