Ep. 1187: Madagascar - Kayaking the Mangoky from Source to Sea with Oscar Scafidi

You're listening to the Adventure Sports Podcast.

Thanks for adventuring with us as we discover what incredible athletes and outdoor enthusiasts

are doing all over the world.

Now here's your host, Kurt Linville.

Hello Adventure Sports Podcast family, boy, today's episode is super cool.

We're talking about Madagascar.

We know that island that broke off the continent of Africa forever ago and has its own unique

wildlife and geology and plants and anyway.

We're talking about that.

We're also talking about a river on Madagascar.

People say the mangaki because that's the way it's spelled, but the locals have corrected

us.

It's mangak.

That's what I learned from this among other things and this is a source to see.

It is about 750ish up to quite a bit more kilometers and there's a book, Kayak, The Mangak.

So all of that is going to be super fun, but I'm sitting here and I realized that I was

wearing a hat and this hat says on it, Beacon Guide Books.

And my friend at Beacon Guide Books Andy, I've known him for several years.

He has done amazing things with backcountry, column gazettes, column guidebooks, whatever

you want to call them.

They're for backcountry skiing and what he's done is he's taken aerial photographs and

put together an amazing guidebook for backcountry skiing.

And he has these for epic ski routes all over the country.

I think maybe his first book might have been in our valley around Crestibute and the

elk range, but he has since done ranges all over the west and Beacon Guide Books.

If you want to figure out where the epic runs are, figure out how to do them safely, figure

out how to get there, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, then check out Beacon Guide Books

with Andy.

Oh, and by the way, this is not a paid advertisement.

I'm just wearing the hat seriously and I thought, you know, I should let everyone know about

this.

We talk about backcountry skiing and actually, even though it is now spring, it is March.

By the time you hear this, March the 4th, this is actually the beginning of the backcountry

ski season in earnest.

And the reason is because this is when the snow consolidates and it's possible to get

into some epic areas without as much avalanche danger.

Be safe out there and all you backcountry skiers enjoy the second ski season of 2026.

Now to kind of set the scene, imagine for a minute, almost being lost in the wild places

of Madagascar, going to places that no one else has gone to or no one goes to.

You don't know if you're the first person to be there or not.

For 27 days, we're talking about running rivers through canyons, rapids, having to

portage over mountain ranges, true adventure, imagine this for just a minute.

Can you feel it?

Can you hear the sounds?

Can you feel the water?

Can you see the sights?

Can you smell it?

Madagascar.

Let's dive in.

Hey friends, today I have a very unique gentleman with us.

He is a travel writer.

He is an educator.

He does long distance expeditions, adventures across the continent of Africa.

The man is Oscar Scafidi.

And Oscar is here today to talk specifically about one of his books and he's contributed

to many, which we'll talk about.

But this book is kayaking the mangok or as we like to say the mangokie, but it's the

mangok we just learned.

So Oscar, welcome to the adventure sports podcast.

Thank you very much for having me cut.

Yeah, so you're in Ethiopia right now, is that right?

That is correct.

Yeah, I'm in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.

And I looked kind of over some of the books you've written.

There is also the Kwanza, kayak the Kwanza.

So another one and then you have travel guides to Angola and other countries.

How did you end up in East Africa?

So I am a qualified teacher.

So I teach history.

I teach a lot of African history and I've been teaching on the international school

circuit for the past.

I mean, it's coming up to 20 years now.

So I kind of, I juggle a couple of different careers at the same time.

So right now I am working at an international school here in Addis Ababa with my partner

who's also teaching at the school.

And we arrived here because we were previously both working in Indonesia.

And we wanted to move back to Africa.

And so we applied for a few jobs in various different countries on the continent that

we were interested in.

And this looked like the most appealing location and school.

So we ended up moving out here last year in August, I think.

You know, if we didn't even talk about kayaking these great rivers, we could just spend

the rest of the time talking about what it's like to be an international teacher and

travel from location to location, experiencing the world and the people on that level.

What is that like?

It is a fantastic career.

