First Descent

by Pam Withers

  Alberto cried out joyfully as she appeared, pinching her nose to keep water out.

  When she flopped onto the rock, Myriam took a few deep breaths before bursting into a rapid-fire news report. “I can see light at the end. We can float right through. The ceiling goes high right after the entrance. There’s even a rock shelf to the right, several feet beneath the cave’s ceiling.”

  “Yes!” I cried, reaching my arm over the edge of our rock to touch the water reverently, as if to shake hands with our enemy-turned-friend, the underground Furioso.

  “We should hide in the tunnel until the soldiers have decided we’ve drowned,” Alberto suggested through Myriam as I disassembled her harness and recoiled the rope. “If they haven’t decided that already.”

  I nodded agreement as I positioned my kayak for a launch off the rock and moved the headlamp from Myriam’s head to my helmet. “I’ll go first. I’ll stop on the rock shelf and get ready to toss you the throw rope as you float by so I can tow you to the shelf if I need to. Hold your water jugs to your chest, with your arms wrapped around them. Keep your feet up, ready to spring off rocks. Stay where the most current is, if you can.”

  As I was speaking, I attached my spraydeck to my kayak, positioned my paddle, and slid off the rock into the current. I didn’t expect this walrus-style entry to flip me over, but it did. I rolled back upright fast, glimpsing Alberto’s look of respect. Then I aimed for the tiny piece of breathing space in the entrance archway. As the bow of my kayak entered beneath it, I purposely tipped over to allow my kayak to slide under without decapitating me.

  After a count of three, I rolled up into the darkness of the cave, noting with relief that the rough, scalloped ceiling was more than a foot over my head, rising the farther I went. I swiveled my head left and right to let my headlamp light up the cavern. When my paddle hit a midriver rock, it echoed eerily through this spooky catacomb. The thunk, thunk of water dripped from the ceiling onto my boat and droplets flicked onto my face. Still, it smelled fresh in here. It felt as cool, fresh, and wondrous as an ancient cathedral.

  I spotted the rock outcrop to my right and swung hard on a sweep stroke to detach from the fast current. I needed to get myself in a position to leap out onto it.

  Pebbles crunched under my neoprene boots as I hauled my boat to safety and grabbed for the throw rope. My headlamp’s thin beam picked up a wet body floating towards me, fast. With his jug atop his chest, Alberto resembled a dead body with a severely distended belly. I shouted and tossed the rope; he caught it and I hauled him up.

  Again, pebbles crunched as they moved under our feet. The second misshapen body showed up, writhing as she tried to maneuver herself our way.

  “Myriam,” I called, and the tunnel echoed her name.

  Soon three glistening human forms sat shivering on the dark shelf, listening to the gurgling river hurl by, our eyes on the light at the downstream end of the cavern.

  “Do you think they’re watching for us on the other side?” I asked Alberto. As Myriam translated, her soft voice ricocheted off rock walls. The three of us leaned together for warmth and to hear each other over the noise of the river and echo.

  “It’s possible, but not likely,” he said slowly. “Rock and brush make the cliff edges hard to get to, and no one ever climbs down here. The elders tell of people in past generations who’ve fallen over the falls or cliffs. Not one ever came out alive. But the soldiers know you are different,” he said, turning to me, then looking at my kayak. “It’s possible, and a sharpshooter’s bullets could reach us, for sure.”

  “They will kill you for deserting?” I don’t know why I bothered posing it as a question.

  Alberto lowered his gaze in my light’s beam when Myriam translated. She wrapped an arm around his trembling shoulders.

  “They will do far worse than kill me.” He rolled up a sleeve to display scars that looked like cigarette burns all up his arm. He removed his wet shirt and turned his bare back to my headlamp. I winced at the angry welts and scars from beatings. Hearing Myriam’s strangled cry, I watched her chest heave as she leaned into Alberto and ran her fingers down his scarred arm and back. She translated between sobs.

  “They torture for the slightest offense in camp,” he said in a flat voice. Myriam lowered her forehead to his knees.

  He lifted a hand to stroke her hair. “You were right,” he whispered, his throat heavy with emotion. “You tried to warn me.”

