When Dawid Andres first dreamed of crossing the South American continent together with his half-brother Hubert Kisiński, the concept of bolting bikes to pontoons and descending the Amazon River was the furthest factor from his thoughts.
The plan to start with was extra smart: Bike from the Pacific to the supply of the Amazon, then kayak four,000 miles to the Atlantic. However the extra the Polish brothers realized about the associated fee and problem of importing kayaks into Peru, the higher these YouTube movies of selfmade water bikes appeared.
The run-ins with pirates continued.
“It wasn’t our purpose to be the primary Amazon bikers. It simply turned out to be the most cost effective manner,” Dawid says of their 6-month journey from September 2015 to March 2016.
The journey should be a document of some sort, however the brothers weren’t in it to make a reputation for themselves. For Dawid, 44, the expedition was a grand journey and an opportunity to reconnect together with his brother. Dawid left Poland for America when Hubert was nonetheless a child. Hubert, 35, had been swept up within the heroin epidemic that ravaged his technology of Poles. Now clear and married with two younger sons, the journey for him was greater than an journey. It was remedy.
The brothers’ massive smiles and pleasant banter opened doorways—and charmed the unhealthy guys.
Hubert took the lead in constructing the Amazon bikes, hybrid craft with a bicycle body mounted between a pair of 10-foot inflatable pontoons. The pedals flip a propeller by means of a mechanism that defies easy rationalization, pushing the contraptions alongside on the stately charge of 6 kilometers per hour. The brothers examined the water bikes on a river in Poland, however the actual trial would come on the broad waters of the Amazon and its highly effective tributaries.
Earlier than they may strap the pontoons on their bikes they needed to experience some 1,200 miles from Peru’s Pacific coast, throughout the excessive Andes to the Amazon headwaters. They climbed a dozen passes of four,000 meters (13,000 ft) or extra and stopped at 16,870 ft for a ceremonial dip in Lake Ticlla Cocha, one of many Amazon’s highest most-distant and highest sources. Nonetheless on two wheels, they adopted the trail of the Apurimac River, skipping the Amazon tributary’s 500-mile gauntlet of Class V whitewater.
The Andes steep slopes and skinny air introduced the journey’s hardest bodily challenges, however the psychological grind and sketchy encounters have been solely starting. The brothers have been robbed for the primary time within the Purple Zone, a area with a status for lawlessness the place many individuals sincerely imagine outsiders kill indigenous individuals for his or her organs.
As Dawid tells it, the bandits have been a examine in ineptitude. They roared up on motorbikes, which toppled over and lay idling within the gravel all through the holdup. When Dawid stepped ahead to assist them choose up the machines, one of many boys—he was not more than 16—leveled a shotgun at him.
Professional tip for bandits: Don’t take selfies together with your victims.
“I wasn’t actually scared till they appeared into my first help equipment and located surgical scissors and began shouting, ‘You got here right here to chop out the eyes of youngsters!’” Dawid instructed Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. The strain eased a second later when one other bandit discovered Hubert’s wad of money. Because the boys pocketed the cash, Dawid appealed to their higher natures.
“I stated, ‘Guys, now we have 200 kilometers of jungle to experience. Should you take cash from us, we are going to starve.’ And of the 500 soles (about $150) they pulled out 200 and gave it again to us.” The bandits then posed for an image, hoisted their fallen motorbikes and rode away.
The brothers removed their scalpel and scissors and pedaled on. Days later they arrived in Atalaya on the banks of the Ucayali River, the place Hubert spent a number of days mounting the bikes to the inflatable pontoons and fine-tuning the propeller drives. They waited a couple of extra days for his or her Ashaninka information, Felipe Suarez Ruiz, to reach. The brothers thought-about going forward with out him, however the final Poles to go that manner alone had been killed and chopped to items.
The brothers determined to attend, heeding the recommendation of Piotr Chmielinski, the Polish-American explorer who was first to descent the Amazon from supply to sea 30 years in the past. Chmielinski turned the brothers’ number-one fan, writing a dozen expedition updates for Explorersweb and providing them the good thing about his connections and good counsel.
Hubert was the expedition cook dinner and mechanic.
The brothers judged the catamarans unsinkable, however fearful concerning the energy of the pedal drives. The mechanisms have been fragile and subsequent to ineffective in opposition to quick currents or sturdy winds. Nonetheless, when a whirlpool caught Hubert and spun him in circles like an enormous liquid merry-go-round, Dawid was assured sufficient to provide it a strive. “I fell into this vortex, fired GoPro and began recording. Hubert shouted: ‘Dawid, get out of there!”
