Finally our adventure began. Michel had told me about a year ago that for him the Kayser expedition was the king of all Suriname kayak expeditions and I couldn’t wait to experience this for myself. Fortunately no cues at the airport in Holland and the flight went as normal. The first two days we picked up the kayaks and other equipment at the storage room in Paramaribo and bought the last items for our trip.
We had chartered our own Cessna who would fly us to the Kayser airstrip -an airstrip once created in the rainforest in the search for raw materials (operation Grasshopper) but now deserted- and pick us up again at Amatopo, a small Indian village settled at the Corantijn river.
A German television crew would fly with us to the Kayser airstrip as part of a documentary about Cessna pilots around the world and would interview and film us during the first day. We met them already at the Torarica hotel where we stayed. It was a very friendly team including a female director and two cameramen. The flight took about 1.5 hrs and was beautiful!! Incredible to fly low over the rainforest and see the thick wall of giant trees from above. Loved the pink blossoming trees that stood out from the rest.
During the flight we passed the “Devils Egg”, a egg shaped stone on top of a high rock and the pilot circled around it so I could see it from up close. When landed, two men that maintain and guard the airstrip helped us to carry our gear to the Zuid river, the starting point from our expedition. Michel had already spotted from the plane that the water was super high for the time of the season. This meant we wouldn’t have to drag the boats a lot over rocks but bad for viewing animals. The camera crew filmed us preparing our boats and did a final interview and off we went. The drone kept us company for a while but then it was quiet. We were all alone in the jungle for the coming 2 weeks.
The first days we were getting used to kayaking again and the hot weather. Beautiful to kayak in silence and admire the giant trees and the birds and the butterflies and the first easy rapids. This would make the most stressed person totally zen, nature here is so peaceful and completely in balance. We saw giant otters, different kinds of monkeys, mecows (ara’s), king fisher birds, tapirs, a rare Harpey eagle, capibaras and a really giant spider in my kayak after a night close to the forest. But the third day and the fourth day I saw two animals that realllly took my breath! Will never forget those moments. On the third day I was kayaking super relaxed and checking out the riverbanks until I looked up and saw suddenly a big brown cat on top of a small hill. I double checked because it was so unexpected but when I looked again I saw a cougar (puma) looking at me! Very rare! I quickly shouted to Michel who was a bit in front of me and he managed to get a good shot with his professional camera! The cougar really stood frozen for quite a while looking at us and then he continued his way into the forest. Wow. On his 40 years of expedition experience, Michel had never seen a wild cougar before and of course neither did I. And even beautifully on camera which also is rare, mostly you only catch the rear of an animal when you finally have your camera ready. How lucky we were. But this wasn’t even the most spectacular moment. That happened at the end of our fourth day….
At the end of the fourth day, around 16:00 we were looking for a nice place to camp. We were quite tired and eager to set up our tent and prepare diner. I saw a nice flat plateau a bit further up and told Michel I would check out the place. When arriving I saw something black moving on the right site of the plateau and I maneuvered my kayak to that direction to have a better view. Then suddenly a huge jaguar jumped out of his hiding place up to the plateau. WOW!! I had seen jaguars before in a zoo but now this big powerful animal stood only 5 meters from where I was with no bars in between! I stood literally eye to eye with a jaguar! We were both frozen for what felt like quite some time. He was checking me out, wondering what kind of animal I was and I was in full admiration and focus staring at him. Michel was in the meantime behind me with his kayak and had seen the whole scene as well. I guess two orange floating big animals was a bit much for him so he ran quickly into the bush behind the plateau. I have thought a lot about that moment when the jaguar suddenly jumped up. Never had I expected to see him (the territory of 1 jaguar reaches about 100square kilometer) and definitely never this close!! Another huge animal that we saw was when we just entered a big rapid and had to focus full to the right path of waves. An enormous capibara, 4 times (oké 2 times) the size of a normal capibara, stood in the middle of a small island full with pink flowers. It looked so unrealistic big, I really wanted to take a picture but the boat already was drown into the rapid so needed all my attention. Michel told me later that the capibara had ran direction water and jumped with 4 legs at the same time with a huge splash in the water.
We went fast. Much faster than planned and at day 5 we arrived already at the camp planned for day 8. So the days after we took it very easy and often just floated with the stream, checking out the river border looking for animals but mostly just enjoying the immense variety of giant trees that existed already millions of years ago! Two tiny people in the middle of a huge uninhabited rainforest. Arriving at camp we developed a well oiled routine to set up the tent and preparing diner. Two times I managed to catch a delicious fish, one anjoumara and a toucanari, which Michel professionally prepared to eat. The super fresh fish tasted delicious and was a very nice change to the dried expedition food we would otherwise eat. The rapids got wilder the further we got. In the beginning I was sitting far too high on my chair which made me very unstable in the rapids but after falling out the boat once, I quickly adjusted my seat and after that it was pure fun! However, because of the high water some rapids were less strong than normal and with lots of rocks now completely disappeared under water, there were also less obstacles to tackle. And then we arrived at Bounty Island, the last river camp before arriving at our final destination. I was curious because Michel had been so enthusiastic about this camp. He hadn’t exaggerated. It was a super bonus to this already perfect expedition! Our own Blue Lagoon. The last day we had to kayak upstream to the Indian village which I loved because of the physical challenge. Some parts you had to pedal against the rapid which demanded a lot of hard work! At 13:00 we set foot on land at Amatopo after 240km in 12 days including one rest day. Michel had promised my mom to keep me safe during the trip and he had kept his word. Not once we had the tiniest discussion, despite sleeping in a small tent, seeing each other in the most primitive conditions, sometimes sleep deprived because of the incredible loud sounds of the giant tree frogs at night, fierce thunder storms or leaking air mat. Happy couple! We slept for the last time in our tent at the airstrip close to Amatopo before we boarded our private Cessna who brought us back to colorful and busy Paramaribo.
