After spinning our little track-web outside the harbor in Palmeira (if you didn’t catch that whole story you can check it out here) we finally got the engine started, motored in and dropped anchor. I spent 5 days on the island of Sal still aboard Cosmos, getting my first taste of what Cape Verde had to offer.
A few random facts to acquaint yourself with Cabo Verde.
The country was a Portuguese colony until it became independent in 1975
The nation’s expatriate population is greater than its domestic population
It is estimated that the islands have one goat for every two people
Total population is 570,000 people spread among 7 islands.
Portuguese is the official language but people also speak Crioulo, an Africanised Creole Portuguese
53% of the population works in agriculture and fisheries. 75% of the food they consume is imported. There is almost no fresh water on the islands
So what was I up to during the couple weeks I spent in Cabo Verde?
I ate Cachupa, feijoada, and lots and lots of fish. I drank grogue (pronounced grog) and ponche.
*Cachupa is kindof the national dish, a slow cooked stew of corn, beans, cassava, sweet potato and some kind of meat. Feijoada is a Portuguese dish that is ver popular in Brasil where I first tried it, a bean stew with lots of random bits of pork. Grogue is the local fire-water, made from sugar cane, it is essentially the same as Cachaça and as in Brasil, is also often drank with sugar and citrus, like a Caiparinha. Ponche is more like a liqueur, very sweet, thick and syrupy, often made from mango or passion-fruit.
This was a very typical mean for me in Cabo Verde. This would have cost about $3.50USDFeijoada
I became acquainted with the other hitchhikers who were trying to get rides, most of whom had been in Mindelo for a couple weeks or more. There was about 14 of us, each with different levels of experience and plans. Every once in a while someone would find a boat and everyone is happy, a comrade gets a ride, the competition narrows, and hopes are rejuvenated. I spent hours each day hanging around the marina. I would use http://www.marinetraffic.com to see when new boats were arriving so I could be one of the first to chat it up with the new arrivals. I made a map of the marina and each morning would walk the pontoons erasing boats that departed and identifying new arrivals that I could talk with.
I found the island of Sal to be a windswept dry unspectacular island apart from the people. The winds thrashed the island constantly, the air was full of dust, the landscape was completely uninspiring. Was Cape Verde going to disappoint?
Frosty the Snowman suffering through a Saharan desert snowstorm in Sal
I spent my 40th birthday alone on the island of Santo Antão, the leeward island I had reached by taking several ferries from Sal. I was gleeful. Very happy for the solitude after spending so much time co-living in tight quarters on Cosmos. I could not have asked for a better place or way to spend my 40th, in this random far-flung corner of the world, an island nation off the coast of Senegal, absorbing truly unique and stunning landscapes. A reminder that life is a gift and if it’s true what they say (life begins at 40) then I got off to a nice start. No, Cape Verde was not disappointing me.
I swam for a good two minutes just one meter above a beautiful sea turtle, watching her glide through crystal clear waters.
I discovered that Cape Verdian people are great. They were really friendly, helpful, and curious.
Music is a really big deal in Cape Verde, the island I spent most of my time on was St. Vincent, where Cesária Évora is from (click to hear her music if you don’t already know it). I’ve been a big fan of hers for many years and was lucky enough to see her live once before she died so I was excited to be in her hometown where she is revered like a demi-god (The airport is named after her). She brought Cape Verdian “Morna” music to the world. There is a really vibrant music scene in Mindelo, the main town on St. Vincent, and the unique thing about it is that it consists mostly of small bars and restaurants that invite anyone to just come up and jam, and foreign visitors are just as welcome to join. So you might see 5 locals jamming it up on guitar, bass, percussion, shakers, cavaquinho, etc. and then some Belgian with his clarinet joining in. It’s really cool.
I was pleased to see the locals here also played mancala, a traditional African game, with bonduc seeds just as I had seen twenty years ago when I was in East Africa.
Throwback to 2001 – Lamu, Kenya On the streets of Mindelo 2020
I ran into Richard, the Swedish captain who I sailed with from Lisbon to the Canaries and got the update…His Fiance Ivy had found a job in Las Palmas and he decided to sail alone to Cape Verde and leave the boat there while they focused on saving some money to ready themselves for the Atlantic Crossing the following year.
While on an amazing hike along the north coast of the island of Santo Antão on my birthday, it occurred to me that even if the sailing world does call to me, and I am excited to fold it into my lifestyle. In my heart I will always be a land-traveler. I understand that for some the vastness of the sea opens their mind and heart to the wonders of the word, but for me it will always be the mountains and valleys, the rivers and lakes, the smells of a busy Asian market, the chaos of a Latin American bus terminal, and all the thousands of faces you encounter, each a grain of salt sprinkled onto your experience, each giving it just a little more flavor. The earth below my feet, the strain of my leg muscles as they haul me up a mountain, the changing landscape and passing people.
