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Q&A with Team SLPA on the Amazon Challenge 2024
Interview: Sarah ThornelyPhotos: Caroline Dawson, Jonathan Gill, Matthew Phillips, Brodie Hopkins and the Amazon ChallengeWhen you get the opportunity to paddle in a world so far removed from what you know on an iconic river in Peru, why would you not? We excitedly kept abreast of this challenge whilst it was happening and are delighted to be able to chat with Caz, Jon and Matt, who make up the remarkable Team SLPA.Want to read about the expedition itself. Head over to https://paddlerezine.com/amazon-challenge-2024/ and read for free.Paddle stats:TOTAL DISTANCE paddled | 335 KMPADDLE STROKES | 58,322TOTAL CALORIES | 18,000+AVERAGE SPEED | 8.3 km/hrTOTAL TIME PADDLING| 40:24.08Challenge mileage breakdownDay 1 48 kmDay 2 34 kmDay 3 55 kmDay 4 68 kmDay 5 76 kmDay 6 54 kmTell us a little about yourselves and your paddling experience?Caz: I own the award-winning adventure business SUP Lass Paddle Adventures. I am an accomplished paddler and coach who has completed several long-distance SUP challenges. My recent overseas trips include paddling the Vjosa in Albania and working as a guide in Scandinavia.Jon: I have been paddling for four years, gained an adventure guide qualification in 2021 and got addicted to paddle boarding during Covid. I love paddling down moving water, going on camping adventures with the paddle boards, and accessing areas where no one goes.Matt: I am a seasoned paddleboarder, sea kayaker, and natural leader. I am currently guiding river expeditions in the north of New Zealand. I have also spent several seasons guiding SUP adventures in the Sri Lankan rainforests and Panamanian jungle, exploring unmapped areas.How did you first hear about the Amazon Canoe/SUP Challenge?Caz: I came across the Amazon Challenge on social media.Jon: Caz told me to do it!Matt: Facebook during its first year, but I already had commitments. Then Caz twisted my arm when we were paddling together in Albania.Can you let the readers know how you prepared for this challenge physically and mentally?Caz: My preparation for the challenge didnt go as planned! I broke my ankle in October (just a week after I signed up). Then, three weeks before heading out to Peru, I became very sick with biliary sepsis, and I ended up having emergency surgery to remove my gallbladder. The doctors recommended I postpone the challenge, but I was determined to bounce back and give it my all. Between injuries and illness, I spent a lot of time in the gym and also took part in the SUP Twelve and Spey Challenges.Jon: We did a lot of training at the gym. Caz would make me get up at 06:30. We would go to the gym and start work. We would push ourselves further with bigger and heavier kit on our boards to ensure we were mentally and physically prepared for a challenge of this scale. We also entered a couple of races and challenges to make sure we were battle-hardened.Matt: I kept working as an expedition leader in NZ. I pushed onto some other higher-grade rivers and got out on the board as much as possible.Did the Challenge organisers give you preparation and travel advice?Caz: I am used to organising expedition-style trips both for myself and others. My biggest challenge was understanding what the rainforest environment would throw at us. Carlos and Freya, the organisers, were a great help and always at the other end of the phone or WhatsApp. The information pack supplied for the challenge was very comprehensive.Jon: Carlos and Freya were always available for a conversation and very helpful. It was a very well-organised challenge with excellent online resources. Again, Caz is the queen of organisation and kept us boys on track!Matt: I am well-travelled and have paddled a broad range of rivers, so I was comfortable with the preparation side of things. Caz kept track of things like insurance, flights, accommodation, etc with a Google spreadsheet and regular updates.We understand its quite a trek to get to Peru, can you let us know how the travelling was for you? Have you been to Peru before?Caz: Travelling to Peru was hilarious. We had 5 x 23kg board bags and six x two-piece paddles, as we were carrying an extra board and kit for Matt. We had heard horror stories of bags going missing, but our seven flights throughout the trip went smoothly.Jon: I was always excited to go to the home of Paddington Bear. Getting to go to Cusco and then travel across the Andes (we reached 4000m) and then down through the cloud rainforest was an incredible experience.Matt: Never been to Peru before. I flew from New Zealand via Chile ahead of Caz and Jon. I wish I had refreshed my Spanish beforehand!Were there specific skills you practised for this challenge?Caz: I spent time practising my fully loaded board flips on the Dee, including a swim on Serpents Tail to test if I could release my leash and righten my board. Ant Ing put me through my paces! I had previously paddled with Jon and Matt, so I knew we all had each others backs should anything go wrong.We had a crash course on the things that would want to bite, eat, or sting us in the rainforest, which Matt kindly delivered in a dodgy natural history and taxidermy museum in Cusco. Bullet Ants, Wandering Spiders, and Black Caiman were all recommended things to avoid, and we did!Jon: Caz and I trained hard to ensure we would work together as a team and know the required skills for safety, rescue, self-rescue, equipment, first aid, and