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DESTINATIONS SPECIAL: The Scouting Expedition
A Trip is Born (Cont.)

Day 3, mile 53
WHERE WERE THE RAPIDS? We'd been expecting them since the afternoon of the first day, but it'd been all smooth paddling so far. Cherri, scouting the Lugenda by plane three weeks earlier, had marked some of the rapids by GPS. It was mostly a flatwater river, she reported, with the rapids concentrated in the first few days.

Earlier in the morning, a fisherman poling a bark canoe had warned us of four cataractas ahead. The river braided between willow-cloaked granite outcrops before suddenly narrowing and tumbling over a six-foot ledge onto jagged granite. Even with a fair amount of whitewater experience, I wondered if I could steer the heavily burdened sea kayak over the ledge without tipping.

Clinton studied the drop.

"It's too steep for these boats," he finally pronounced. "It'd be no problem in a river kayak, but it might knock the rudders off the back of the sea kayaks."

I was relieved. Clinton and Rod—who was so strong he could single-handedly heft his and Cherri's big double with all its gear—and Steve and I hauled our boats over the rocks to the channel below.

When we reached the next rapids, a five-foot ledge plunging into standing waves, I was ready to portage again. But Clinton hopped into his yellow single, dropped down a slot in the lip, paddled gracefully through the waves, and eddied into a pool, waving his paddle at us.

Steve and I stroked upstream. Then I wheeled the boat around, aiming at Clinton's upraised blade. The big kayak tilted over the lip and dove into the waves, water crashing into the air. Rod and Cherri followed, whooping loudly.

We'd run our first rapids on the Lugenda.

We ate breakfast on a sandbar. With military precision, Clinton and Rod had structured our daily routine: up at dawn; a quick energy bar; on the river around seven o'clock; paddle until breakfast at 10:30; paddle nonstop until late afternoon; make camp. (Every night after dinner, as he crawled into his bag near the fire, Clinton asked me to read a "bedtime story" from Wild Africa, an anthology I'd brought along.) With this stripped-down schedule, we'd make maximum daily distance, whatever the shortfall in daily calories or sleep.

Clinton and Rod built a fire and tossed about a rugby ball as a pot of amber-colored river water came to a boil. The satellite phone—for "emergency use only"—emerged from its waterproof case. Rod checked his safari-business e-mails. The night before, Cherri had called her office. Is this truly wilderness? I'd wondered, hearing muffled voices in the thick African night. We finished our mugs of instant oatmeal.

"If you 'okes are properly rested, let's carry on," Clinton would say after a short break, his Rhodesian accent suggesting empire on the march. "We have a rivah to conquah!"

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