I spent most of my time in Cape Verde in the town of Mindelo where the only marina is on the islands. It’s also the second most touristic town in the country. It has a certain charm to it with its small but bustling fish market and central market, a nice city beach, and the architectural leftovers of Portuguese colonization. It reminded me at times of parts of Brazil (such as Salvador). I enjoyed walking out into the streets that became more and more familiar to me each day….
…the exception to this was the days when a cruise ship was in the port, it was as if each time one arrived the bow of the colossal ship tore through the fabric of the town completely changing the atmosphere. Two thousand European tourists pour through the rip in the fabric, skin freshly rouged by the African sun. Red cheeks hide behind cameras pointed at the marketplace, the municipal building, the guys playing samba near the port for spare change. They spend their 20 euro contribution to the local economy on a caipirinha, a bottle of water and a souvenir sea turtle made out of a coconut shell and then they are back on the floating beast. They have no time to actually get to know the culture or have a meaningful conversation with a local. Maybe I’m just bitter from the terrible experience I had in my limited days working on a cruise ship, but I would be happy if I never saw another one in my life.
Mindelo on a day when there was no cruise ship in port
On the evening of my birthday after a long day of hiking, it’s already dark when I arrive back in the town where I am staying after hitchhiking from the other side of the island. Walking through the streets I hear music and follow the sound to an abandoned building where I find a samba band practicing for the upcoming carnival. There is no roof on the building and the moon competes with a single light bulb to dimly illuminate 20 people banging on drums in unison creating a sound that is so loud, so intense, that despite the fact that it sounds more like noise than music to me, I cannot pull myself away from it. (The video does no justice to just how LOUD it really was)….
With the Cosmos guys the day they set sail for Suriname
The Cosmos crew arrived in the marina in Mindelo a couple days after I did. I hung out with them often as they were getting Cosmos ready for the crossing to Suriname. William introduced me to a French captain named Thibault who he had gotten to know while dealing with some boat issues in the Azores. Will and the rest of the Cosmos crew tried to convince him to take me on as crew but he insisted he was a devout single-handing sailor who never takes crew. Worth a try.
The day after my birthday I did another amazing hike even more impressive than the first. I hiked for 4.5 hours along a beautifully constructed stone path through terraced mountains with occasional views of the sea in the distance. During the first 3 hours of the hike I only ran into people one time, this old couple who were slowly carrying sacks of grain up a hillside on bent backs. They came across me as I was taking some photos and were curious about the camera, I offered to take their photo and got this nice one (followed by a few more from the hike to give a sense of the landscape):
I hitched a half dozen rides around the island of Santo Antão during my stay there, one of them was a couple from France and Lebanon, they were on vacation and had rented a car, but neither of them knew how to drive it! It was a manual transmission and they had managed to make it to where they picked me up, but shortly after I jumped in the road entered the mountains and became very steep. The first time the car had to stop for some goats in the road the guy didn’t know how to work the clutch to get the car moving again with such a big incline. And so it was that I was able to return the favor for their picking me up by becoming their chauffeur 😉.
The day after the Cosmos guys set sail to cross the Atlantic, Thibault, the devout single-hander finally caved and offered to take me on as crew. We would leave the next day. The conditions were that I would be in charge of the provisioning and all the cooking. The destination…Grenada. Offer accepted, after 8 days of thumbing it I was going to cross the Atlantic!
The night before I was supposed to set sail to cross the Atlantic I had a small bout of “What the hell am I doing?”. Something even with my entire life experience of doing this kind of thing I am not completely immune to. It usually only appears briefly and in those twilight hours laying in bed when we tend to review and evaluate our day’s decisions. The full extent of my very non-conventional life rarely stands out to me. It’s just my life, for me it’s normal. But every once in a while some of the absurdity of it comes into focus and I see more clearly just how out of the ordinary it all is, and in those moments sometimes a rogue spark ignites a tiny flame of doubt. Not so big…just big enough to enhance the adventure “Tomorrow I will board a small boat with some guy I barely know and will sail from Africa across the Atlantic ocean?” Yes. You will.
And that brought my time in Cabo Verde to a close. The main event had arrived. I would cross the Atlantic on a 33ft.(10m) boat named Moya with a crew of two people, me and Captain Thibault. More on that soon….
