Lost in the Floodplains, Aguaro-Guariquito National Park, Venezuela
I’m looking through some old journals, trying to piece together another story for BootsNall, purely to keep with the travel writing game while also working on my other blog. This one is from notes for a story which I never got around to writing for the wilderness women submission call. It follows on from an earlier entry on this blog (with better pictures).
The Llanos del Orinoco region is a vast area right in the centre of Venezuela, large swathes of which are flooded during the rainy season. We kind of stumbled across it.
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From field diary excerpts, Venezuela River Dolphin Expedition 1989:
Tuesday 8th August, field: Things looked a little brighter until John tried to change the oil—the screwdriver did not fit. We decided against turning back to Arichuna and instead resolved to find some houses on the way. We succeeded after a short journey downriver only to find that no manually operated screwdriver—no matter what size—would undo the pesky screws. We would have to get to a workshop in Caicara de Orinoco. To cross this huge river with our 6.5 HP engine might turn out to be our biggest challenge yet.
Wednesday 9th August, field/Caicara: This was one of our most fruitful days in the field—we saw no fewer than 19 dolphins, most of them in three big groups, leaping all around the boat
It may also have been our luckiest day. Big rainclouds had started to built up and in the distance, funnels of leaden sky seemed to be sucked right down into the earth, yet we remained dry. In addition, we reached the Orinoco at least two hours ahead of time. I wanted to put up camp early to give us time to relax after we had fled from our mosquito-infested campsite without breakfast that morning, but the banks were flooded. When we finally reached hills of solid granite, there were fishermen around which prevented us from landing as we wanted to keep out of sight for safety reasons. So we continued across the vast river to Caicara de Orinoco. We reached the town at 17:30, just before dark, after an ardurous 45 minute crossing in a boat that could not handle waves higher than 50 cm. The opposite shore was almost too distant to see; the river might have been ten or more kilometres across at this point, but conditions remained calm and we made it without incident. However, when we were nearly there, we realised that we appeared to remain stationary with regard to the vegetation at the bank—then the boat, under full throttle, slowly began to drift backwards. The current was too strong for our miniscule engine. We drifted helplessly downstream, steering with the tiller, and—incredibly—managed a smooth landing right at the bank at Caicara which we had overshot in our eagerness to take the shortest way across. How is that for luck?
Friday 11th August, field-camp: We have been exploring the mouths of tributaries in the Apurito/Guariquito deltas with the vague intention of following the Apurito back to San Fernando de Apure. The days were fruitful with numerous dolphins sighted which gives further impetus to my hypothesis that, in the Orinoco region at least, Inia is not a solitary species.
Today we watched a couple of dolphins from the bank until the afternoon. When we eventually took the boat and slowly drifted downstream, they followed us but kept their distance as we glided into the water to cool off. Eventually we left them behind and returned to the campsite.
Just before dusk we went for a last swim. Two dolphins were once again around the campsite and others had joined them from downriver. As we drifted closer, the water started to boil with their splashes. Underwater, I heard a deep barking sound as one of the animals leapt out. Airbubbles surfaced near the boat just where John held on to the rim. I lost my nerve when something large brushed past me, touching my skin but remaining unseen. It must have been a dolphin, but I was haunted by visions of piranhas and electric eels sheltering in the submerged branches just below the surface. I motioned John and we quickly climbed back on board. The dolphins may have felt unsettled by our presence but we were definitely uneasy in the tea-brown, murky water that is their domain.
Saturday 12th August, downriver from field camp: After a morning of observations we drifted downriver once more. Occasionally the water stirred directly next to the boat—the dolphins were close but remained unseen.
As we drifted into the afternoon, the air grew still. The only noise came from the birds on the banks. River swallows skimmed over the water and occasionally Kingfishers dived for fish. The sky was cloudy but the river was calm with barely a ripple. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, a large dolphin surfaced directly in front of the boat. Then we spotted a few splashes where a group of dolphins seemily moved upstream. Eventually that group remained behind and another came into view just ahead.