Yeah, I think I guess I say I juggle a few different careers, but there's certainly

a lot of overlap in terms of the opportunities that these different things allow you to do

whether it's travel writing or teaching internationally.

So yeah, basically you sign a two-year contract, obviously you interview for jobs, but once

you're offered a job, you sign a two-year contract and then you relocate yourself and your

life to that place.

And then after that, you can kind of go on to rolling one year contracts.

So it's really up to you and your employer how long it is that you want to stay in that

place.

So yeah, it's really the world is your oyster in terms of places to go because they're

international schools in almost every country in the world.

I did not know that.

That is a fantastic way to experience the world.

That is super, super cool.

One of my biggest complaints about adventure travel is that it's too short.

You know, you don't get to spend enough time in one place to really get to know the culture

and the people like I would like to anyway.

And like I just returned from Tanzania about three days ago and I'm still jet lagged.

But my biggest complaint about that trip, which I won't complain, it's a wonderful, wonderful

experience that I had.

But my only complaint was I really didn't get to see Tanzania.

I saw Kilimanjaro a very big mountain and I got to know the people that I climbed

it with very well, which was delightful.

But I was sad because I really didn't get to experience Tanzania itself.

Yeah, I mean, that's one thing I really like about this, this career path is that you

get to spend multiple years in the same location, getting to know the city that you're in.

You are working with a lot of local colleagues, so you build that sort of network and you

get to see a country from a completely different site to how you would see it if you were going

in as a tourist or in a sort of shorter expedition.

Hmm, yeah, I love it.

You also seem to have a connection to big rivers.

So how did you get started exploring these rivers?

What's that about?

Yeah, so the first big river expedition I did was in Angola in 2016.

So my friend, Alfie Weston and I, we kayaked the Kwanza River, which is the longest river

in the country.

I mean, it's a bit of debate as to how long exactly it is.

The Wikipedia entry says that it's about 975 kilometers long.

I'm not sure what that is in miles, I'm afraid.

But we ended up kayaking just shy of 1,000 kilometers on it.

We did a solid 300 kilometers of portage in addition.

So I get the feeling it's actually a bit longer than it's recorded as in the official sources.

Yeah, I was wondering about that.

It's hard to know really where river starts.

It's easier to figure out where it ends most of the time.

But like I was just on Google Earth and I was looking at the Mangok River.

Yes.

And I thought, well, I wonder which leg of this is the river and which one is where they

started and how you get the miles in and all that.

So you've touched upon one of the chief sources of stress when it came to organizing our expedition

in Madagascar on the Mangok.

So for the Kwanza River in Angola, it was actually my friend, Alfie, who came up with

the idea for the expedition.

He also lived in Angola at the time and he had a previous interest in the river.

He'd done a couple of shorter sections.

But anyway, for him finding the source is very easy.

The source is listed in various locations and it's accurate.

So when you drive down to it, it's actually sign-posted as a sort of tourist site or a site

of special interest.

So you can just follow the sign off the road, drive a few kilometers off road, and there

you are.

That is the source of the Kwanza River.

That's not disputed.

For Madagascar, it's a very, very different situation.

So firstly, the start of the river isn't a much more remote location.

And secondly, there's not really one established authority who's decided exactly which tributary

is the beginning of which tributary is the source.

So lots of hydrological debates to be had as to exactly where the start point is.

In the end, we spent months doing the research and the best we could get was a French hydrology

report of the island from the 1990s that covered the entire island.

So it had a very short section on the Mangok and it just referenced one of the tributaries

which is the Matsiatra and it referenced the source of the Matsiatra as being the source

of the Mangok because that feeds into the Mangok.

But it just said it's kind of over here next to this mountain.

That was about as close as we got.

So no GPS location, no sign posting.

We just had to sort of head in that vague direction and work it out once we got on the

ground.

Interesting.

So on Google Earth, I mean, for the listeners, I'm sorry, you don't have this open in front

of you right now, but on one of the tributaries, it looks like there's a sizable lake or series

of lakes that could be a source.