I got an email the other day from my sister-in-law who reads my blog. She felt inspired to email me her own “Jordan-style blog post” to update me on what’s going on in her suburban life raising two children. I loved it so much I asked her if she would let me post it here. So this is a special guest blog post written by Mia Jones coming straight from the wilds of a Las Vegas suburb.
I last left you in the plushness of my new down comforter, a gift from my husband who I knew purchased it for himself as much as he purchased it for me. Early alarms sounded as the still-dark morning graced its presence around our abode. Our dwelling, an ancient white stucco with unique tile roof, wasn’t the newest or fanciest in town, but it suited us just fine. The minute I walked in, I felt the hours of video game playing, homework struggles, screaming and wrestling that would take place in the common areas. It would never be quiet here, but who wants quiet.
I turned off my alarm on my now-antique IPhone 8 and stumbled to the bathroom. Sorry Burley, that dog always gets an early morning trample from me. The toilet was a cold porcelain with no lights- my husband hadn’t changed the light bulb in days and I had to guess when wiping. Always an adventure.
The toilet….fully illuminated
My next task was to get the children out of bed. Even the difference in age couldn’t keep them from sharing their desire to NEVER wake up for school. It always began with the sweet good-morning-Mommy voice and ended 15 min later with threats. What isn’t commonly known is the usefulness of threats. Many people have heard of the power of positivity, but let’s not underestimate the power of stripping blankets to the floor and screaming about missing recess and no time for foods. Some days, chants of “I swear to god” and “Stop Arguing and just get dressed” would echo through the bare stucco walls. Just as the ancestors used to do.
The Laundry Mountain I have to climb almost every morning. There was one day I almost didn’t make it
On Jan 6, we headed out to start our new semester of learning, a new decade, they said. We had celebrated the end of the decade in the same place we had started, years full of driving and walking and the occasional jog. Here is a GPS of our travels:
As we walked out the door for the first time, wonders anew and abound, we clutched our generic vanilla coffee and cereal cups, a stellar tip I learned from a Mommys group back in 2004. (For those who don’t know, a cereal cup is a large plastic cup filled with cereal and milk, as opposed to a primitive bowl that can spill and is need of a spoon.) The groans of excitement are still audible & and we await our next adventure, uh, morning, with feverous apprehension.And if you want to track my movements, you can pretty much find me in the same four places around Summerlin. No need to click anything. Or just text me.
Brilliant.
I just want to say that although I do lead an adventurous life, I have massive respect for the adventure of raising kids. In its way it is MUCH more adventurous than anything I do! Thanks Mia 🙂
So I don’t have time to write another update about Cape Verde because…..drumroll. Well, I’ll just leave you once again with this link to track my location. (I wrote this post on Jan. 21st and set it to go live on the 23rd.) [Thanks Scott, and Happy Birthday 🙂]
If you didn’t read my last post feel free to check it out, it explains how I found myself being dumped onto the floor of a 45 year old sailboat while being tossed around in the middle of the sea.
About 24 hours prior to that I was meeting the boat’s skipper for the first time at a marina just outside of Lisbon. Captain Richard is from Sweden and got into sailing a few years back. He bought his boat and has been sailing around in the North Sea gaining the experience he would need for his big plan….to sail from Sweden along with his fiance Ivy to the Philippines where she is from. Not bad!
I felt comfortable with the crew right away. Richard turned out to be a super easy going mellow kind of of guy.
Ivy was the lively, expressive and spontaneous one.
Ivy
Richard had also accepted another crew member who was in the same boat as me (damn pun…literally and figuratively). Maksym was about the same age as me and aside from some sailing lessons as a kid had not been on boats as an adult and was also just curious about the world of sailing, wanted to do a decent size crossing to see what he could learn and how he liked it.
Maksym
I got a little introduction to the boat, went on a shopping mission with Max to get provisions to feed 4 people for a week at sea, and then when the wind started to pick up around midnight we hoisted the sails and floated out into open waters. I would spent 9 days aboard La Fortuna. So what was it like?
I learned a LOT about sailing. The most important and scary thing I learned? Just how much more I have left to learn
Max jumped into the freezing cold Portuguese Atlantic waters and swam all the way to the beach near where we were anchored. After this he was affectionately referred to onboard as “The Crazy Ukrainian”.
I watched a giant full moon rise out of the sea three nights in a row and bathe the boat and the water with pearly light
We set sail from Lisbon and traveled a total of 870miles/1400km.
In all my travels it has always been my way or the highway so to speak, well, actually it was my way AND the highway. But the trip was always my own or I had entered it with a partner and it was “our” trip. Now it was interesting for me to have to adjust to being the tag-along on someone else’s trip. I learned a lesson in letting go of control, that not every decision was mine to take.
