Orange River Canoe Trip

“Help, I can’t breathe, I’m going to die”. These words gasped out by Gareth, one of the river guides on our 3 night 4 day Orange River canoe trip, were a surprise to say the least.

Up to that point we’d assumed that the blue liquid Gareth was spitting all over our first night’s campsite was part of a joke. It transpired that he had drunk chemical toilet cleaner or “blue juice”, helpfully stored in a drinking water bottle and thrown to him by friend and river guide Rory, who’d only been joking about drinking it!

Two litres of long life milk (we’d be on black coffee that night!) calmed Gareth down, and Roach, our canoe guide leader, delegated Rory to paddle Gareth downstream through rapids to a point where they could walk several kilometres in the dark to a road and hopefully flag down a vehicle (the nearest hospital being Springbok, a mere 170km over the border in South Africa).

There was a sober air in camp that night despite the exhilaration of running “Entrance Exam” the aptly named first rapids on the river after we’d left the Felix Unite lodge and campground. We’d spent the day travelling downriver in 2 man Canadian canoes and our group, consisting of 4 Swiss, 2 Poles, 2 South Africans and ourselves, were now fully aware of the isolation that attracted us to the trip in the first place.

The sight of Rory paddling in to camp the next morning cheered everyone, not just because he reported that Gareth was fine despite chronic diarrhoea (at least he cleaned the toilet at the same time) but also because we wouldn’t have to cover Rory’s cooking, carrying, washing up and packing duties any longer!

The combination of quiet paddling stretches interspersed with rapids and a backdrop of stunning desert mountain scenery (mostly the Richtersveld National Park) makes this a very popular canoe trip. Five or more companies take people on this stretch, resulting in over a thousand canoeists on the river at a time in peak season. Our group of 12 had the whole river to ourselves for the 4 days, bliss!

The overnight campsites were scenic and the food produced by Roach and Rory excellent considering everything was out of cool boxes and cooked over an open fire. The chemical toilet, bravely carried by Rory in his canoe, was an added luxury and thankfully Gareth hadn’t drunk all the cleaner fluid!

We discovered over dinner on the first night that Tony and Kirsten, the Swiss couple, were enthusiastic rock climbers back home. This might explain why they spent each day of the trip wrapping their canoe around part submerged or even exposed rocks in the river, clearly intent on setting a swimming record for the trip. Their daughter Oona, paddling with friend Aline, steered around or over all obstacles in a whirl of paddle blades.

Kevin, South African and ex Plymouth Argyle rugby player, had an upper body physique similar to myself and Arnie Schwarznegger, which helped power him and his partner Holly through the quieter stretches of water. In the rapids their canoe was higher out the water than a US aircraft carrier and wobblier than a child taking it’s first footsteps! After a couple of capsizes you could sense that Holly was looking forward to the second part of their holiday, a week in a private lodge adjoining Kruger National Park.

Greg (the nearest we could get to his Polish name) and Iwana powered through all the quiet stretches and the rapids with equal enthusiasm and smiles, helped perhaps by continual top ups of energy drinks.

Roach and Rory worked overtime on the rapids, explaining the lines to take and the things to avoid. They then paddled down them standing up (just to emphasise our inadequacies) to set up “safety”. This seemed to consist of standing on downstream rocks waving paddles at us like frenzied semaphore signallers to indicate where we should steer to avoid large waves, rocks and eddies.

We soon learnt that “single file 1 boat length apart” meant faster water, “single file 2 boats apart” meant tipping out was possible, “single file 3 boats apart” meant that Tony & Kirsten were going to get stuck on a rock and “we’ll pull over and have a look at this one” meant that Angela was thinking of returning to the UK!

The wildlife on the river treated us with rightful indifference, fish eagles watched from tree perches, baboons barked warnings at us, vervet monkeys stared and the cormorants, darters, kingfishers, herons and egrets carried on fishing.

In two of the overnight riverside camps (actually areas of natural grass with tree shade) we saw fireflies lighting up the trees and bushes, a magical sight complimented by the pea soup glow of the Milky Way. The chat around the campfire after dinner was energetic and excited after the thrills and physical effort of paddling in temperatures of 35C to 40C during the day.

Fortunately Roach left his guitar playing and singing to the last night, his rendition of a famous Afrikaans folk song will live on my memory for a long time, perhaps hypnosis when we return home will remove the pain! Should you go on this trip and find Roach leading it, retire to bed the moment he gets the guitar out.

We were sorry to leave the river at lunchtime on the fourth day, though the sight of Gareth on the riverbank waiting to unload our canoes was a welcome one; he was none the worse for his toilet fluid drinking escapade and will no doubt get free beers for months from Rory!

Angela and I would like to thank Roach and Rory for their incredible hard work, Roach for leading the trip with just the right balance of professionalism, calm and casualness and Rory for his equally cool but professional approach. We’d also like to thank our fellow paddlers for making it a memorable experience and we promise to email all our photos around ASAP. Thanks to Gareth or Blue Juice as he’s probably now known, for his help on the first and last days, hope the experience didn’t put you off becoming a river guide!

Thanks to Carlos, the director of Felix Unite, for letting us camp free of charge for 4 days prior to the trip, for his daily observations on Namibia, Portugal and life in general and for cooking the best tasting steaks we’ve had since arriving in Africa last June.

Sorry if this is beginning to sound like yet another Oscar acceptance speech but thanks are also due to Heike and Clint in Somerset West who recommended the trip in the first place and last but not least to Angela for being a great engine (front paddler) and (for once) taking orders from me the captain (rear paddler).