He pedaled furiously because the whirlpool pulled him towards the opening in its heart, a funnel six ft deep and stuffed with fallen branches and different particles. Then, simply as all of a sudden, the vortex disappeared. Chastened, the brothers pedaled on to their subsequent journey.
Weeks later rows of symmetrical waves rose seemingly out of nowhere, almost upsetting their craft earlier than subsiding as rapidly as they’d come. The thriller was defined that night, when an aftershock shook the village the place they have been staying. Chmielinski later found the unusual waves had been brought on by an earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale.
“It wasn’t our purpose to be the primary Amazon bikers. It simply turned out to be the most cost effective manner,”
Most days have been much less eventful. The brothers spent the daytime on the river, pedaling in 15 minute shifts with 5 minutes of relaxation between. Or moderately Hubert did. Dawid was slower, and sometimes pedaled via his relaxation interval to catch as much as his brother. The boys cooked and napped on plywood platforms lashed between the pontoons of their unusual craft, coming ashore to camp and resupply in cities alongside the best way. Their brothers’ openness and cheerful smiles received them pals alongside the river, and so they have been typically moved by the kindness of the individuals they met.
In Tabatinga, on the border of Peru, Colombia and Brazil round Christmas and an area household took them in for the vacations. Adorning the tree they have been delighted to see hecho en Polonia—made in Poland—inscribed on the lights.
The run-ins with pirates continued. Within the remoted stretch of river above Manaus, a ship stuffed with males circled them 4 occasions, after which left. On one other event, a pair of strung out bandits accosted them and determined they’d nothing value stealing.
The brother’s technique in these encounters was the identical because it was with everybody they met: Large smiles and pleasant banter, both in rudimentary Spanish or barely understandable Portuguese. “Our weapon in such conditions has all the time been good speak,” Dawid instructed Gazeta. So when 5 males roared up in a motorboat bristling with weapons, he began a dialog.
“I’m standing on this boat with my arms over my head. I’m rocking, afraid I’m going to fall, and this man is aiming at me with a gun large enough to kill an elephant with,” he says. “I instructed them we’re Poles, good individuals, we like Brazilians very a lot and need to expertise an journey right here.” Lastly, as one of many males examined the pontoons searching for medicine to steal, Dawid requested if they’d any beer. The pirates burst out laughing, and left with out taking something.
Who’s the pirate now? Dawid pedaling the Amazon.
For months, the brothers merely pedaled downstream. It’s onerous to get misplaced on a river, however once they reached the Amazon’s huge delta navigation all of a sudden turned an issue. The delta is 200 miles extensive, with scores of channels and an island the scale of Switzerland within the center. Aided by Chmielinski, who adopted their progress on-line, they disassembled their catamarans and continued on two wheels. The roads on Chmielinski’s maps and satellite tv for pc pictures turned out to be mere tracks, and at occasions the brothers needed to hack their manner via the jungle.
The hardship introduced out the very best in Hubert. “He has an extremely sturdy psyche,” Dawid instructed Gazeta. “On the finish of the journey he was unbreakable. I used to be falling out from fatigue, saying I can’t go any additional. Hubert all the time replied with laughter and stated, ‘Dude, let’s go on! GPS exhibits that in a second we’re leaving the jungle.’”
Ultimately they adopted a line of phone poles to Belem, a metropolis of two million on the Rio Pará, nicely upstream of the Atlantic. Dawid and Hubert traveled the final 120 miles by bike, on grime roads reduce via the jungle. They reached the Atlantic on March 6, 2016, six months and roughly 5,000 miles after setting out from Peru’s Pacific coast.
Dawid and Hubert on Brazil’s Atlantic coast, six months and 5,000 miles after leaving the Pacific coast of Peru.
Reflecting on the journey, Dawid says they by no means would have began in the event that they knew the hazards and hardships forward. Nor might both brother have completed the journey with out the opposite. Hubert’s mechanical aptitude and regular demeanor saved the expedition many occasions, and the Amazon remedy, as Hubert calls it, was a hit as nicely.
“What was harder to beat, the Amazon or medicine?” Hubert instructed Chmielinski. “Undoubtedly, the latter. On the Amazon you’ll be able to name for assist when issues go unsuitable, however with an habit it’s important to cope alone otherwise you drown.”
With Dawid at his facet, Hubert discovered a manner via the metaphorical jungle. “When issues went unsuitable in the dead of night of the jungle I might see the solar,” he instructed Chmielinski. “After which with my machete I used to be in a position to reduce my manner via to the sunshine.”
—All pictures courtesy Dawid Andres and Hubert Kisiński
1 comment
Wife is a teacher and likes practical things. Really nice watch for daily wear.