I learned to cook in a tiny galley with waves tipping the boat to 40 degrees in each direction
This journey has been to learn to sail but also to learn how much sailing I would like to do. I don’t want to buy a boat and outfit it for a circumnavigation only to find that after 2 months of it I am bored. My hopes are this trip will let me know what my true appetite for sailing really is. I can say that on the first day, in 4-5 meter swells and feeling slightly seasick, I already had doubts just about finishing this one Atlantic crossing I had just set out on! By the end of the trip I had gained appetite for more, but still not for a full circumnavigation (something that would take 2.5-3 years). At the time of writing this I would say I am still excited to buy a boat and do a real sailing mission of my own. But I think I would have my fill of life at sea after 8 months or so. We’ll see how this appetite grows or diminishes as I the journey continues.
I had to make some adjustments to my bed so that I wouldn’t get dumped on the floor every 5 minutes.
Max and I tried for 30 minutes during the peak of “the high seas” to capture with the camera what a 5 meter wave looks like as it rolls towards the boat. We hung off the side of the boat from different angles and tried different perspectives, trying to include more or less of the horizon or the boat in the photo…we tried everything. But camera simply cannot capture the depth of field necessary to get a feel for the height of the waves. So you’ll just have to trust me, they were big 😉
During one of the times we had no wind and were motoring the motor suddenly died. This will deliver a shutter of anxiety to any sailor. Luckily it was just a fishing net caught in the prop and we had a crazy Ukrainian onboard who didn’t hesitate to dive in with a knife and free us.
Seasickness. I have been on several boats in my life and on more than one occasion there were crew members vomiting off the side while I was making myself a sandwich. I thought I was well immune. But when we first set sail from Portugal in rough seas with swells of 3-5 meters….I did not feel well. Nothing to the point of wanting to vomit, but I was definitely “on the spectrum” of seasickness. I didn’t eat anything for almost a whole day. This was very disturbing considering that it was the first day of an adventure that was to keep me at sea for 6 weeks. I hoped and prayed it would not last
I pined for a shower. By the time I first got one it had been 10 days since I had had a proper shower.
We conversed with a pod of dolphins
When I was still on the boat but about to disembark, I remember thinking to myself that if someone offered me another ride across the Atlantic leaving that next day that I would find it hard to accept…I felt I really needed at least 2 or 3 days on land before just heading back to sea. But the next morning (after one night on land), I had already had my fill of land and would have happily joined another boat
While Max was swimming through the icy cold Portuguese waters to the beach, Ivy had already donned her wet-suit and was swinging from the halyard line into the sea. Feeling the pressure, Richard and I each took a pathetic swim barely making contact with the water long enough to get wet.
We reveled in the fact that with each day’s sail we were going further south, away from the European winter and the cold. By day 3 I had shed one of my layers, and by day 5 I was even walking around in shorts for a brief moment. But we were always hoping for weather that we never got. We just wanted one day of full sun. It would peak out here and there, but never for long. This shot was taken during the brief 40 minutes we had on day 5 when the sun came out in full and the water was nice and calm
For three nights after making landfall I would wake up in the middle of the night, in a bed, on land, feeling my body move side to side with the waves.
I listened to LOTS of podcasts and audiobooks.
Arriving in the Canaries I immediately sprang into action looking for the next ride across the Atlantic. I hitchhiked from the south of the Island to the north stopping at 3 marinas to leave my little flier on their announcement board. Even on this much-less-trafficked island there were already about 8 fliers up from other crew seeking boats. Competition was going to be fierce!
The seasickness I felt as we cast off from Portugal only lasted for about 18 hours. After that I was happily cooking down in the galley while 4 and 5 meter waves tossed us about. HUGE relief that it was something I just needed time to get used to.
On the last night in the boat we dropped anchor in front of a beach at about 11 at night after 6 days on the open ocean. The next morning, we piled into the dinghy to motor to shore and made perhaps the most disgraceful landfall ever. We totally botched the timing of the waves and came careening into the beach sideways getting totally soaked with people jumping over into the water trying to keep bags from getting wet everyone shouting conflicting orders….a total disaster. And when we finally gained composure and looked up, about 4 meters away was a couple in their late 60’s naked as the day they were born with big smiles on their faces having just thoroughly enjoyed a good show. We had anchored at the nude beach.
Don’t be fooled, this picture was taken during the tiny 30 min. window of nice weather that we had
So, the journey has begun! I don’t have many pictures from this first leg of the journey but there are a few more to see if you click this link.
