Win - Canoe & Kayak

INTERNATIONAL KAYAKINGWild Men of Borneoby Kelvin Oram“We’ll hire you a canoe when we getthere!” I promised my brother Jameswhile discussing plans for our paddledown the Kinabatangan River inSabah, Malaysian Borneo.Tackling 3 consecutive rivers on my own wouldhave severely tested my sanity! I was reallylooking forward to sharing a river with someonewho was my best mate as well as my brother.However, I had reservations: I was to beresponsible for someone who had never kayakedbefore on a river once famed for its 8m crocs andheadhunting locals!After a day’s practice near Batu Puteh, the villagewhere our expedition was to start, we met ourlocal guide Bart, already a friend of mine from aprevious visit to Borneo. We hired a couple ofkayaks, pumped mine up and set off into theunknown. The villagers had never been more thanhalf a day’s paddle down the river and thoughtthat we were nothing short of crazy.We had no map, no compass, no forms ofcommunication with the outside world (althoughBart could sing quite loudly!) and our guide hadonly been a few hundred metres down the riverand had only kayaked on a handful of occasions.Then things started to get interesting!...................The 2 hired fibreglass kayaks, had been lyingunder a shed for 2 years before we used them!They were rudder-less and ‘slightly’ difficult topaddle in a straight line. So the whole of the firstday, James and Bart zigzagged down theKinabatangan, wasting huge amounts of energytrying to point in the right direction! Their kayaksalso leaked. Every hour or so we had to find a sandbar, empty the boats of gear and then of water andload up again. This was a frustrating start toour troubles!James noticed, on one of the sand bar stops, thatalong with all the water draining out of the kayak,a steady trickle of little red ants formed rafts onthe surface of the river as they escaped. There wasa huge ants nest in one end of his kayak and theywere not all that happy about being flooded out.Next James winced with pain and scratched hisarse frantically. After sitting in the river for half anhour while we smirked at him unsympatheticallyfrom the riverbank, Bart noticed a similarsensation. They both sat in the cool water rubbingtheir botties while we debated the cause. BecauseBart didn’t have an ant’s nest in his kayak, weconcluded that it must be an allergic reaction tothe fibreglass seats of the kayaks.After suitably padding their posteriors wecontinued paddling down the windy riverthrough the Bornean rainforest past troops ofmacaques and proboscis monkeys. Our heavymetalloving guide knew about the sexualprowess of the dominant male proboscis monkey.It is also known as the 24-hour monkey due to itspermanently erect, bright red member! Thischeered us up no end!At 4pm we asked “How far to the campsite?” Bartreplied, “round the next bend ha ha ha!” After halfa dozen of these “round the next bend ha ha ha’s”we paddled in silence. An hour later as it wasgetting dark we reached the hill marking our campfor the night. At precisely 7pm, we were enjoyingour 2 min noodles when a cacophonous whine hitus. The killer mozzies from hell had arrived fromthe surrounding jungle to drive us into our tentsfor an early night.I had forgotten how small my tent was with two8 ISSUE THIRTYtwo • 2005