  I didn’t need to ask why he’d helped capture me. In fact, I wondered if he’d managed to persuade them not to do it until I was free of Myriam. I also wondered what Alberto would do when we reached Jock’s. Surely the Colombian Army would not treat an ex-guerilla kindly, or employ him.

  “There are organizations that protect ex-guerillas,” Alberto said as if reading my thoughts. “There are some in Popayán. They will help me while Myriam starts university there.”

  As Myriam raised her head, Alberto pressed a finger to her lips. “You are meant to go to university. You are meant to help our people. Even Abuela told you so,” he reminded her softly.

  I turned away to grant them privacy for a moment. Then I spoke: “We’ll spend the night here.” I pulled my space blanket out of the kayak. “At first light, we’ll float out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  None of us slept well. We lay in a tight huddle, the space blanket barely reaching across us. Chill wet stones dug into our backs. The impenetrable blackness was accentuated by the constant slapping and sucking noises of the flow beside us. Hunger gnawed, thirst bit. Only our combined body heat provided any relief from the cold. There was comfort in being part of a threesome, I reminded myself – but not much.

  I woke numerous times, fearful that a rainfall might make the water rise and flood our shelf, which would force us into the canyon in the dead of night. Fearful my kayak might float away. Fearful a mad guerilla might climb down the canyon walls, ninja-style, float in, and stab us. Fearful, even, of what lay ahead – the tremendous responsibility I had for two people as well as myself. On the other hand, once I’d seen the cave entrance, I’d never have attempted the canyon if not for the need to get my companions to safety. Nor would Henrique or Tiago ever have considered it.

  When the first pricks of light lit the two ends of our cavern, I felt Myriam stir. “What would you have done if you’d found that this tunnel wouldn’t let us through?” she asked.

  I flicked on my light and turned it towards her. I’d been waiting for that question. “I’d have been forced to free-climb the canyon walls on the river’s left side and help you up with my throw rope. Then we’d have had to take our chances with the paramilitaries, I guess.”

  Myriam shivered. She couldn’t imagine taking their chances with those who’d slaughtered the men of her village.

  I walked to the downstream end of the shelf and listened. The roar of whitewater was not sweetness to my ears. The prospect of big rapids no longer drew or thrilled me. My only goal was to get Alberto and Myriam out of the canyon alive.

  I returned to our shelf. We each took sips of water from the little bit we’d left in the jugs. No one had food.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” I said. “You’ll float in the water on your backs with your jugs on your stomach and your feet up. You’ll keep a death grip on your jugs with one hand, while using the other to maneuver left or right. Aim for the deepest-looking channels, unless I signal otherwise.”

  “Could we tie our jugs to us?” Myriam suggested.

  “Dangerous,” I replied. “If anything catches, you could get strangled or drown. I’ll be well ahead, picking the best route. You’ll do what you can to follow that route. It’s very, very important you try to go where I go. In Class V, the wrong route can kill you. The most important thing to remember …” I paused for effect “… is to keep your feet up and pointed downstream. If you lower them, they can catch between rocks and drown you.”

  The memory of nearly doing that when paddling with Jock a
nd Tom was all too fresh.

  “Plus, you need to use your feet to spring off rocks as the river hurls you towards them. Bend your knees and bounce off them the way a frog floating on its back would.”

  A vague smile pulled at Myriam’s face.

  “Alberto’s shoes will protect him as he does this. Myriam, I’m giving you my neoprene boots so you don’t cut your feet.”

  “Okay,” she said, tugging my boots on after I passed them to her. I omitted saying that this added to the many reasons I must not – absolutely must not – eject from my boat. As their leader, and as someone with no one to rescue me if I messed up, I felt intense pressure to succeed in rolling up every time the violent rapids capsized me.

  “If I see something super-dangerous, I’ll attempt to land on a rock and position myself to toss you the throw rope. It will guide you the right way or pull you to safety. If you get ahead of me, try to back-stroke into a calm spot until I pass you.”

  “Okay,” they said.

  Secretly, I feared for them. Even if they’d been expert kayakers, following my lead was going to be tough. Doing so while immersed in tossing water, with no more than a slapping hand to steer with, and while clinging to a floating jug, was going to be somewhere between brutal and impossible. But critical for survival.

