00:02:00 – Narrator – The Blue Nile or the Great Abai as it’s known in Ethiopia remained virtually unexplored until the summer of 1968 when a British and Ethiopian team of almost 70 people took 9 weeks to explore and survey the rivers mile deep gorge. To this day the Blue Nile is still one of the worlds greatest natural wonders.
00:02:21 - Jim West – Several months of excessive rain has caused rivers to flood, left families stranded in low lying areas, electricity lines have been damaged, flood waters cut off the main roads to Addis Ababa. Jim West, GF News, Ethiopia.
00:02:33 – Narrator – Now with water levels higher than any other year, the challenge to navigate down this great river has just become much bigger. Explorer Henry Coetzee and his team of 4 will venture down the Blue Nile, one of the most feared and least traveled rivers in the world.
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00:02:52 – Lady singing in Amharic – Ethiiiiioooopiaaaaa
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00:03:18 - Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Right so here we are in Addis Ababa. One of the largest cities in Africa, and also one of the poorest, but a very very interesting place none the less. Just arrived this morning, and I’m trying to get together a uh attempt to go down the Blue Nile. A few friends if mine will be arriving in the next few days who will give me a hand on this venture. It’s going to be a tough one, but I think we can do it. First obstacle though is I need to find some rafts. Now I left a few here a few years ago, if I can find them no worries, if I can’t find them, uh I don’t really know it’s a long swim down the Blue Nile. So first mission for today, find some boats.
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00:03:51 - Screen Text –
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River People. The Blue Nile Expedition
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00:03:58 - Screen Text –
Name: Hendrik Coetzee "Hendri"
Role: Expedition Leader
Born: Republic of South-Africa
Age: 31
Major Expeditions: Entire White Nile
Years Experience: 9
River Expertise: River Explorer
Sponsors: Artic & Fluid
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00:04:06 - Screen Text –
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Itegue Taitu Hotel Established Sept. 1898 E.C.
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00:04:20 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Hello, I’m looking for… no I cant unfortunately “keymafi arabi”. Um…Joseph? No Joseph, ok. Thank you. That’s not a good start at all. If this number is incorrect. There there is going to be some issues. Hello. Hello…….. excuse me sir, ok hold on a second, maybe my friend, you can tell me friend where we should meet and he will tell me.
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00:05:06 – Operator - speaks in Amharic
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00:05:15 – Operator – At what time do you need it?
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00:05:17 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Um this afternoon, 2 hours maybe? Well I’m not quite sure if he has the boats or not but we’re meeting him anyway.
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00:05:23 - Screen Text –
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Flight from UK
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Name: Lee James Kelly
Role: Scout
Born: United Kingdom
Age: 30
Rivers Kayaked: 60+ in Africa, Nepal, New Zealand and Europe
Years Experience: 14
Other: I also cook a mean curry, like knitting and quiet walks with my dog.
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00:06:12 – Lee – He’s gonna take me boat round through this door here. Ha ha ha. Thank you very much. You’re a king man. So what’s the storey?
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00:06:30 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Ah not much.
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00:06:33 - Screen Text –
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Joseph Arrives Taitu 4:45 PM
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00:06:45 – Hendrik – How did Joseph, how does he fit into the picture? How did he end up with the boats?
00:06:50-Translator- All right I will ask him
00:06:53 – Joseph – Scott, Scott.
00:06:54 – Translator – Eh?
00:06:54 – Joseph - Scott.
00:06:56 – Translator - Scott?
00:06:57 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Scott?
00:06:58 – Joseph – Yeah! Yeah!
00:06:59– Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – I lent it to Scott?
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00:07:14 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Ah hallelujah. Look at this bru, well done . This is beautiful. Well done bro. Ahh right, so can we maybe make a plan to, if I pay for a vehicle to get this stuff sent to the hotel, all of it, would that be possible? If we get a pickup truck or..?
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00:07:36 – Translator and Joseph – Speaks in Amharic
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00:07:51 – Translator – Alright, show me the hotel first and I can manage it
00:07:55 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – No the one…
00:07:56 – Translator – You can just pick it up tomorrow
00:07:57 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” - The one where you just left us?
00:07:59 – Joseph – 6 o’clock
00:08:00 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” - In the morning?
