West Sumatra 2009

Sungai Lambai – Jungle Creek! Part 2

Tuesday, 23 February 2010 14:45 |

Continued from Part 1

After this we had a fun run under a log, a small rapid, and then another horizon line. We scouted and this one seemed to be the business. It had a half foot drop, a two foot drop and then it dropped about two metres into a frothing pressure area, and immediately turned right and dropped another metre. This was followed by a swift flowing pool of about five or six metres and then another three metre drop that looked like it had a dodgy hole and something weird on the right hand side, which was right below us, so we couldn’t see. Andrew ran first again, much to my dismay as I wanted to hit this one first, and he had an absolute styler of a run, making it look fairly easy! Especially on the final hole.

Sungai Lambai – Jungle Creek! Part 1

Tuesday, 23 February 2010 14:00 |

Thursday, 19 November. Breakfast was some cake type stuff, and something similar to what we called vetkoek, neither of which appealed me so I wolfed down some monkey nuts and that was that. It was partly cloudy and quite hazy, it looked like it was to be a hot day. But no matter, another day of excellent kayaking lay ahead of us!

Upper Batang Liki – Continuous Heaven (PART 2)

Tuesday, 26 January 2010 10:34 |

CONTINUED FROM PART 1

Not long after this the river started to become a lot larger. The jungle walls closed in and became more vertical and in places over a hundred metres high. Portaging didn’t look possible and I began to get nervous. We had been on the water a long time and the possibility of running out of light was becoming quite real. We didn’t scout any of the rapid and just plunged down, sometimes swopping over who would probe the next rapid. I remember one long rapid as it dropped down and into a right hand bend. Andrew made the eddy after a quick roll and I wondered how this one would turn out. He got out to video and down we went. As I dropped into a river wide hole I disappeared, taking two strokes to get out, luckily. Shew, glad we didn’t have more water! It’s a pity that we didn’t take many photos here, but we didn’t know how far we still had to go and the light was bad anyway. The idea of sleeping out here in the jungle unprepared didn’t appeal to any of us.

Upper Batang Liki – Continuous Heaven (PART 1)

Tuesday, 26 January 2010 09:36 |

The morning of Wednesday 18 November arrived very early and still raining. Breakfast consisted of noodles and fried eggs, which did the job. We idled around a bit longer as the rained eased and then it stopped. All 8 of us clambered into the vehicles to explore higher up on the river we had paddled the previous day and knock down another first descent. It was bound to be an exciting day.

Lower Batang Liki – The First of the First Descents, Part 2

Tuesday, 05 January 2010 20:57 |

[continued from part 1]

By 05:40 the television was close to maximum and I could obviously not sleep anymore – Tuesday 17 November had arrived on a loud note. Celliers said the mosques had started singing at 04:00 but luckily I didn’t hear it. Note I use the plural, there must have been around five of them, all of which you could hear at the same time. On one rainy morning it actually sounded great, but I guess I must have had more sleep that time round. Breakfast was boiled eggs and noodles, and I’ll spare you the meals from now on. Although they were often the same, and quite simple, they were absolutely marvelous and even as a fairly fussy eater, I found these meals disappearing quicker than a home sick mole. Soon after breakfast our two vehicles arrived. A Ford and Mitsubishi double cab, both of them 4x4. We loaded our boats and took a long drive to the put in of the, let’s call it, ‘Lower’ Batang Liki. Batang is the word for river. So it’s The Liki River and again, they have the words reversed so one could directly translate as River Liki but of course this is not the case.

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