kayakthekwanza

There were a lot of hippos in the upper stages of the river. Luckily for us, due to poaching during the Angolan Civil War (1975 to 2002) many of them learned to be scared of humans, so often they would submerge and swim off before we even saw them. However, on this occasion we were paddling along and saw what we thought were two rocks in the middle of the river, about 200m up ahead. Our plan was to paddle straight in between them. It's very lucky that we didn't!

Out of nowhere, an Angolan man climbed up a tree on the bank and started shouting to us: "Do you have a rifle? Because they'll kill you!" We soon understood that he meant the rocks were actually hippos and that they were aggressive males. We spent a while trying to sneak past them, and in the end had to spend the night camping in the village that had been terrorised by these hippos for years.

The next day we set out early to try and get past them but they saw us coming and charged over to us and our guides, in a traditional pirogue up in front. Hippos can swim very quickly when they want to! They got within a few metres of our kayak, forcing us to dash to the opposite bank and climb up a tree to escape. We had to wait about half an hour up the tree before we could climb down and continue our journey. Total pain! I have a video of us up the tree looking out at the hippos, let me try and dig it out!

Here is the video: https://twitter.com/kayakthekwanza/status/929643680679518208

The local media had no interest in our journey sadly. There was nobody waiting for us on the finish line except our friends and representatives from The HALO Trust. The only time we made it onto an Angolan news website was when we were arrested for spying! After the journey finished we got a bit more international attention and I wrote a story for the in-flight magazine of TAAG, the Angolan national airline.

The local people we met along the way were fascinated by our journey, and also helped us out loads. The further from the source we got, the more amazed they were. A lot of them thought it was impossible: too many hippos, rapids and waterfalls etc. I particularly enjoyed one comment from a fisherman we met: "Why don't you get an engine? It will be a lot quicker!"

Yes, quite a few things!

1) Ensure that all of our mission-critical gear was secured to the kayak at all times (we lost my boots in rapids and my feet then got destroyed on the walking sections). You can see a screenshot of one of my feet here: http://kayakthekwanza.com/gallery/

2) Bring less crap! Our kit was way too heavy. We dumped about 5kg each after the first week as it was proving too difficult to carry.

3) In line with the comment above, don't bring a drone. In the end we only got two decent bits of footage with it and it just took up too much room (which is a shame, as the footage was beautiful). https://twitter.com/kayakthekwanza/status/915235961373626370

4) Not camp anywhere near the Capanda Dam: even though we had permission to be there from the relevant ministry, the Angolan security forces there freaked out that we were spying on the dam and arrested us (guns in our tents while we were sleeping). Not a pleasant 4 days!

5) Be more careful when navigating rapids: we sank and damaged the Klepper kayak in one set which was a disaster and meant serious delays. It was also not ideal from a safety point of view...

Lucky we didn't ask you for advice before setting out! Those beasts sound like air compressors going off when they surface and exhale. It's kinda scary.

We saw some very big crocodiles! Alfy is a keen birder, so he was able to record all sorts of species of birds as we went down the river (he kept a log for The Wild Bird Trust). We also saw mongoose on one of our hiking sections, and walked through a national park that is home to a man-eating lion (thankfully we didn't meet him!) Didn't see a single snake for the whole month which was a miracle. Our biggest animal hazard was mosquitoes. We got munched camping by the river so Malaria and Dengue were a big worry the whole trip.