00:08:04 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – The reason why
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00:08:05 – Translator and Joseph – Speaks in Amharic
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00:08:11 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – At 12, see the thing is just, you know, what the problem is like normally I don’t mind, ya know next day next day, but I have to take all these pump them up tonight and see where the holes are and if there’s too many holes I need to get stuff sent from, from Uganda to fix it. So I’m in a bit of a time rush
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00:08:29 – Translator and Joseph – Speaks in Amharic
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00:08:36 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – All right You can get it. You can get it tonight.
00:08:39 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – Tonight, great. Just tell me how much the vehicle is and the trouble and what? What? And offcourse I will.
00:08:47 – Joseph – No problem
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00:08:48 – Translator and Joseph – Speaks in Amharic
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00:08:58 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – No, no, no. There has to be money my friend. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. But you help me anyway that’s nice. But there has to be money for the car and for your time.
00:09:10 – Joseph – In Ethiopian 200?
00:09:12 – Hendrik Coetzee “Hendri” – 200, 200 easy bro.
00:09:13 – Joseph – No problem, yes.
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00:09:16 - Screen Text –
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Flight From Uganda
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00:09:22 - Maddy – Hello.
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00:09:23 - Jane - Awe thank you, that’s what I need.
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00:09:26 - Maddy – Cheers.
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00:09:27 - Jane - Cheers
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00:09:27 - Maddy - How you doin?
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00:09:28 - Jane - I’m good.
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00:09:29 - Maddy - Nice to see you, how was it?
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00:09:32 - Jane - Oh it was a really hard 2 hours.
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00:09:33 - Gemma - Kat, you've got red wine on your jacket.
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00:09:36 - Jane - Oh is it? Oh look at your hair.
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00:09:39 - Gemma - It's good, how are you lovely?
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00:09:40 - Jane - What happened to the dreads?
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00:09:43 - Gemma - Oh they got cut, it was time for them to go.
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00:09:48 - Jane - So, so, cheers!!.
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00:09:57 - Screen Text –
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Name: Jane Dicey
Born: Republic of South-Africa
Age: Classified
Rivers Rafted: 100+ Africa, USA, Ecuador and New Zealand
River Expertise: Advanced Wilderness
First Aid Trained
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00:10:04 - Hendrik - Today is uh Tuesday, and this is our first real day of Operation in Addis Ababa. Yesterday was a holiday, nothing could get done, so we just enjoyed a bit over the weekend. Now, uh today we've got to do all the shopping, get all the hardware for the frames the boats, and we've got to make sure the boats aren't leaking, Joe's on that job now, he arrived last night at 12:00, so you're going to get to meet him. Jane arrived, she's already on her mission to go to all the Embassy's. What you do is go to the Embassy take them your passport say 'what's the story here we if something goes wrong will you come and save us'. So everyone's got their little jobs this morning, everyone's off in little directions getting stuff sorted.
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Name: Joseph Henry "Joe"
Born: New Zealand
Age: 27
River Experience: 1 day tandom kayaking with Hendri on the White Nile
Expertise On River: None, but I have a winning formula, just do whatever HendrI tells me and it all pans out nicely.
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00:10:51 - Hendrik - Loading up this morning, a few last minute details, some last minute shopping and hopefully we get out of town in about 2 hours.
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00:10:59 - Lee - We're nearly ready for the off, all the stuff's on the roof, eventually got all the food together, got mosquito nets, Malaria pills, spare paddles, spare ores, spare bolts, spanners, hammers, bla bla bla bla, and now as usually waiting for our women, and then hopefully we'll be on our way.
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00:11:25 - Becky - Uh I’m Becky Lar, I’m from England, and I’m in Ethiopia and it's too hot. But it's ok. I’m getting burnt. And we've got lots of toilet paper so that's good.
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Name: Becky "Lar" Armitage
Born: United Kingdom
Age: 25
Rivers Kayaked: 50+ Africa, USA and Norway
Experience: 13 years
Rivers Expertise: Kayaker, raft guide...
River Bum!
Sponsor: Liquid Logic
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00:11:58 - Lee - Well we've forgot the ores, so we went back for them. Now we've climbed out of the city. It's nice to get away from the smog it's nice and fresh, and uh we're on the way. About 8 hours I think. So we'll see how far we get.
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00:13:16 - Screen Text –
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True Source Of The Blue Nile "Gishe Abay" 10:46 AM
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00:13:46 - Hendrik - We're approaching the source of the Blue Nile, we'were just gonna hike in. Originally thought it was gonna be hour and half walk, but it turns out it's 2 mins...so they say. So we're gonna walk 2 minutes down here, but we can't go anywhere cause it's a sacred sight and the priest needs to come and I don't know make sure I guess we behave. Uh…. Yah this is a very sacred sight for Ethiopians and for Egyptians so it's pretty special to see the source of the Blue Nile, obviously one of the major rivers in the world so yah, I’m looking forward to it.
