By 05:40 the television was close to maximum and I could obviously not sleep
anymore - Tuesday 17 November had arrived on a loud note. Celliers said the
mosques had started singing at 04:00 but luckily I didn't hear it. Note I
use the plural, there must have been around five of them, all of which you
could hear at the same time. On one rainy morning it actually sounded great,
but I guess I must have had more sleep that time round. Breakfast was boiled
eggs and noodles, and I'll spare you the meals from now on. Although they
were often the same, and quite simple, they were absolutely marvelous and
even as a fairly fussy eater, I found these meals disappearing quicker than
a home sick mole. Soon after breakfast our two vehicles arrived. A Ford and
Mitsubishi double cab, both of them 4x4. We loaded our boats and took a long
drive to the put in of the, let's call it, 'Lower' Batang Liki. Batang is
the word for river. So it's The Liki River and again, they have the words
reversed so one could directly translate as River Liki but of course this is
not the case.

A wooden bridge with steel girders spanned the broad river and a long but
gentle rapid lay downstream as it disappeared into the shadows of the thick
surrounding jungle. The clear water looked inviting and upon testing the
temperature, this was confirmed. I decided not to paddle with a top on at
all. My dry top was at home anyway as I knew this was going to be warm water
territory. Although, looking back, my short sleeved dry top would have come
in handy from time to time as an enormous amount of water comes in at the
tunnel around your waist! But only once on the river, unless you wish you
dehydrate yourself by walking if the put in is long. I applied sunscreen to
my bare arms and got ready to hit the water. We were quite certain this was
going to be a fairly easy section and hoped it would be, as we had never
paddled with the other four Indonesian guys before. This was a first descent
and because we basically had no useful maps, we had no idea what the
gradient actually was but we were fairly certain it would be fine. I grabbed
my boat and carried it down to the river, this rubbed the sunscreen off my
right shoulder, I didn't think about this at the time. Oops.

====

Selanjutnya beserta photo2, klik :
http://adrian.playak.com/index.php/west-sumatra-2009-mainmenu-22/147-lower-b
atang-liki-the-first-of-the-first-descents-part-2

 

Wasalam.

Nofend

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