Is that not where it is?

No.

So the Matsiatra kind of flows, it's to the south east of Fianadansoa.

That's the nearest point that you would find because that's actually quite a large town.

That is a long Google Earth.

Yeah, the Matsiatra sort of flows over that town.

So you sort of follow it to the south east from that town.

And that's the source of the Mangok.

So I'm kind of chuckling here because the adventure begins just with the idea.

Just trying to sort out how to start, where to start, what to do.

I mean, that's a big part of it.

That's a huge part of it.

And it was a little bit frustrating because we just wanted a GPS location.

You want certainty when it comes to the planning stage.

You want to know where the start point is.

And then you know how long it's going to take to get to it.

Whereas what we did is we just got ourselves as far down the Matsiatras we could.

And then we had to start hiking towards the source.

So we had a solid four days that was a little bit difficult mentally because we're walking

in the wrong direction.

We're going to have to redo all of this.

We're going to have more of our gear with some local guys who say they know where the

source is.

And we're just following this river as it goes from being about two meters wide to being

one meter wide to being a trickle.

Yeah, it was very, very tough.

So how far did you have to hike down from the trickle before the river was big enough to

float your kayak?

It wasn't too bad actually.

Once we'd found the source, according to the locals, we sort of said, okay, camp for

the night.

And then tomorrow we'll start from the beginning and the expedition will actually begin.

So that was technically day four of the whole trip.

So when people ask how long it took, I mean, I suppose from source to sea, it took about

24 days, but to actually get to the source in the first place took another four.

So in my head, it's at least 28 days worth of journey.

But actually, it only took one day of solid hiking before we could get to a section where

it was wide enough and deep enough that we could put the kayak together and actually

start paddling.

Okay.

What kind of a kayak is this?

Explain a packable kayak to us.

Yes.

So it is a clapper kayak.

So clapper are a German brand.

This kind of kayak was invented at the turn of the century.

So I think sort of 1906, 1907.

And it was such a good piece of engineering that it basically hasn't changed for nearly

a hundred years.

And they still use the same materials, actually.

So you get a birch wood frame, a very lightweight, flexible wood.

You make the sort of skeleton and then you just pull a canvas skin over that skeleton.

And then after that, you can put all your gear in it and you add the rudder and the pedals

and et cetera, et cetera.

So we had a 5.45 meter long two man kayak weighed about 36 kilos with absolutely nothing

in it.

So by the time you've added additional stuff like seats, rudder, pedals for the rudder,

that sort of thing.

I think you're up to at least 40 kilos and then obviously we add all of our gear on top

of that.

But yeah, basically you can break it down and what ended up happening both on the Angola

trip and on the Madagascar trip is you split it between the two of you.

So you end up with about 20 kilos of kayak on your back and then you add all the other

stuff that you need as well for survival and camping and hiking.

So that's not a light load.

So 40 kilos is about 88 pounds.

So you have about 44 pounds each of just boat, not to mention everything that you have

to throw on there.

And yeah.

So what about resupply?

Did you have to be self-sustaining all the way down or could you resupply as you go?

We were allowed to resupply it.

So I mean, we were allowed to do whatever we wanted.

It was our trip, but we decided on the Angola trip back in 2016, we decided we were going

to apply for a Guinness World Record and they're quite strict about what they mean when

they mean source to see trips.

So we had to move the kayak under our own power for the entirety of the journey.

So we either needed to be paddling the kayak or we needed to be carrying the kayak.

No one could.

We couldn't get porters, for example, to carry any piece of the kayak at any stage.

However, we were allowed things like resupplies.

So we didn't have to carry all the food we required for the entire.

I mean, Angola was a 32, 33 day journey.

So we basically had pre-arranged rendezvous at the sort of seven to ten day mark where

we could get more food and swap out gear and that kind of thing.

And that was a similar situation in Madagascar.

So yeah, we had to carry the kayak the whole way or paddle it.

But then we did have a couple of rendezvous points with our chief guide where he just

had a massive suitcase full of food and we could just grab stuff and put it on our backs.