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00:14:17 - Lee - How bout five hundred and eleventy-twelve times ninety-three thousand? Right? I don't know how to write that, I’m just kidding. Do you have a scrap? No, no. I don't want to ruin your books
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00:14:23-Child- Write write!
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00:14:46 - Child - (laughs)
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00:15:04 - Lee - The answer to fifty thousand, four hundred and one times nine thousand, four hundred and twenty one is actually six hundred and sixty six thousand, seventy nine thousand, seven hundred and twenty one.
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00:15:19 - Screen Text –
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Actually 50401 x 9421 = 474,827,821"
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00:16:19 - Joe - Well here we are at the source of the Blue Nile. To be honest I haven't been able to see too much yet. There's a corrugated iron roof protecting a spring I think, and a stream of people have come out all wet. I think they go in and get dunked get blessed and they're bringing out water bottles as well. Some people come here and drink the water; they believe it's got good healing properties we've heard.
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00:16:45 - Lee - Well quite a humbling experience. We've just walked down from the field we were at before and there's a huge gathering of people who've traveled from as far as Addis Ababa. Looks like they've walked for miles and miles and miles hoping to find some sort of cure to their ailments be it HIV through to a common cough I think. And we've walked down here through the actual source itself and for various religious reasons we can't actually get inside the source but we can go in and have a look around so I’ve taken a little bit of the source water there from as close as I can possibly get, had a little taste of it. As well washed my feet, and uh hopefully that'll bring us a little bit of luck on the river, fingers crossed there.
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00:17:34- Hendri - So um, it's definitely um, could be sketchy with a lot of sick people going in and out there, but it would seem it's coming out of a spring. Can't do any harm really, seems to mean a lot to a lot of people, take a shot. Joe.
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00:18:04 - Jane - Mmm it's lovely and clean.
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00:18:11 - Joe - Ya that's some nice fresh water, that’s very good.
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00:18:22 - Lee - It's nice. It's delicious.
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00:18:33 - Screen Text - Bahir Dar 4:00 PM
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00:18:33 - Hendri – This is where we're trying to stay here tonight. Get our boats ready, pack them, blow them, pack them as ready as we wanna go then tomorrow morning.
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00:18:40 - Fentahun - Sir, you don't go like this, because you have to take in the paper, the paper that it got it from police commissioner we have to take time, we have to talk about this.
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00:18:50 - Hendri - Let's talk about it.
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00:18:51 - Fentahun – Okay, Can we sit there can I show you the paper?
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00:18:53 - Hendri - Sure but now first thing is the truck has to go back now.
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00:18:56 - Fentahun - Yah but it will go, can we put all the stuff because it will not safety here. Can we put it there?
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00:19:02 - Hendri - I will do the safety here, and we'll take care of security.
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00:19:06 - Fentahun - There is misunderstanding here.
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00:19:08 - Hendri - I know but plans have changed.
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00:19:09 - Fentahun - What I want to be, I want to be clear to you sir. Ok you are my clients. You are my guests. We want to show you all the information. We want to give you all the information. We don't want you to get any trouble when you are rafting.
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00:19:23 - Hendri - What I need to do is I need to unload my gear, can I unload it here? Let me just, I need to find out first if there’s access to the river, So I can get to the river from here?
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00:19:35 - Jane - The question really is, we need to unload our equipment immediately, where's the best place to unload it that will be safe and that in the morning we can very quickly access the river?
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00:19:44 - Fentahun - Can we put there in the police commissioner? Because in the priest there is the police.
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00:19:50 - Jane – Right…right at the beginning of the river?
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00:19:52 - Fentahun - Yah, they can look after it.
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00:19:55 - Jane - Can we go there now and even pump up our boats and get things ready in their, in their area right next to the river?
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00:20:01 - Fentahun - yes
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00:20:03 - Jane - So we can get everything ready and it's secure to leave it with the police commissioner for the night and tomorrow morning we can just get on the boat and we're ready?
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00:20:09 - Fentahun – Yes.
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00:20:10 - Jane - That's possible?
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00:20:11 - Fentahun - That's what I’m talking.
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00:20:11 - Jane – Excellent!
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00:20:12 – Fentahun - Because if you leave it here, then you need to take the time to take the boats there.