  “Kayakers use river signals,” I added, and shone the headlamp on myself to demonstrate the hand and paddle signals that would warn them to maneuver themselves left, right, or center down a rapid.

  “And if I raise my paddle like this …” I lifted it high above my head horizontally “… it means get out of the water onto a rock as fast as you can, and wait for further instruction, okay?”

  My headlamp illuminated their nervous glances towards our cave’s exit.

  “Alberto, I have a pair of shorts you should change into.”

  He looked at me questioningly.

  “You don’t want your guerilla uniform on anymore, do you? You don’t want the guerillas or paras or Colombian Army to identify you as an ex-guerilla.”

  “You’re right,” he mumbled, and accepted my shorts. As he changed, I switched off my light. The blackness was creepy. I wanted out of this tunnel.

  “Ready?” I asked, flicking the light back on.

  “Ready,” Alberto answered in English. I saw Myriam look at him with surprise and pride.

  “No matter what is ahead,” I pronounced, “it’s only a few miles to the Magdalena. The Furioso will batter us, but stay with my line and it will flush us out into the Magdalena alive. Maybe even before noon.”

  My hand brushed against my paddling jacket pocket before I remembered the necklace was no longer there. Myriam saw me. She reached out for my hand and touched my fingers to her necklace. Then she did the same for Alberto.

  I climbed into my kayak. They placed their only possessions – the water jugs – on their chests.

  I paddled out of the tunnel exit, which was just high enough that I didn’t need to roll to slip under it. The daylight blinded me. Even as I positioned myself for the first rapid, I glanced warily up canyon walls that reached high towards the blue cloudless sky. Though I’d never have seen a hidden sniper, one thing was for sure: I was about to become a super-fast-moving target. Dead Man’s Canyon lay before me like a seething minefield of whitewater. It was tough to identify a safe line at all, let alone on the fly. But I was committed, now, and determined to fight the battle with the best muscle and instincts I had.

  Whoosh, wham, bang. My boat felt pellet-sized in the massive waves, which picked it up, slammed it down, and threw it against house-sized boulders. I got thrown over; I rolled; I got tossed into a backwards cartwheel; I rolled again. My heart moved to my throat. My eyes darted everywhere, searching for passage between boulders. I scouted frantically from the tops of waves and looked in vain for eddies into which I could turn and breathe, check on my mates behind me, and gauge what was coming up.

  I turned violently into a micro-eddy at the end of the first rapid, craned my neck, and saw my compatriots come bobbing, crashing, and hurtling towards me. Like ducklings caught in a hurricane, they searched frantically for their leader and flapped madly to follow in my path.

  I peeled out again, got sideswiped by a wave, and skittered down a frothy, rock-studded path, barely upright. In the havoc of current at the rapid’s bottom, I was thrown over, the collision of my helmet on rock reverberating around my skull. I rose back upright on one quick paddle arc. Hardly had I blinked water out of my eyes when I found my kayak charging towards a line of rocks that divided the river into two. One look and I knew that the right-hand channel was the way to go, but my best efforts to sprint over there turned my boat backwards in the left lane. No! Frantically, I signaled for my followers to head right, even as I was forced to negotiate – backwards – the tricky water in the rockier channel.

  Loud smacks against rocks unnerved me, but failed to damage my boat or the touch-and-go course I selected. This is the butt-bruising, foot-entrapment capital of the world if my two river-mates make it down here, I thought.

  At the bottom, I put in a hard spin and sprinted to the end of the other chute in time to help steer Myriam and Alberto to a calm patch.

  “You went the right way,” I congratulated them. “Are you okay?”

  “Y-y-yes,” Myriam said, shaking as Alberto eased his stranglehold on his jug. “Can we rest a minute?”

  “For sure.”

  Hauling themselves up on a rock, Myriam and Alberto glanced upstream and downstream. The towering canyon walls cast reproving shadows on the invasion of its ancient, undisturbed space.

  “So far so good,” I tried to reassure them, treading water with my paddle to stay close by.

  It was several moments before either spoke.