Wow.

So, man, where to start, where to start?

But I guess the first thing is, you'd already done a big river.

So you knew what you're getting into when you chose to do the man goch and I have a hard

time, not saying man gochie.

So I have to.

Well, so did we.

Yeah.

Turns out we pronounced it wrong for the entirety of the expedition.

So if you watch our documentary film, we're saying it wrong for all those 45 minutes.

So we were only correcting on the finish line.

That's hilarious.

Where can people see the film because they're going to want to see this?

Yeah, I mean, it's available free for you on YouTube.

So if you just type in kayak the man goch or kayak the man gochie, you will find it

quite quickly.

Oh, that's awesome.

It's out there in the world if people want to watch it.

So you've traveled around a lot of Africa and other places in the world.

But what stands out in Madagascar is unique.

Something that you think the listeners would say, wow, that is something.

Where to start with Madagascar.

So just to say, even though I did the expedition in 2022, I had actually previously lived in

Madagascar for many years, well, two years.

So I actually worked at an international school in Madagascar between 2017 and 2019.

So I got a really good opportunity to explore the island and get to know the culture and

the people there.

So we were talking earlier on about how that gives you a completely different view of

a place as opposed to going in as a tourist.

And I think people talk about Madagascar as the eighth continent because it's so unique

in terms of flora and fauna compared to anywhere else in the world.

If you look at it, it sort of fits quite nicely against the coastline of Mozambique.

And it used to be part of the coastline, but it split away long, long ago.

And since then, everything's evolved in a completely different direction.

So they have a lot of endemic, unique plants and animals, the most famous one being the

lemurs made famous by the film Madagascar, but also you have incredible rainforests.

You have some amazing Indian ocean beaches, those sorts of things.

And I think the one thing that really stood out to me when I first moved there in 2017

is how a lot of it didn't look and feel like Africa.

It looked and felt much more like certain parts of Southeast Asia.

In terms of the people and the culture and the farming that was happening there and the

fishing and things.

And there's a very specific reason for that.

So the people of Madagascar originally are not from mainland Africa, they're actually

from Southeast Asia.

So it's very strange to think when you look at the map because you'd assume that Madagascar

would have been settled from the west, people getting in boats in Mozambique coming across

the Mozambique channel, which is not that far, and settling that way, whereas in reality

what they did is they came all the way across the Indian Ocean from some islands in Indonesia,

such as Borneo, which is truly incredible.

And you see that overlap in the Malagasy language, you see it in the types of food and musical

instruments and certain technologies that people use.

And it's just something I didn't really know about before I moved there.

Wow, that is a cool, it's not trivial there, but for me, it's something that I did

not know, and I find fascinating, the way that the people in Southeast Asia traveled

through across the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean, it's just mind blowing how they

did.

It's incredible that the technology and in a lot of cases not in very big boats at all,

but just using quite advanced navigational techniques and having a really clear understanding

of the winds and those sorts of things.

So I guess they kind of skirt it their way all the way across, via Sri Lanka and Indian

things, and then down, which is quite amazing if you look at the distances.

Goodness, yeah, that's crazy.

I mean, listeners pull up a map and look at this because it's kind of mind blowing.

That's something else.

Okay, so what is it that makes the Mangak River unique?

I would say probably it's the levels of isolation that you see along quite vast stretches of it.

So Madagascar itself is a huge island, it's about 1,600 kilometers or 1,000 miles long.

It's got a big spine of mountains that sort of go down the middle, so they divide the

east coast and the west coast, and this river sort of cuts through quite close, it starts

quite close to the east coast and it sort of cuts through westwards over and comes out

on the west coast, almost through the centre-ish of the island.

And that is one of the most isolated, undeveloped parts of the entire island.

So you've got a very remote chain of mountains that basically has no people in it.

You've got grassland again, it's not very inhabited at all.

So it's a part of the country that you would not get to see otherwise.

There are no roads, there's no way of getting there unless you're on the river.