I don’t want to give away too much of what will become the next update, but lets just say that I rang in the New Year of 2020 right about here: Click Google Map Link I’ll update when I can the story of the boat I ended up on and what’s in store for me next. Happy New Years to all 🙂
I had been laying down for a half hour or so listening to a podcast when I decided it was time to get some sleep. I pulled my earbuds out, turned off my phone and literally within 60 seconds of relaxing my body and turning my focus towards sleep my entire body was hurled off the bed and with a big THUD I found myself on the floor.
About 10mm of fiberglass separated me and the Atlantic ocean that plunged below me to a depth of one and a half miles. Outside a bright full moon illuminated waves that reached 5 meters in height at times. I had by this time already been sailing for about 24 hours in these huge waves, ever since we pulled anchor from the southern tip of Portugal. I was on a small 45 year old 33ft/10m monohull sailboat bound for the Canary islands. It would be another 5 days before we would spot any land.
“Throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor, catch the tradewinds in your sails. EXPLORE. DREAM. DISCOVER” – Mark Twain
So another adventure has begun! I had been preparing for a big Africa trip all year. Much of the planning had already been done, the rough itinerary, visas, even a review of what vaccinations I was due to renew. The idea had actually been conceived of a couple years ago and had already been shelved once in lieu of the Siberia adventure (more on that here) The plan was to fly to Rwanda in late December of this year, buy whatever little Chinese made motorcycle the locals were riding and attempt to ride it overland across Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, and Namibia, finishing in Cape Town South Africa. Wild camp along the way, and explore a part of the world I don’t know so well.
The VERY rough itinerary would have looked something like this:
However this plan fell apart when I learned that security issues in Sudan have improved some since the last time I had considered a long overland trip in this part of the world. That opened up the possibility that perhaps I was thinking too small. Maybe I should instead be planning to just do the whole thing overland….that is to say starting in Barcelona with a motorcycle and going all the way overland to Cape Town. Once the seed of this new plan was planted it grew like a weed and the decision was made. But a trip like this requires much more planning and money, not to mention I wouldn’t want to set off driving through Europe in the middle of winter. So the Rwanda trip was scrapped to make way for the bigger and better plan that would come to fruition later…perhaps next year.
Maybe something like this…
But I already had my heart set on some sort of adventure to escape the winter in Europe so I decided to make some new plans. I had become more and more interested in learning to sail in the last couple years. Having familiarized myself quite well with land travel it just seemed like a natural evolution to want to tame the seas as well.
One might ask, “But Jordan, didn’t you already try that back in Colombia 8 years ago? Didn’t that end in a near-death shipwreck experience”. Yes…and yes. For those who became readers of my blog after that feel free to read the story here. But I once heard someone say that there are only two sailors who have never run aground on a boat. One never left the port and the other was an atrocious liar. So I have got that out of the way.
So as a first step back into the world of sailing this last summer I joined several sailboat hitchhiking groups online that are meant to connect sailboat captains with able-bodied crew. I wanted to spend a chunk of time on a boat, gain some experience and also just to see if it was even something that I had an appetite to do more of. I ended up with a misfit group of sea pirates lead by a couple of young Italians who had scraped together some money to buy an old 31ft. boat named Mon Amour. There were six (yes SIX on a 31ft. boat) of us onboard this little boat for the 10 day sail from Rome to Sicily.
Mon Amour
The atmosphere onboard was all “Summer in the Med” lots of fun, beers, snorkeling, swimming, great food (one of the captains was a chef), stopping at every beautiful little island along the way occasionally hitting up a pizzeria in some small port town. Beautiful blue skies and a perfect 80°f/28°c daytime temp with water temperature about the same. There was even an active lava spewing volcano to spicen up the adventure. The crew were all young enough to be my kids but we were all like-minded life-hogs and despite being 6 of us on a tiny boat we all got along swimmingly (sorry for the pun). It was basically hedonism with some sailing involved. I already knew I had a taste for the former, and I learned that I also enjoyed the latter. So this is what sailing can be like? I had a feeling it’s not always like this but I my interest was piqued. I began dreaming about buying my own boat in the next couple years to set off on a long ocean journey.
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For more photos from the summer sailing trip CLICK HERE
So when Africa got delayed I turned all my attention to the seas. Perhaps I could take a more serious crack at learning to sail and turn it into a great adventure, my Plan B for escaping the winter. So I signed up to take my RYA Day Skipper Theory Exam….kindof the first step towards becoming a licensed sailboat captain and as I worked through that I was scanning every website, Facebook group, and forum that exists to connect crew with boats. I first found a couple boats in Asia that were interested in taking me onboard. But I’m trying to fly less nowadays to keep my carbon footprint down so Asia was not my ideal option, it would require two long-haul flights to get over there and back. The ideal plan seemed to be to hitchhike across the Atlantic ocean. A carbon zero ride to the other side of the world so I’d only require one long flight home.
