Ethiopia

Blue Nile River Descent

In 2018, during my white water rafting season in Iceland, a friend of mine reached out to me telling me about an rafting expedition in Ethiopia. It was organized by an American white water paddler, Rocky Cantos. It took a lot to convince me to join the trip, because it was gonna take a lot of extra money, time and traveling to be able to make it there, as I had already booked my flight back to Uganda, I didn’t have a visa, no camping gears or other river equipment.

However, I made it there and was not disappointed! During that trip I was the main safety kayaker, who went down the rapids first, to scout and to give a green light to the rest of the team and cover them up in case things didn’t go according to plan.

The trip was about 360km long, which took us sixteen days, from lake Tana - the main source of the Blue Nile - until halfway the river, before it joins the White Nile in Sudan.

It was a life experience, going down one of the few grand canyons of Africa. The views were stunning and the river challenging. The whole river was new to me, with big class II -VI rapids and falls. We were in the middle of nowhere, carrying food and accommodation for 9 people with us. On top of all that there was so many wildlife in and next to the river, of which hippo’s and crocodiles formed the biggest threats, next to snakes and elephant.

Good enough, the trip ended up being successful. Only one incident happened, when a crocodile attacked us on the last day of the trip, just before the take out. This crocodile chased us for about 500 meters, until it managed to bite a hole in the boat! Lucky enough, we were just about to get to land, which is how we survived the attack. Otherwise it would have ended seriously different, this creature was hungry!

An edit of all my footage will be added to this page soon!