  “This is nothing like the rapids near our community,” Myriam said in a low voice, rubbing her back like it had been bruised by multiple rock hits already.

  “No. Canyons tend to be crazier. Too much water squeezed into too narrow a space.”

  Myriam turned and studied me as she fingered her necklace. “You were looking forward to this?” she said with a note of disbelief.

  I was holding up, but was far too concerned for our safety to be enjoying it. I squinted downriver. “If you get ahead of me and can’t grab a rock, what are you supposed to do?” I coached.

  “Keep to the deepest channel, and keep our feet up,” she recited.

  “And never, ever let go …”

  “… of our jugs,” she finished, looking down at hers.

  “Tell me when you’re good to go again.”

  They sat there, pale-faced and silent, for a full five minutes. Then they eased back into the water together, faces turned bravely toward me.

  I smiled, with what I hoped communicated confidence, and plunged my kayak back into the heart of Dead Man’s Canyon. Once again, the Furioso flung me at boulders that seemed to rise at will and turn passing water into a simmering stew of instability.

  I lost count how many slap-braces gave me narrow escapes from capsizing. I lost count how many times I had to roll. My neck grew stiff from the tension of scouting upcoming catastrophes and swiveling around to check on Myriam and Alberto. Surely we are at least halfway down now?

  I sighted a decent-sized eddy and darted towards it, adrenalin fueling my overworked shoulder muscles, only to find myself sucked into a whirlpool that knocked me over and held me, even after I rolled four times within it. It ground my helmeted head against an underwater rock before I finally rose, gasping, and side-surfed out of its grip.

  There! A moment’s reprieve in a patch of calm. My breath was coming fast. My throat was dry. I stretched my neck high to look for my companions. I saw Alberto’s jug come barreling towards me – his head, shoes, and hands extending out from it like turtle appendages.

  “Grab hold of a rock and wait for me,” I shouted, pointing and pantomiming so he’d understand. His face was white, but he’d made it past the whirlpool. That’s something.<
br />
  “Myriam isn’t behind me!” he shouted. “She went …” He pointed to a different channel.

  No! I thought. She hadn’t been able to see me or judge which way to head, while I was upside down.

  I searched the waves for the second jug, my chest tight with worry. Then I saw it – floating high and alone – no Myriam clinging to it. Charging out of my eddy, I ferried back and forth, back and forth, as Alberto managed to halt his downriver journey by clinging to a rock in an eddy near me. Neither of us was in a position to catch the jug, even if we hadn’t been more focused on sighting Myriam. Finally, I heard a shout and saw her clinging to a small boulder upstream – well away from where I’d carved a path. She was struggling to maintain her hold.

  “Myriam!” I screamed.

  She raised her head.

  “Stay there!” With no flotation or help, she could not carry on down the steep, agitated channel. I looked about frantically, found a rock I might be able to climb onto, and took considerable effort to get to it. After I hugged the rock, I crawled up onto it and pulled my boat to safety. I aimed the throw bag to a point just upstream of Myriam. It took two tries, but she finally grabbed it as it floated by. Then, after great hesitation, she slid off her rock and into the roiling water. When she dropped into the whirlpool that marked the joining of the two channels, I pulled and pulled, praying she wouldn’t lose her grip.

  Finally, I guided her to my rock and pulled her up by her armpits. She allowed me to lay her on her back. She was so bruised and waterlogged, she resembled a rag doll. I turned and felt immensely relieved to see Alberto and his jug still waiting in their eddy. Downstream of him, I noted, the rapids let up a little.

  I squatted down on our tiny rock to study Myriam, whose braid was in disarray. Hair hung over her face. She didn’t bother to move it. “Are you okay?”

  She stared dully at me, not responding. She looked defeated. Without the jug, she was lucky not to have drowned. I noticed her shivering uncontrollably. I unzipped my life jacket, sat her up, helped her arms into it, and zipped it back up. She didn’t move to help me; she seemed almost lifeless. I wrapped her in a warm embrace to reassure her. Alberto would have to understand. She didn’t resist, nor did she respond. I kept my arms around her until I felt the shivers subside. Then I placed my hands on each side of her face to lift it to mine.