When I told my parents about my idea to hitchhike on a sailboat across the Atlantic they were not surprised, they have long since ceased to be surprised by my ideas, the first thing they said was “Ahh well, then you will not be so far from home, you can pass through for a visit before returning to Spain”. The original idea was simply to cross the Atlantic, spend some time tooling around in the Caribbean jumping on other boats gaining some more experience, and then head back to Europe just in time for the arrival of spring. But a visit home added the possibility of a new dynamic and objective to the trip. The objective….Barcelona to Las Vegas without stepping onto an airplane. If I could just get myself to some Central American coastline by sailboat then I could travel overland through Mexico and into California. Et voilà! It would all depend on what opportunities I could find once in Caribbean, but it’s a worthwhile objective.
“I can’t wait for the oil wells to run dry, for the last gob of black, sticky muck to come oozing out of some remote well. Then the glory of sail will return.” -Triston Jones
Anyways, first I have to get myself to the other side of the pond hitchhiking on a sailboat and the problem is I am not the only one with such ideas of hitching rides across the seas. Especially nowadays with more and more people who have a lust for travel but an aversion to flying. Basically there is competition to get on boats. A LOT of competition especially for the Atlantic crossing. Cute experienced girls get picked first, then cute non-experienced girls, then super experienced sailors next, and then it gets harder and harder for each demographic with non-experienced couples and vegans at the bottom of the list. So at least I have an edge on some.
All boats follow more or less the same route across the Atlantic and there is only one window of time during which the weather conditions are favorable for an East to West crossing, late November through February, with most boats choosing to sail late November or early December in order to reach the Caribbean in time for Christmas and to minimize any time having to endure anything resembling a winter. The route is Europe to the Canary Islands where most boats leave from directly to cross the Atlantic, those that don’t leave from the Canaries will instead continue further south to Cape Verde to start the crossing from there, this somewhat shortens the crossing.
In any event I focused all my attention on the online resources to find a boat. After about 6 weeks of scouring every website, online forum, and Facebook group I finally found a captain sailing a 33ft/10m boat named La Fortuna from Portugal to the Canaries and eventually to Cape Verde. He didn’t have plans to cross the Atlantic but like any hitchhiker you take whatever ride will get you closer to your destination.
So on December 9th I left my home in Barcelona and boarded an overnight train to Lisbon (opting out of what would be a much cheaper flight) where I would meet Captain Richard, his fiancé Ivy, another crew/hitchhiker named Maksym from Ukraine, and La Fortuna….the boat that we hoped would get us all safely to the Canary Islands. And that is how I ended up dumped onto the floor of a boat in the middle of the ocean surrounded by giant waves tossing us about in the sea. I’ll leave you there for the moment and will try and get out another update in the next days to describe the journey in more detail.
If you are just finding this Siberia story you might want to start reading it from the beginning, this first post. Otherwise…I previously left off as we paddled away from Varvarinskiy, fully stocked with new food supplies but several days behind schedule.
Happy to have reached the River Vitim
Later that same day we hit our next big milestone which was the confluence of the river we were on (the Vitimkan) with the Vitim river, the large river we were always aiming for that we would follow to our finish line, which somehow seemed to be getting further and further away. We had high hopes that once we hit the Vitim the water levels might be higher and thus faster and that we would be able to make up for some lost time. This was not the case.
Our hopes for faster waters shattered, we realized that if we were going to have any chance of making it to Romanovka it was going to be if we pushed ourselves even harder and faster, so that is what we did. Our days became occupied with constant analysis of our progress, and this progress was constantly disappointing. Our routine was to wake up, waste no time in breaking camp, eat a hasty breakfast, pack the boats, and then jump in. Once on the water we would essentially paddle full power with a couple short snack breaks and maybe a 45 min lunch break until the sun was almost down and it was time to look for a camp spot. There was no time for relaxation, or any exploration of the surrounding wilderness that did not serve to get us further downstream.
There were specific forces working against us that we constantly had to fight off, endure, or at times simply submit to. Mostly it was just the long stretches of flat motionless water that we called “pancakes” which separated the occasional whitewater. The slow motionless water resisted our paddle strokes with pure malice. It seems unreal that we could paddle as hard as we did only to feel the boats move like sponges through a giant pool of maple syrup, which is exactly what it looked like. There was nothing more disappointing than coming around a bend to see a kilometer or two of dark maple syrup shining motionless in the sun, and there is nothing you can do but dig your paddles in and slog through it.