After a bit of gentle paddling, we held the boat stationary. There were two dolphins nearby. We started splashing our hands onto the water to see whether we could arouse interest, then John jumped in. Thirty seconds later a dolphin surfaced perhaps one metre from him. Now surrounded by at least three animals, John grew uneasy and clambered back on board. We turned the boat around, fired the engine and returned to camp.
Sunday 13th August, Parque Nacional Aguaro-Guariquito: We spent all morning trying to find the Apurito among the tributaries which either ran dry or lead us astray through long furrows among rows of shrub and trees, fooling us into thinking we were following the river. The whole country appeared to be flooded—it was impossible to perceive the rivers as something other than openings between the trees. The country now belonged to the fish, the birds and the dolphins, but not to the people.
For some time we drove around between the trees searching for a river among the furrows. We had taken seven days’ worth of supplies with us. Heavy rain had kept us in the camp for one-and-a-half days longer than anticipated. Because it had been too late to leave in the afternoon, we were now effectively two days late and our supplies were markedly diminished. It was still drizzling when we finally broke camp, but there was no guarantee that the weather would not turn worse and remain so for several weeks.
The ‘river’ widened. We had no idea where we were; our tourist maps were hardly much help. At worst we could return to the Orinoco and reach San Fernando via the Apure, but we were sure that we were in the direct vicinity, if not on, the Apurito.
Eventually, the ‘river’ ran dry, like so many before. We decided to turn around; nothing would be gained by getting lost in the floodplains. But it was too late. We were already lost.
We circled for hours, trying in vain to retrace our route or to find another way back to the Orinoco, hindered by shallow flooded grassland. We could have waded across it, but that meant leaving the boat behind. We could see the hills in the distance, but we were well and truly stuck.
The distant sound of an engine prompted us to turn northeast, but there seemed to be no way out from the swamp. It was clear that we were in the middle of a huge floodplain, although in places it looked as if we were back on the river: there were river birds, river dolphins, even what looked like a river bank—but closer examination revealed that the grass on the ‘bank’ grew in water several metres deep. The ‘shrubs’ were the crowns of trees, their trunks submerged. Behind the narrow strip of vegetation there would be another ‘river’. This furrowed plain seemed to stretch indefinitely to either side.
We figured that there were three ways out of this mess: the first was to wait until the water drained away at the start of the dry season in October, the second was to follow the dolphins in the hope that they return to the river; although that might not be before the dry season. The third was to rely on luck.
Monday 14th August, floodplains: At dusk we tied the boat to a tree canopy and settled to a dinner of food scraps while watching a group of dolphins nearby. Within hours, the boat had been colonised by tiny, vicious ants that used the rope as a bridge. I emptied most of our insect repellant over their hastily established nest so that we could get some sleep. But rest did not come easy in the humid air under a heavy sky. Occasionally, a dolphin rubbed against the wooden hull of the dugout, making it rock gently from side-to-side which was comforting in an odd, other-worldly way.
In the grey light of dawn, I discovered that the insect repellant had dissolved our compass. There had been no stars visible during the night and there would be little sun to navigate by during the day. The hills in the distance gave us a vague idea of direction and we decided to keep to the east, guided by the faint glow of the rising sun. Twice we reached marshy ground where the floodplain turned into swamp and veered back into deeper water, then turned east again. At six in the morning we reached a long waterway which we followed for 50 minutes with no end in sight. Again it looked like a river, but there appeared to be no current.
Suddenly John spotted a house in the distance. Startled, he stopped the engine and I floated a piece of paper on the water—there was a current and this was definitely a river! When we reached the house, the fisherman who lived there with his daughter welcomed us with a mug of good, strong coffee. He had been watching us for some time, at first with his gun by his side, and now kept shaking his head in disbelief as we tried to tell our story and showed him the molten compass. We had reached the Apurito, but we abandoned our original plan and decided to head straight back for the certainty of the Orinoco and the Apure.
We passed our old campsite before nine. Travelling as fast as our engine allowed (18 km/h) we saw nothing but a single splash of the thirty-plus dolphins which we had previously encountered there. The river keeps its treasures hidden from those who rush.
Denni