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00:20:56 - Joe - Yah yes, it's a bit warmer here than the English climate I was acclimatizing to. And a little bit of physical labor, blame the altitude puffing, yah but it's looking good got a raft up it's exciting. Looking forward to getting on the water
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00:21:22 - Jane - See the deep features will sort of disappear and the shallow features will become the massive holes perhaps, and then other places like I was just explaining we mind if it might be nice cause where it's spilling over we've got sneak routes around the edges rather than having to run the meat off…
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00:21:36 - Lee - Bit of humming and hawing whoing lalalarawling, but there's the bridge, there's the Blue Nile. We were originally going to put on paddle about 5 Ks around the lake there but since we were here last time, or since some of the other chaps were here last time wrecking the place they built a dam alright so what we've had to do we're putting in here at the very first bridge the dam's about 500 meters up stream, and now the complicated process of riging the rafts dragging everything down sorting all the food out, water personal kit, what needs to go back to Addis Ababa, and then hopefully early doors tomorrow we'll pick up a few necessities, bit of fresh veg maybe some bread and then offski down stream and yep I think it's probably about 12 days down to the bridge there and well that’s really about it. It's just about time to have a good nights sleep, another good feed and that'll be us.
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00:22:34 - Screen Text –
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Ghion Hotel 6:30 PM
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00:22:33 - Lee - I think i'll have anjerra please, and two sauces, you have filapia, i'll have the hastilla please filapia, and grilled tips which is grilled lamb with grinsgli and onions served with anjerra bread please.
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00:22:57 - Jane - Anybody else want to order is that all together?
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00:22:58 - Lee - Thank you.
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00:23:00 - Hendri - So what high water means to us? It means the water is gonna go faster. It means uh eddie lines get stronger, that's where two currents meet lets say someone's coming up someone's coming down stream that becomes very tricky high water and what adds a little spice to the whole thing is when it gets into the canyon you lose a lot of your like they're called eddies where you can stop on the sides cause the water's getting higher it's just pumping through there so there's no miss. Say there was a rock in the beginning where you could stop behind, the rock is now under water so you lose that option. So that's not good news at all for us. The good news is what sometimes happens with high water is um, if previously the the water had gone over a rock and it formed a hydraulic behind it that could have stopped the raft that could now be totally submerged so it's not a rapid anymore it's just a big rolly roller coaster. So that could be the good thing. Obviously the good thing is speed, and the flats if we go. But um I think we'll get a very good indication tomorrow of what we're dealing with this is supposed to be th warm up section tomorrow, so let's hope it's a warm up section.
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Departure Bahir Dar Bridge 7:30 AM
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00:24:54 - Lee - This is my yellow Kayak here, after seeing some of that footage and seeing the size of some of those crocodiles beginning to wish I brought a bigger one.
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00:25:03 - Hendri - So it's today, finally the day's arrived we get put on the river just rigging up the boats. We showed up yesterday and the water is high, it could possibly be the highest it's been run according to the local people here, so it's not ideal news, it definitely makes me nervous but what you gonna do. Let's go down and find out, hopefully the first section on the first day will serve as a good indication if it's possible or not to do the river. Either which way I think it's going to be higher than the original plan, but what'a you gonna do, so maybe it's just more fun, don't know.
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00:25:30 - Jane - We got a sat phone packed in here, and Im writing our number into here and a few other emergency numbers so that they're easy access.
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00:25:45 (whistling)
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00:25:52 - Gemma - Who's that honey in the raft! Hey baby where you goin? (laughter)
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00:26:26 - Lee - You might think I’m a little bit mad but this is our way of finding out where the hippos are. Generally they would be hanging around in the shallow water perhaps in the eddies behind some islands and what have you, just parking off for the day and if you give it a bit of a bang generally they'll hear that and pop to the surface to have a look see what's happening.
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3 Hours later. The first rapid. Cameraman down!
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00:27:24 - Lee - What you can see up stream there is the rapid that we had a bit of an epic on yesterday, but Hendri, Goose and Becky Lar there, they decided they'd run first. Decided they'd give it a bit of a stab and yep the drop at the top was a lot bigger than it actually looked from the point where we were inspecting. Raft dropped in, got a bit of a beating, flipped, snapped some ores, everybody took a pretty nasty beating there, everybody hitting rocks, quite a lot of down time, we were a little bit worried about where Hendri was for a while but he popped up at the surface and in true Hendri Coetzee tradition just got back on the ball. Got the raft upright, got everybody to the side. It's the next morning, we've had a pretty rainy night, been pouring down with rain. We're all a bit cold, a bit muddy, a bit wet. But everybody's in good spirits. We've managed to collect a few things from the eddie that we found. We lost our GPS however, which is not good, and like I said we snapped two ores and lost a spare so we're gonna have to turn one of the rafts into a paddle boat now. We'll see how that goes.
