Ever since first visiting Colombia while traveling the length of the Pan American highway on the Oil and Water Project, this country has been high on my list of adventure destinations.
The feeling of Colombia is about as raw and real as it gets. A rich and vibrant culture giving a beautiful backdrop to some of the most remote, untouched wild places I’ve ever seen. Years of conflict within Colombia has protected Colombia’s natural resources. Logging, mining, damming rivers have all been at a standstill for the better part of the last 40 years.
While the violence in this region of the world has been some of the worst and long lasting on the planet, it has left the majority of the rivers of Colombia untouched and mostly unexplored.
Three years ago while on the Wizard’s Eye Expedition my good friend Jules Domine, who has done more to explore Colombia than almost any other whitewater paddler, invited me on an expedition into one of the most remote places of the Colombian Amazon. Together we spent 20 days paddling 1000 kilometers of the Cacueta to Araracuara Canyon.
Our goal was to paddle the rapids of this remote canyon then fly out form a military airbase. The river was high and we realized as soon as we got there the rapids we’re not runnable. After waiting a few days for a plane we flew back to civilization after one wild month in some of the deepest jungle I’ve ever seen.
It was undoubtedly one of the most difficult expeditions of my life.
See film of the first expedition now.
Two years later I got a call from Jules. He wanted to return to this far away place to attempt the rapids we turned back from. With the memories of the bugs, the heat, six months of battling a flesh eating parasite, and the intensity of the expedition beginning to loose their edge......
I agreed to join.
I flew to Bogota to begin my journey back into the Colombian Amazon. A day of buss riding put us at San Jose, a small city at the doorstep to this vast, unforgiving corner of Colombia. From here the same DC3 that brought us back out of the jungle those years before would bring us back in. That night we got news.
Aniol was having visa issues, the river was rising fast, and the mission was to be aborted.
Listening to my intuition, I didn’t exactly think this was a bad call and the next day part of the team, who was already at the canyon flew back out to meet us.
What began as a failed attempt to return to the canyon ended up being an amazing week long paddling vacation;-)
With the right perspective, it's easy to continue having KAVU days!
We traveled back to Jules’s house in Antioquia and started rattling off a few rivers. The Corona, Samana, and a few other tributaries to these beautiful rivers helped us make some lemonade out of lemons.
Colombia continues to be one of my favorite places on earth and a country I will continue to come back to as long as I live.
A rad Kayak Session 60 article from Jules and Tyler's first journey on the Rio Caqueta and the Araracuara canyon
Tyler Bradt
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Chris Korbulic
A film from Jule's and T-Bradt's first trip to this region of the Colombian Amazon. Also available on the Outside TV app and OTV website.
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