camp skills. I personally spent more time ensuring I knew how to use video technology, such as drones and 360 cameras, on our adventure.Matt: What will and wont eat you? I have spent lots of time in jungles and rainforests, but each one is different the Amazon didnt disappoint.Did you feel confident before you started on day one, and how was that day?Caz: Really confident not! Paddling in the Amazon was the first time I had been on a board in almost a month, as before heading out I had emergency surgery, which wasnt ideal. I had to be careful with any heavy lifting the boys were great in helping with my kit and bags.Jon: I knew we would have it in us. However, Caz has a different story that she hasnt shared with anyone, but shes flipping nails!Matt: I felt great when we first hit the water. I had to get used to a brand new McConks board and Ainsworth paddle. Within 300-400m of the start, we were straight into a rather big and boily rapid, which was fun and set the scene for the rest of the day.Can you let us know about the indigenous people you met?Caz: Just the loveliest, smiliest, happy people. Both tribes we met when paddling were welcoming and couldnt wait to share their stories with us. A memory that will stick with me will be splashing around with the children on the boards we managed to fit 11 children on a 14 McConks board!Jon: What a humbling experience to meet the tribes and people on our trip down. The background work that Carlos and Freya had done to ensure the barriers were down and the tribes wanted to work with us worked wonderfully. There wasnt a language barrier that couldnt be broken down with the medium of mime, a smile or pointing to something. Meeting the families in the communities, including the children and showing them our paddle boards is an experience that I will never forget. Laughter surpasses all boundaries.Matt: I loved seeing the kids get the school supplies and enjoyed their excitement of being on the sups and playing games.Anything particularly unusual happen whilst on the challenge?Caz: Aside from eating alpaca and guinea pig and drinking masato (locals chew yuca root and then spit it into jars for fermentation), the most unusual thing was spotting a bright red crab in the middle of the rainforest.Jon: Our dance every 30km, we sang our Were paddling the Amazon song, and as the kilometres rolled on, our board moves and paddle spins got more and more polished. We certainly impressed the North American canoe team!Matt: I had to fish Jon out on a rope. We saw giant armadillos and spotted the endangered Amazon giant otters, which are 6ft long! Everything in the Amazon is big!Were the Amazon conditions anything like you had ever experienced before?Caz:The Madre de Dios is one of the main tributaries that form the Amazon River as we know it. The eddy lines and boils were pretty huge and very unforgiving on the first couple of days. I was pleased with only taking one swim over the whole 335km on the first rapid, on the first day, less than 500m from the start! We had some big 70km+ paddle days, which in the heat was totally energy-sapping. We had an alarm that reminded us to drink every 30 minutes. We all carried seven litres of water on our boards and got through it every day.Jon: The boils and eddy lines were huge. As we travelled down the river, the meanders got longer and wider, and the flow, slower and slower. By the end, it was like paddling in treacle!Matt: Big volume fun. I enjoyed the Madre de Dios. It was like paddling in New Zealand or a volatile tidal river.What were your absolute highlights?Caz: The wildlife. At times, it felt like we were paddling through an Attenborough documentary. The forests on either side of the river were alive with wildlife and at times, it was pretty surreal, particularly the early morning flyovers of bright red Macaws and Toucans.Jon: Meeting the communities, speaking to the people and seeing how they lived. The nightwalk in the jungle and all the creepy crawlies the size of your hand, including spotting the Wandering Spider one of the Worlds most deadly spiders.Matt: I loved the big-volume wildness of the river on the first couple of days. I loved being in the Amazon, surrounded by the wildlife, the vegetation, and the communities who call this magical place their home.What were the lowlights of the trip?Caz: We all experienced upset stomachs on the trip, some worse than others our bowel habits became an almost daily topic of conversation. Also, the sandflies were an absolute pest, which meant we all set up camp and dived into our tents quickly at the end of the day. The heat was also relentless; it rarely dropped below 30c during the day.Jon: Getting beaver fever! Seeing the destruction of the rainforest and river banks through illegal gold mining operations.Matt: Being chased down the river by a swarm of giant wasps! One stung me on the hand, and Caz over-prescribed me with antihistamines to be on the safe side, which made me very sleepy!We also got some fascinating insight, particularly from Jon, into maps, water quality, wildlife, and food take it away, Jon!The maps we had for the challenge were 40-year-old river maps, which change over time and every season, so the available maps were for reference at best. Google satellite images despite being 2024, did not match up to the serpentine twists and turns in the river. All navigation was following the rivers main flow and getting to checkpoints.For safety and tracking, we were tracked with a ping from Garmin