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00:28:45 - Lee – What? Why? Oi, hey, the camera man's back behind the camera, good show. This rapid here doesn't look too bad, big pour over in the middle there but you'd have to be Hendri to end up in there and flip.
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00:29:06 - Hendri - So uh day two of being on the water and we had our asses handed to us yesterday really and now that we're back in the white water everyone's a bit conservative so it makes it a bit harder really when you start looking at water like that. But we gotta run the water still while we're here, so Jane's gonna go through the left hand side here. There's going to be a lot of water splashing but I’m pretty confident she'll be ok.
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00:29:44 - Jane - That's the kinda rapid I like, there's some spots to avoid. You actually have to work a little bit to get your line, but it's not that hard. It's a nice feeling to just bounce through and get splashed, come through smiling up upright.
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00:30:28 - Hendri - We've got quite a tricky part of the puzzle here at the moment, the water drops quite high maybe about 20 meters in a distance of I don't know 300. Cause there's so many islands it's hard to tell where the big drops are you can't see clear lines, so we're looking at some options to come through. Over here we've got an option of slowly, slowly dragging the boat through this little side channel hooking it on that side over there and then try and roping it down. Um it's one option. Gonna climb over and see how many other options we can have a look at, and then choose the best one.
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00:31:38 - Hendri - We've found another enormous rapid and we can't do it. So now we've got the fun job of dragging the rafts across the rocks, and uh wonderful African sunshine. It's fantastic it really is. We can't do it, it's way too big, so were gonna carry the rafts around boom back in the water over there hopefully there's not another big massive waterfall only just around the corner. But now let's go and have a bite to eat, and reassess the situation
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00:32:10 - Lee - So this is one of the down sides of being the scout now and again, is that you don't catch the eddie that perhaps you would have liked to. There's the raft up at the top there and it looks like they're gonna be able to walk around that side and I've got myself into a big of a pickle here because now I'm stuck in the middle of the river and yep I'm going to have try to find a way across these islands here perhaps, but it looks quite steep and I can't really see what’s going on down stream there so I guess I'm just gonna have to get on with it.
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00:33:09 - Lee - The kayakers amongst you know exactly how I’m feeling right now. There's my boat, there's some jungle, there's some more jungle, there's some snakes and stuff, I’m rather hoping that this cliff face leads here leads me back down to the water, at the bottom of that pour over. If not I’m gonna have to backtrack and start again.
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00:33:44 - Lee - Oh yah, well, I’m still here only just. Nearly missed the eddie but I’m pretty glad that I didn't because that pour over looks even bigger from here. We'll have a look at it once we get round but now I’m gonna try and get up that cliff face and hopefully there'll be less snakes and less vines to get tangled up in. I’m knackered I need some water.
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00:34:14 - Lee - So uh yah, made it round. Pretty pleased I made that fairy-glide though. I’ll show you why, yaaaaah, very nice, oh look at that in the middle there, ah I hope that is the guys on the far bank there, looks like we're expecting a bit of rain as well, but yah that is the mother of all pour over weirs and I’m at the bottom of it and I’m still alive which makes me quite happy really. It's uh yah, even if I had been washed up this is where I kinda popped out just here, just had a fairy-glide just above that, you can see there's a big rock in the bottom there so even if I had had to run it I don't think that my luck would have been in, nasty rock against the bank area as well too. I’m pretty glad I managed to get around that.
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00:36:05 - Lee - Just came through another couple of quite big rapids. There's quite a lot of white water on this section more than we expected. We're kinda putting that down to the fact that there's quite a lot more water than we've been lead to believe about this time of year from what the locals have been saying there's an extra 2-3 meters in the river compared to this time in previous few years. We’re getting pretty close to the falls now, or it certainly feels like that. You can see over here things are starting to gorge up a little bit and it just got that feel about it, just scouting down stream. The guys are just up there having a bite to eat and I’ve come to a horizon line with some smoke coming up and I cant really see where I can go next so I’ve got out on this island here, I still really can't see so never know it might be walky walky time, have to go have a little look.
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00:37:03 - Screen Text –
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Tissisat Falls "Smoke Of Fire" 7:30 AM
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