The Global Paddling Community

"It seems like I can't stay away from South America for very long, so when Brad Ludden invited me along on a trip to Venezuela a few months ago, I just could not say no..."

From cold to warm

Two months ago I never thought I would get the chance to kayak in Venezuela, as a matter of fact, the country never occurred to me to be a prime whitewater destination until I had a little chat with Brad Ludden. It took him something like 10 seconds to convince me, and what he said was something like: " Big water, huge waves, incredibly hot and big blunts....!" The crew consisted of Alex Nicks, Andrew Holcombe, Seth Warren, Brad Ludden and myself. Alex was shooting for his new video, and the rest of us were supposed to be rodeo stars... Right... Let me put it this way, the boys ran the show...

After spending a night at the airport in Caracas. sleeping in the most air conditionned corner (!), we got on a flight down to Puerto Ayacucho. This little town is situtated on the border with Colombia, south west of Caracas, with the river Oronoci as our prime destination. The road ended just a few miles outside the town, since this was the true outskirts of the Amazonian forest.

After 2 months in the south east of the US it took me about 10 minutes to look like a tomato, I swear the temperature never dropped under 30 degrees celsius. Ever. It feels like we spent most of the time either inside the hotel room with the air condtionning as our savior, or in the river busy trying to hit huge blunts and donkey flips, or just getting straight up trashed in some enormous holes. A pretty good life...

Air

The Oronoci turned out to be a huge river with tons of different chanels. The riverbed is mainly basalt, and the huge basalt boulders surrounding the river create a spectacular view. In this time of the year the river is low, but in the summertime, millions of cfs flow down the river, and I can only imagine the size of the holes and the waves, based on the boulders found on shore next to the river, and between the channels...

It took us a little while to get all our kayaks down from Caracas, since the airline would only accept one or two kayaks at the time, and the daily newspapers from Caracas were a little bit more important to get down to Puerto Ayachucho than a few gringo plastic boats.. Me and Alex took a hit for the group and paddled a big section of the river the first day, which turned out to be about 3 hours of flatwater, with one really good rapid in it. The next day we came back with the rest of the gang and started to catch some air... On river right side there was a really fast wave where you could hit air amazingly easily, and we did... Ludsky and Andrew were sticing huge donkey flips and pan ams, while I was busy working on my aerial blunts... Alex and Seth were up on the rocks trying to document the acrobatics, but once in a while they would get in their kayaks to show us how to catch the really big air. I guess we paddled a solid 5 hours each day, but it felt more like ten hours by the time we were finished. And with a water temperature around 20 degrees celsius, it didn't really help to get out of your kayaks to cool down in the eddy!

On the river left side of the rapid there was a huge diagonal wave where you could probably fit 20 kayakers, and where you could hit big blunts in the far corner. And the best part, when you fell off it, just waiting for you downstream was a huge hole which most of the time would kick your ass. You could get the sickest aerial bounces in that hole, and I can recall at least a couple of aerial windowshades of mine where I landed on my face after being thrown 2 meters from the top of the foam pile to the bottom. And believe it or not, I still rolled up with a smile!

I saw the boys get some really nice moves as soon as they could get some control in the hole, and from the shouts from Alex from behind the camera I knew that he had caught them as well...

Jetboats and Pyranhas

The Oronoci has some really nice rapids, but what is really overwhelming on the river is the amount of flatwater. So a few days we would get either a jetboat from the local rafting company or some locals with a boat to take us down to the rapids. One day Alex even hired a local guy with a wooden canoe to get close to one of the waves so he could get some good shots..After a day of exploring the upper section of the river, we finally reached the take out and met up with our driver. He had spent the day fishing, and proudly showed us what he had caught. A fifteen cm long pyranha with red eyes....The teeth were even scarier than the eyes, and eventhough Jose tried to convince us that as long as we were not bleeding there was no danger, we exchanged sceptical glances. We had been swimming around in the river for five days without even thinking about what was actually swimming together with us in the water.

One day we were paddling through a little bay, or I guess you can call it a huge eddy, we saw two creatures in front of us, coming up to the surface now and then to breath. It took us a little while to realise that we were actually facing freshwater dolphins, and we were all amazed by the sight of their pale skin and swift movements. After all, the outskirts of the Amazon have a lot to show a few unknowing foreigners!

After ten days it was time to head back to the western world, facing a totally different aspect of life. The little glimpse I got of Venezuela and its culture made me just want to return for more....

Article by Mariann Saether for PLAYAK.COM. April 2002.

All photos on this page by Seth Warren.

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