Amazon Expedition – Day 11

Blog writen by Bobby

I woke up today at 7:30 am dangling fifteen feet from the ground in the Main Sail’s bag. There were probably twenty wasps buzzing around me in the confined space of the long and narrow bag! I had to carefully climb out dodging wasps in my bare feet.

Mike called us over to learn how to trap animals weighing up to 200 pounds! I learned that the simple traps are often the most potent. To trap something as big as a jaguar it only takes 10 feet of rope, a machete and some bait. There are so many resources in the rainforest that the options are limitless. We saw that with a machete and the forest the locals trap anything that swims in the water. We saw huge structures that were built by the native people that were designed to trap fish. Made out of vines and wood they made something similar to a crab trap. We squeezed into the trap. We felt the piranhas that were trapped in there swimming around and between our legs.

We came back and I took the wheel of PANGAEA. It is a weird feeling having the responsibility of a 14 million dollar boat in your hands. You learn to feel every small movement the boat makes when you turn the wheel. You have to watch the currents in the water, so you know how much to turn the wheel. When the current is coming from the right, and you spin the wheel to the left you have to spin it a lot harder than normal. When you see that the depth is the very minimum PANGAEA can go, you learn to spot the rough water and the calm water. The rough water is where it will be deeper, and the smooth is where it will be shallow. You start to see rivers within rivers.

The day was now nearly over. Then much to our surprise we were told we were going to do a rely race on the boat. We were split into two groups. When the whistle blew the two teams jumped off the boat at the front. We then swam down current to the back of the boat (which felt like we were flying!) We had to pick up our wooden kayaks and paddle back to the front of the boat. Then we climbed up the anchor in the front of the boat. We had to push our teammates up the anchor because it was very slippery. All of us then climbed as fast as possible up a rope on the Main Sail. We got into the sail bag, crawled through the sail bag, and it was finished!

At the very end of the day I finished up my blog. As I was going to give it to Luke, I went to open the door at the same time as Christian who happened to be carrying a bucket of water, we clashed, and now I am half a sleep re-doing my blog!