What kind of wildlife are you encountering along the way?

I mean, I would assume there are some crocodiles and things like that.

But being separate from the main continent of Africa, I'm not sure what's there.

Yeah, so one of the chief sources of stress when we did our Angola expedition was not only

man-eating crocodiles of which there are a fair fear in Angola, it was also hippos.

So hippos are very, very dangerous.

In fact, far more stress for kayakers than crocodiles should be, especially if you're in a big kayak.

You know, the big, the territorial, they've got no natural predators once they reach maturity

and they're very, very aggressive.

Now, luckily for us, the last hippos in Madagascar died out a long time ago.

They used to have pygmy hippos, but now they don't have any hippos.

So we were quite pleased to read that we weren't going to have the hippo risk

along the river.

I'm sorry for the lack of biodiversity, but yes, they were crocodiles.

So crocodiles were our main concern and also bull sharks or zambizi sharks.

And we did see both of those as we were going.

But because the communities along the river are quite impoverished and kind of have a lack

of access to protein essentially, they have poached a lot of these crocodiles right down

in terms of the total numbers.

So whereas in Angola when we were kayaking in 2016, we saw some massive crocodiles, huge,

huge, very scary, you know, some of them looking like they were almost the same length as

our five and a half meter kayak whereas in Madagascar, the average crocodile we saw was

probably one meter because they just get, they get caught and eaten.

So yeah, they, they were there, but they weren't too much of a risk for us.

On that, we saw a lot of beautiful bird life, saw some incredible fish eagles and various

other animals, birds up in the trees.

And we did actually see lemurs, many different species of lemurs.

I know it sounds like a bit of a stereotype, but yeah, as we were kayaking along, we did

have cifarcas, which are the sort of fluffy white lemurs, they're actually quite famous

because when they're on the ground, they bounce sideways, so they look like they're dancing.

So we, we disturbed them while they're having their lunch and they were swinging through

the trees, making a lot of noise.

We saw brown lemurs who are very, very common across the island bouncing around as fantastic.

So yeah, a lot of animal life as we went.

Now that's fun.

So what's it like contrast for us?

What's it like to float down a river in a place like this in comparison to some other

way to see the land, maybe hiking across it?

From a wildlife perspective, you are much better off floating.

You can sneak up on a lot of animals, much better on a river than you could if you were

hiking.

So I've had some of those incredible encounters I just talked about.

I don't think, I don't think some of those would have happened.

Had we been trudging along, making a lot of noise on a hiking trail.

So yeah, that's one thing.

And I've actually got another example of that.

This is actually from a completely different trip.

I was in Gabon and we were on the water of a river and we managed to sneak up on a group

of forest elephants because they just couldn't hear us because of the rushing water all

around us.

Whereas had we been walking, they absolutely would have cleared out before we arrived

because they've got a fantastic sense of hearing as well as a sense of smell.

So yeah, it's quiet.

It's very peaceful and therefore you can sneak up on stuff that wouldn't allow you to

otherwise.

When humans have used waterways to get through difficult areas for thousands of years, which

is pretty common, do you think it's considerably faster on this river to be on the water?

Have you ever gone through all the hassles of getting on the plane, security, luggage,

long waits at the airport, all that kind of stuff?

And then when you finally arrive at your destination, not only are you worn out, but

you also might feel a little bit disconnected.

I know that I do when I hop scotch around the planet on a plane.

That's one of the reasons why I love the great American road trips, where you get to drive

from one place to another and connect all of those dots.

You get to experience the changes in the terrain and the weather and the people and the communities.

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Do you think it's considerably faster on this river to be on the water?

I mean, yes, when it's clear and it's open and there are no waterfalls or rapids, you

can absolutely cover more distance on a river than you could hiking.

So I think on a few days towards the end of the trip, when things widened out and we

had less issues with rapids, we could cover 60, 70 kilometers in a day and considering

how much equipment we had with us, that wouldn't have been possible hiking.

I think our one day hiking record was about 45 kilometers, something like that.