Pancakes and maple syrup
Sometimes it was rain we had to deal with, in general we had spotty weather and lower than normal temperatures. If the rain wasn’t so bad we would just paddle through it, other times it just made more sense to stop and wait out the harder rainfalls. And maybe even more frustrating than the flat water and the rain was the wind. When we faced a headwind it was as if no matter how hard we paddled it always felt like we were dragging a bunch of dead weight behind us. Ahhh wait…we WERE dragging a bunch of dead weight behind us! Idiot Two was still dragging Idiot One behind it, in all it’s exceptionally hydrodynamic glory.
On that topic…for several days we had been pooling our collective genius to sharpen the point on an new plan that we believed might just get us out of this mess and propel us literally and figuratively towards our goal. There came the day when apparently we felt we had debated the intricacies of the plan enough that it was time to put it into action. We called the plan “Idiot Three”.
The idea was that maybe it would be faster if we unloaded some of the weight from Idiot Two onto Idiot One and exchanged that extra weight for an idiot. Thus making Idiot One essentially a cargo ship and making Idiot Two… yes, Idiot Three.
Three Idiots, preparing for Idiot Three
So on a particularly windy day three idiots decided to pull the trigger on Idiot Three and implement the plan. It was tricky because with three of us on the same kayak sitting so close together we had to synchronize our paddle strokes so that we paddled in unison, otherwise our paddles would collide with each other. This coordination and its resulting failures, as one may imagine, added the potential to earn many extra idiot points, which we racked up in spades. And on top of it all, it just didn’t work. It didn’t add any speed whatsoever to our pace.
Idiot Three
“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.” – Edward Abbey
Aside from these struggles we were also paying close attention to an infection that seemed to be inhabiting Tyler’s foot…an infection that looked frighteningly similar to the infection that he got the last time he decided to take some time off work and join me on one of my adventures in the Amazon. That time it landed him 5 days in a Colombian hospital.
There was also one rather technical rapid that we had to pass through. Our guru Valentine had written about it and Andrei the photographer hermit had also warned us about it. It was called the Mariktinskiy rapids and had the potential to turn our entire adventure upside down along with our kayaks. It was a couple hundred meters of fast water completely littered with large boulders that we would have to nimbly avoid colliding with. We had it marked on our GPS so we knew it was coming and had time to stop before, do a little bit of scouting, button down the hatches and get ourselves properly suited up. It was an exciting little run and we got through it without any major damage done.
Getting suited up for the big rapids
Aside from all this we just enjoyed the whole experience for what it was. The scenery was still amazing and diverse, occasional rocky cliffs giving way to rolling hills and taiga. Unfortunately though the wildlife was still strangely missing from the picture. Still not a single siting of anything more than a squirrel since the siting of our royal moose on the first day. We did however come across some large paw-prints on the beach of one of our campsites which we can only imagine came from wolves.
We also started to have some luck with fishing. All of a sudden we started getting hits. We reeled in a few fish within a couple hours. This added a welcome new element to our daily routine but unfortunately we were so hard pressed to keep on schedule we just didn’t have much time to devote to fishing.
So it was that the day came when we were on schedule to reach the tiny outpost of Ust’ Jalinda, about the same size as Varvarinskiy. Also cut off from the outside world. Only about 70km as the crow flies from our goal of Romanovka, it is impossible to reach by any 4×4 vehicle.
By this point Tyler had to be in Romanovka in exactly 5 days. At the pace we were going (still 270 kilometers on the river to go) we were exactly 7.5 days from Romanovka. The plan to solve this problem was to find someone in Ust’ Jalinda who had a boat with a motor on it and pay them to motor us downstream for one day to get us back on schedule, or even better a bit ahead of schedule so we could slow our roll a bit and take things at a more leisurely pace.
Ust Jalinda off in the distance
The town sat a half kilometer from the riverbank so I stayed with the kayaks while Tyler and Bartek wandered into town to buy our way out of this mess. What they found out was that somehow, despite the fact that this town exists at the confluence of two different rivers, in the middle of nowhere, there was not one person in the town who owned any sort of buoyant motorized mode of transportation. BUT, we were in luck. Why? Because once a month the government subsidized public transportation that links Ust’ Jalinda with Romanovka makes the 7.5 hour journey overland, and coincidentally it leaves tomorrow and there happens to be three seats left. Siberian public transportation?
We had already used airplanes, cars, horses, and kayaks to get to where we were. It was only logical that we would end up in a tank. Right?
