The faint glow of a cigarette and human silhouette waited at the summit. I clambered to my feet, located Kitty, and began a four-legged crawl up the slippery hill. But we were still hours from home, with a muddy matrix of roads yet to navigate. Later, while laying on my back, enveloped in a blanket of cool mud, jungle canopy swaying gently overhead, I felt that I could have fallen asleep then and there. It was only after we hauled it up onto the bank that the locals informed me of the crocodiles that live around the bend and how lucky I was that my splashing and swimming hadn’t drawn their attention. After an hour of consecutive blind dives and drifts along the murky river bottom, I finally located the bike and tied a makeshift vine rope through the wheel. The recovery efforts were nothing short of miraculous. It was all going well, until a phantom rapid slapped the top-heavy wooden pirogue broadside, sending the bike and my belongings into the muddy water mid-crossing. More foolish yet, I left my bag of essential gear strapped to the back of the bike. With daylight depleting and a swell that would be gone tomorrow, I encouraged a reckless plan to float the bike across a river to make up time.
Well-traveled dirt roads had morphed into merciless mud bogs and small streams swelled into steady rivers, making travel slow and arduous. But, clearly, I was not impervious to the occasional travel blunder or letting enthusiasm get in the way of good judgment, as it had on this day.īefore departing, I had failed to take into account the abnormal amount of rain that had fallen in previous months. In that time, I had become quite adept at preparing for my trips in order to manage the risks involved and move between continents, countries, and climates with efficiency and comfort. I had spent the better part of the previous decade traveling the globe in search of adventure and pursuing my passion for big-wave surfing. Rolling onto my back to catch my breath, I gazed skyward and contemplated how close I had just come to meeting a very unpleasant and potentially messy death. Not until the pitch leveled 20 feet below did I finally slow to a stop, the top of my skull coming to rest mere inches from a pile of granite boulders. Flailing wildly, I grasped for any vine or branch that could help me, to no avail. I landed flat bellied with a wind-removing slap and began a high-speed mudslide into the darkness below.
Mud river travel kit full#
The bike spun clockwise in a full rotation, ejecting me over the edge of the blind embankment.
Mud river travel kit crack#
The stump passed inches beneath my leg, slamming the peg with a crack that split the thick jungle air. I weighted onto my left foot, swiftly elevating my right up toward the heavens, and said a prayer. His elbows and knees drew into an optimistic tuck to shoot the gap.
Mud river travel kit driver#
The driver slammed on the brakes, and our slide commenced. The urgency in my voice registered this time, but it was too late. Through the fading orange light ahead, I could make out a hairpin turn buffered by precarious tree stumps. I held on, pointing Hello Kitty forward, grateful not to have been abandoned in the jungle, as he justifiably could have done hours ago. His desire to get home and be rid of me ran deeper than the tracks left behind after each fishtailing turn the bike made.
Or, at least, that’s how I thought the story was supposed to go. It was the kind of storybook escapade that bonds two people in friendship for life. Against the odds, we had continued on to our destination and found a perfect wave. But I had saved him from drowning and retrieved his bike, which he then miraculously fixed on site. What I had promised him would be a few hours’-long surf check and easy payday had morphed into a 17-hour debacle that nearly cost him his life and saw his bike sink to the bottom of a crocodile-infested river. He wasn’t slowing for anything, and I couldn’t blame him. With each request, the old bike’s RPMs seemed to spitefully increase. “Mora, mora”- slow, slow -I pleaded with the young Malagasy man.
My bare, mud-covered feet gripped the metal foot pegs for extra stability like an eagle holding its prey. One of my arms clung to the waist of the driver and the other was perched on his bony shoulder, illuminating the road ahead with a small Hello Kitty flashlight I bought from a local villager. The stench of two-stroke oil, fermented sweat, bad decisions, and shitty planning followed us like a dark cloud as our old Yamaha Enduro sputtered down a footpath in the Madagascar jungle.
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