And that was starting in the dark and ending in the dark.

So yeah, you can go a lot quicker, which means you can see more diverse landscapes and

just a lot more of a country.

Yeah.

I mean, we saw essentially a transect of Madagascar that stretched 750 plus kilometers.

There's no chance we could have hiked that.

What an amazing life experience.

You know, you just mentioned waterfalls and rapids and things like that.

What does this name got river like?

Is it pretty tough?

It's very tough.

So we were trying to do our due diligence beforehand and map out the river and where

all the obstacles were going to be.

Unfortunately, we were relying on very old satellite photography because it's not a place

that satellites frequently go over and take detailed photos because there's absolutely

no commercial interest in that part of the world.

So a lot of the photographs we were looking at were taken in the late 80s, early 90s.

And you can imagine how much a river changes over the course of 30 years.

So we mapped it out as best we could.

But we quickly found out once we got on the ground that it's not a particularly suitable

river for kayaking on, especially not source to see.

So our initial estimates were, I think we thought worst case scenario, we're going to have

to portage with the Klepper kayak for about 60 to 100 kilometers.

And that was, we thought us being conservative.

So we were like, okay, we'll kayak about 650K and we'll do the last 100 or so carrying

it, which is bad enough because that's a very heavy kayak.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

So we ended up carrying it for nearly 300 kilometers.

So 300 kilometers, that's 180 miles, that's ridiculous.

That's not good.

And also we were not carrying it, you know, along flat sections of grassland.

We had to carry it through that mountain range in the center of the country because that

was the section with massive gorgeous that we could navigate.

It was the section with the waterfalls.

It was also a section with a canyon that our chief guide, Max, called Crocodile Canyon.

And he was quite insistent that we shouldn't go into Crocodile canyons.

We took him at his word and decided we're going to portage around Crocodile Canyon.

Well, I can't imagine.

So had other people gone down this river before, I mean, I'm sure that parts of it had been,

but so you were first source to see.

That's one of the things that kind of drew me to that river.

So there are sections on the lower mangok that have been done.

And that's actually very good for tourism.

It's nice and flat.

It's wide, not too many dangerous animals.

There's road access.

So I do actually know of an organization that runs a reserve down there.

And they take people out on, you know, three day kayaking trips and they do camping and things like that.

But the upper sections and the Matsiatra, especially as far as we could see,

no one's ever done it.

Even our guide who had taken people specifically for whitewater rafting in certain sections of the middle of the river

said, no one goes up to the start.

Why would they?

There's no reason to go out there.

Right.

So no, we were as far as we are aware, the first people to do this.

Wow.

So you really are boat scouting the whole way.

And I mean, for instance, you mentioned the gorge and having to go around that through the mountains.

But how did you even know where to get out?

Yeah.

So we had to rely a lot on local advice.

So there's a lot of fishermen on the river.

And obviously they move up and down.

For some of those communities, the river is the only way of moving goods up and down.

Because there's no roads in some of those sections.

So we had to ask, basically, you saw anyone who looked like they knew or anyone in a boat.

You said, is there a hazard down there?

How far can you get?

Where's the next village?

How far have you been?

You always have to establish that because we always want to make sure that they're giving

you their first-hand experience rather than something heard.

But yeah, it was a lot of guesswork, but also a lot of just relying on local information

networks because they knew a lot better than we did.

It sounds very, very adventurous.

It really does.

I mean, I think I don't want to assume too much.

I've had dreams of going over the waterfall.

I didn't know it was there.

You know?

That's a terror for me.

So I can't imagine what it's like to go down a river without knowing hardly anything

about it.

It had to be something else.

Yeah, it's certainly a risk.

We tried to mitigate risk as much as possible beforehand, but there was a large element

of our known when it came to this.

So yeah, we did err on the side of caution.

I mean, we are in a five and a half meter long kayak and it's filled with a lot of gear.

So it's heavy.

It's slow.

It's not very maneuverable.

So by the time you see a problem, you can't sort of quickly nip around it.

