Nasty Monkey Bites! (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine January 2002

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Nasty Monkey Bites! (Cont.)

O: Pardon?

Blashford-Snell: They wanted it. They had incredibly bad teeth. They eat sugarcane.

O: You're not personally traveling around yanking teeth?

Blashford-Snell: No, we had a dentist along from London. These people had never seen a dentist in their lives.

O: How did the last trip go?

Blashford-Snell: The real problem for us was that there were 300 miles of rapids on the Bolivian-Brazilian border. So we had to design a boat that was capable of going through whitewater. And, near as possible, we followed the traditional design. We produced a trimaran—three boats joined together by cables, slung very close, side by side. We got through some incredible rapids. And almost at the end of the rapids, we hit a Grade 5, or, some say, a Grade 6. It was quite extraordinary. The boat went into a hole, which was about 15 feet deep. One of the outriggers immediately tore itself away from the main hull, and we flung up in the air and capsized. All the men were thrown in the water. This boat, which by that time weighed about 20 tons,

If you asked me to climb Everest, because there was some reason to, such as a rare plant on top that might help cure cancer, I think I'd build a scaffolding up the side.

was absolutely stopped dead. And then she went down into another bad hole and rolled out of that one. Amazingly, the hull rerighted itself, rather like one of these lifeboats coming up the right way. There were still four guys clinging to the wreckage.

O: Wow.

Blashford-Snell: And there were 11 in the water at this point. They managed to swim out and were picked up by the rescuers. The boat then drifted downriver, and at this point I could see that there was no way the four men left on board could control it, so I ordered them to be taken off. We watched the boat sadly disappear into the sunset over the next lot of rapids. Next morning, I flew 20 miles downriver, and there was the boat! She was tied up at the bank, looking as if nothing much had happened to her. We rebuilt the damaged stern on the main hull, and she sailed for another 1,600 miles. That's how resilient the reed boats are.

O: Have you always been adventurous, even as a boy?

Blashford-Snell: I was pretty sickly as a kid. I suffered from asthma, I had flat feet, I had hay fever, and I was allergic to cats. But my parents were very adventurous. My mother and father spent a lot of time galloping around the bush with Boy Scouts and Girl Guides. And they brought me up very much along those lines. Eventually my asthma disappeared, thank God. I'm still allergic to cats. But it's very useful when there's a tiger around. I can smell 'em a mile away. When I've been in the forests of Nepal, for example, usually just about the time my elephant senses it, I can smell tiger if there's one close by.

O: You had a hellish parasite in Fiji. Is that the sickest you've ever been?

Blashford-Snell: I've had parasites—but malaria is the worst thing. I had malaria three times in Africa, and once it was nearly fatal. It's a rather unpleasant disease. The trouble is, the drugs are also unpleasant. When I was in South America in '99, I was on a drug that gave me hepatitis. So I had six months of that.

O: The drug gave you hepatitis?

Blashford-Snell: It's a side effect. I went bright yellow, and couldn't drink whiskey for six months. Terrible for me.

O: What's the most exhilarating moment you've had in your travels?

Blashford-Snell: Crikey. There are so many. I suppose coming out of the Congo River in '75, when we'd come 2,700 miles. Coming out of the river and onto the ocean, and suddenly you realized that the river wasn't tugging and pulling at you; you were just riding up and down gently on a swell in the Atlantic. A chaplain we had with us had a service, and we stood there with the sun going down behind us. It was a service of thanksgiving on the Atlantic for the fact that we'd all lived and got through, because no one had been killed, which had been miraculous. That was certainly one of the most thrilling moments of my life.

O: Is there any obstacle that's gotten the better of you?

Blashford-Snell: I'm not in it for pure adventure. I don't tackle obstacles like the South Pole, the North Pole, or Everest—I don't need to prove anything to myself. I know just about what I can do. I believe that any bloody fool can be uncomfortable. If I go on an expedition, I try to make it as pleasant and comfortable as I possibly can. I'm not averse to having a bottle of scotch carried along, and a few decent glasses to drink it from. If you asked me to climb Everest, because there was some reason to climb it, such as a rare plant on top that might help people find a cure for cancer, I think I'd build a scaffolding up the side.

O: I'd like to see you try.

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