Inreach mini every ten minutes so we could be followed at home. There was also the SOS feature we had in an emergency. Luckily, we prepared to make sure we would not have to use this.We were so remote that help was two hours by boat and 14 hours to the nearest hospital! We were in the middle of nowhere, with the forest surrounding us from every direction. There was not a road until the last day, and that was a four-hour boat ride downriver. We did see a few smaller aircraft at night, but these would not have been much help with them trafficking Narco!The water quality was very muddy, full of fine silt, and you would never see the bottom of your paddle, let alone the riverbed. Who knows what we paddled over! There were lots of trees and branches, with strainers and sweepers ready to catch you out if you were not paying attention. However, calling to one another and keeping a keen eye, we never had any issues with debris.Meals: We planned all our meals before with dehydrated Real Turmat packets being our staple; however, as a treat every other day we had a chocolate pudding to keep morale high. A 700-calorie breakfast, 700-calorie lunch with 200-calorie snack packs of biscuits, a 700-calorie dinner and a 500-calorie pudding, would be enough to keep us going, but we did have to force ourselves to eat in the heat despite not wanting to. You would feel the ache and slow down when you were hungry, especially on the bigger and slower days. Each of us drank more than 7-8 litres of water daily to keep ourselves hydrated, and despite drinking nearly constantly, we rarely needed to go to the toilet due to excessive sweating.We all saw some fascinating wildlife, including Giant Armadillo, Giant Otter, Macaws, Toucans, vultures, and hummingbirds as small as your thumb or as large as a sparrow, buzzing and being very territorial. Frogs, bats, spiders as big as your hand and playful like kittens, insects, crabs, monkeys, snakes, lizards, and some very impressive paw prints from Tapier, pigs and big cats. Massive blue butterflies, and at night, the moths and other eyes we saw staring back at us were everywhere, so much life in all abundance.Lastly, Cocaine production: We were all attuned to our senses of the water and the rainforest smells: clean, alive, and almost sweet. However, we did notice a change of smell at several locations to a rich leaf mulch smell, almost like silage or compost. This was the Narco labs making cocaine.We understand you were the first SUP team to cross the line, and Caz, you are the first woman to finish this challengeCaz: Being the first woman to paddle the Madre de Dios on a SUP is a pretty cool achievement. It felt super special after it was so touch and go as to whether I would even make the start line. There were a few tears shed. Its made me think of other paddle possibilities out there. The challenge wasnt a race, but our SUP boards travelled considerably faster than the traditional canoes, which helped us make the daily checkpoints in good time.Jon: We started as a team and finished as a team. We worked incredibly hard preparing for the trip to ensure our skills were up to speed in areas such as self-rescue with loaded boards.Matt: We stuck together, kept moving (we averaged 8.3km/hr over the 335km) and worked as a team we all had skills that complimented one another.Can you let us know about the organisers and their team?Amazon Challenge organisers Carlos and Freya were fabulous and went above and beyond to ensure everyone had a great challenge. They are keen to welcome more SUPs for the 2025 Challenge.As were the support crew a big shout-out goes to members of the Shipiteri community, who were always so smiley, helpful and supportive in their rescue boats and at every checkpoint.Can you let us know about your Challenge fundraising?Over 2000 of donations were raised through our Just Giving page, which has been split between Manu Biological Station, Los Amigos Biological Station (as visited by Sir David Attenborough) and the Shipiteri Community, all of which we visited on our trip.The funds will support rainforest conservation and the development of eco-tourism opportunities for the Peruvian Amazon communities.Do you have particular people you would like to give a shout-out to for their help?We have received incredible help and support with this challenge from friends, family, and clients making donations via our Just Giving page through to top paddle and outdoor brands that supply us with kit.We particularly would like to thank:McConks: 14 touring boardsMustang Survival: clothing, bags and buoyancyAinsworth: carbon paddlesKelly Kettle: water filtration systemLifesystems: first aid kit, mosquito repellent and suncreamWaterhaul: sunglassesSealskinz: waterproof socksExposure Lights: waterproof torchesPhizz: hydration tabletsTarget Trees: cash donationAgronomic Digital Innovation: cash donationAdvice for people sitting on the fence about this event?Go for it! Its a very special event, and the environment (30c+, high humidity, wildlife, and remoteness) makes it a unique challenge. It would be great to see more SUPs take part in 2025.Thank you so much to Team SLPA for their fascinating insight into what appears to be an incredible adventure and challenge if you are interested in registering for 2025, I am sure Caz, Jon and Matt would be delighted to give you more info and you can also check out the official website here: https://amazoncanoechallenge.com
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