You have to be very, very careful that you don't drift yourself into trouble because

by then it's too late.

So we did a lot of stopping, getting out, walking up to the obstacles, assessing a lot of discussion

as to whether we were going to go through or whether we're going to actually get out,

carry it or even break it down and carry it along a distance.

Yeah, it was at certain points.

It was very slow progress, but we were deliberately like that to be careful.

It sounds like fun.

Did you ever wish that you had two smaller boats instead of the one bigger one?

Yeah, so we, Ben and I, having done the Madagascar trip, it was never really a discussion

whether we were going to use a Clepper or not.

Back in 2016, when my friend Alfie and I were doing the Angola Expedition, I think the

main reason we used a Clepper was because he already had one and it was in country.

And then we did a bit of research because people were saying you should use pack-rofts,

for example, it would be a lot easier.

And we looked into that and then they were like, oh, maybe you want hard shell kayaks.

And in the end, the Clepper, through sheer luck, happened to be the right tool for the

job because we needed something that had a high carrying capacity for all of the gear.

It makes more sense for you to break down a larger boat and split it between two.

Then you each try to carry your own boat just from a power to weight ratio sort of thing.

And yeah, the pack-rofts, they're just not sturdy enough.

They can't carry enough.

They're too slow in terms of a top speed, especially if there's a headwind.

They just weren't suitable for the job, although they would have been a dream to portage.

Oh, yeah.

We did think about that every time we were carrying our big, heavy boat.

Wow.

What about food?

I mean, it's such a simple question, but what did you eat and when you resupplied, what

was available?

So for the Madagascar trip, we took in all of the food that we required for the entirety

of the trip, and there was no assumption that we were going to be able to get any useful

food by the side of the river on the river, that kind of thing.

So we had an expedition sponsor, her base camp food.

They essentially do mountaineering dehydrated rations.

Okay.

What we ended up having were ultra high calorie dehydrated rations that designed for people

who are climbing up mountains and very sensitive to the weight that they have on their back,

which is also our situation, basically.

So yeah, we ate a weird jamboree of sort of dehydrated spaghetti bolognese and chicken

teacum masala and the various other.

To be honest, it's actually really delicious.

It's really nice stuff, but unfortunately for us, it just wasn't enough calories.

It was physically impossible to carry the amount of calories that we needed, because we're

working from the minute we wake up till the evening, you know, burning thousands of

calories every day.

We just weren't getting enough in, so we were constantly hungry.

Dinner time was one of the most exciting times of the day, because we're just desperate

to rehydrate one of those russian packs and start eating it.

Were you able to supplement the food with foods along the way at all?

No, not really.

We were very surprised, actually.

In a lot of the villages that we went to, they had nothing to sell us, but nothing.

They were subsistence farmers, and they did not have any to sell, like there wasn't a

negotiating tactic.

Obviously, we had money with us.

People were just like, I'm sorry, I can't spare any of this food.

This is for us, so no, we would have loved to be able to buy, especially carbohydrates.

If we had more access to yams or plantains or sweet potato, something like that, it

would have been fantastic, because we were craving carbohydrates, but I can probably count

on one hand the amount of times we managed to buy food from communities as we were, as

we were going along.

Obviously, when we passed through towns, on the rare occasion we passed through towns,

then it was a little bit more promising.

But on the multiple isolated sections, there was no food going, and neither of us are particularly

good fishermen, so we didn't even bother trying that.

I think I would have been looking for some fish.

When I've had to do extended trips with dehydrated foods like that, or freeze dried foods, I've

always tried to take a small container of olive oil at least, because you can pour a little

olive oil on it, get some more calories, or they're all sorts of tricks.

One of my favorites was, you mix regular butter with peanut butter.

You add enough water to make it swallowable, maybe even sizable, and then you can put

some alasas or syrup or jelly or something like that in it.

You can get a lot of calories in a very compact space, but I still find myself on those extended

trips losing weight.

It doesn't seem like there's any weight, you know, there's just no weight to keep up with

it.