We didn’t want to get off the river, but at this point we had no choice but to jump on this opportunity. It was physically impossible for Tyler to get to Romanovka at the pace we were going. So adaptability became the name of the game and we decided to accept the tank ride and then once in Romanovka see what could be done as far as arranging someone with a boat or a tank with whom we could work out some way to get us back on the river for a few more days but still make it back again to Romanovka for Tyler’s flight.
Local Buryat woman watching as they loaded up the tank
The tank left at 7am the next morning. We set our alarms for 5:00 thinking it would give us plenty of time to break down the tents and get things packed. In true idiot fashion we did not realize until we were halfway through packing that we had crossed a time zone sometime in the previous days and that it was already 6:30. We were about to miss our only ticket out of here which had been handed to us on a silver plate. Somehow we managed a wild scramble to get ourselves to the village with all our gear just a few minutes after 7.
We met our “driver” Sergei who looked like he had wrestled a few bears in his day but he had a friendly disposition. We paid the man and piled into the back of the tank along with the other passengers, a couple teenage girls, a 4 year old, a baby, an old man, and a few women. Then we rumbled off into the taiga.
The bone rattling journey took 7.5 hours during which children vomited and diesel fuel mysteriously pooled up around our feet. We stopped for a couple breaks to relieve ourselves, pick berries, and test the tank’s sea legs.
Sergei our driver
Sergei dropped us off in town center. Romanvoka, with a population of a few thousand people and a (dirt) road that actually connects it with the outside world, Romanovka had become a bit of a Shangri-La in our imaginations. Surely we would find hot water flowing from golden
Our roommate
shower heads and toilets where one would not have to worry about finding 20 mosquito bites on their ass after finishing up.
The reality was there was no guesthouse in the town at all, but a nice Buryat woman who owned a shop offered to let us roll our sleeping pads out on the floor of an empty room next to her little general store, we would just need to share it with the night guard, this guy. Sure. He looks harmless.
We threw our bags down and asked where we might find a shower. There was no shower. No problem, maybe just point us in the direction of the sink so we could wash up a bit. No….no sink. Water? We were pointed in the direction of the Vitim river which sat a hundred meters away. The toilet was an outhouse behind the shop. Ok. So we still had not reached “civilization”, but it really was a Shangri-La in its own way. There was cold beer, hot coffee, and people watching. We indulged in all of these and then sat down on the floor to take stock of our situation.
First order of business was to take advantage of our connectivity (our phones worked here) and check the weather forecast for the next days on every possible weather site we could find. The
Downtown Romanovka
consensus among all of them was terrible, low temperatures, and rain all day and night for the next 4 days. Then there was Tyler’s foot, which was still swollen up like a balloon and while we had managed to keep it from getting any worse it was not getting any better either.
Bartek and I were supposed to continue on from here and do another 500 kilometers on the river. But with the weather forecast the way it was and our pathetic pace, we would be hard pressed to reach the end goal on time (there was no option really to just do a part of it because there was no way “out” aside from the one small plane that would leave from the village 500km downriver.) Mostly it was just the thought of getting back in the boat knowing we would have nothing but grey cold wet weather for at least the next 4 days, there is just nothing pleasureable in that. All this coupled with general exhaustion from our no-rest full-on pace and a feeling that we had lived one hell of an adventure already was enough to lead us towards what would probably be the smartest decision these idiots would make on the whole trip….to throw in the towel.
Romanovka looking over the River Vitim
It had been an insanely wild adventure. It seems like months had passed since Vlad drove us to Rambo’s wild-west compound where we downed vodka shots to appease the spirits, since we had crossed rivers, mountain passes, and endless bogs on horseback, since our first unsteady days in the boats learning the ropes, since tea with Andrei the hermit photographer, since arriving in the rain in Varvarinskiy like ghosts emerging from the closet to surprise the locals with our presence. Each campsite we stayed at along the way was unique and each one held the stories of the day that had passed, stories which we re-lived over a blazing fire surrounded by our wet gear, our kayaks on the shore nearby turned bottom up, as if the moonlight would help to dry the glue on the freshly patched holes created by that day’s micro catastrophes. And then we reached our (new) finish line by tank…go figure.
So what did we learn in all this? That experience should not be underrated, but that inexperience should not be over-dramatised. Valentine’s footsteps were hard to follow in our freshly minted shoes, but our total lack of experience never felt like an obstacle that could not be overcome. Sometimes you just have to throw yourself into the deep end to learn how to swim. Speaking of the deep end…I can’t wait to see what the sailing enthusiasts say when I post in their forum my plans to sail from Spain to Papua New Guinea.
my little flier on their announcement board. Even on this much-less-trafficked island there were already about 8 fliers up from other crew seeking boats. Competition was going to be fierce!
The Scenic Route Through Life 