So we both lost about 10 kilos each, was that about 22 pounds, someone like that.

And I didn't really have 10 kilos to spare, so I wasn't looking too good on the finish

line, but we put it back on pretty quickly once we finished, so that was fine.

That's amazing, so this is not a luxury trip.

Anybody that wants to go on a luxury trip and enjoy fine dining, this is probably not

it.

No, this was hard work from start to finish, and I mean, from a purely psychological point

of view, it was hard the whole way because of the uncertainty.

We were never quite sure how far we're going to have to go that day, we're never quite

sure whether this is going to be a kayaking day or whether we're going to have to break

it down and start carrying more portage.

We both weren't big fans of the portage, as you can imagine, so hard, hard, hard, hard,

all the way through.

Well, it's not your easy little float trip, the funny thing about Colorado River trips

is that often people will get the rafts, and if you have the raft, then you can have

the huge ice chest, and if you have the huge ice chest, then you can have the ice, and

you can have the steaks, and you can have the drinks, and that sounds amazing.

I think I need to try that one day, that sounds quite luxurious.

Yeah.

Well, food is a big deal on these sorts of expeditions, and quite often we end up just

getting by, I think.

You know, it's just so darn heavy.

You know?

You're right, even if you dehydrate it, and especially we're already carrying the clepper,

so we were really micromanaging how much extra weight was going in those bags.

We were down to the gram, weighing everything, and talking about what is the maximum amount

we are willing to carry, especially as we're probably going to have to carry it over some

very uneven terrain.

What was your number one concern when you set out on the trip?

Probably getting injured in a very isolated location, and the fact that the medical evacuation

routes were extremely limited, especially at the beginning of the trip.

So, once we got up into the mountain range, which was towards the center of the island,

that was one of the most isolated places I've ever been in in my life.

We originally budgeted for three or four days worth of hiking in those mountains, it ended

up taking nine.

Oh, wow.

And for that time, we saw hardly another human being, because there's no reason to go

up there.

There is, I guess, the land up there is not good for farming, there's almost no water,

so you wouldn't be able to irrigate your crops, and people don't take their animals up

there, because there's no water, it's very, very hot, so it's just quite, I mean, it's

beautiful, but it's extremely isolated.

And I was thinking, if we got injured up there, we got a serious problem, because beyond

getting a helicopter, I have no idea how you would have gone out there, you had to be

carried out of there, basically.

Wow.

Sounds like a very punishing environment.

Yeah, it was tough.

So we had some guides with us.

So at that time, we had a guy called me, who was from the area, and he managed to rope

in a couple of other guys, three guys, actually, Rodeo, Razozian, Ramam, they were also from

the area, but they had never been through that mountain range.

They had always stayed to the east of the mountain range.

There was no reason for them to go up into those mountains.

Right.

They knew what was on the other side of the mountains, because it could be reached via

a road that sort of did a huge dog leg down to the bottom of the island and back up.

But they didn't know of anyone who'd ever cut through like that, but good on them, they

volunteered to take us and help us out, and it's very lucky that they did, because without

them, we absolutely would have run out of water up there.

So obviously, when we're on the river, we can drink out the river, when we're not on

the river, we have to carry our water.

Water is very heavy.

There's only so much water you can carry, and then you need to start relying on finding

more.

And we, Ben and I had no idea where to find it, whereas these guys could look at the

landscape, and they, I don't know what it is that they saw, but they could say, over

there, I think we'll be all right, this way less so, but I have no idea to this day how

they did it.

But they, just when we were running out, they'd always get us to the next bog or little

trickle of water that we hadn't seen, that's what they actually really, really incredible

skills.

Ah, well, take notes, huh?

That's a good skill to have.

That's crazy.

That's a fantastic skill to have, yeah, I wish they could have taught me, like they

were amazing.

Sure.

Wow.

Well, I'm going to speak as an inexperienced Westerner, often when people think about doing

adventures in places like Madagascar, they, they don't know what to expect in terms

of dangerous, like, venomous animals.

They don't know what to expect in terms of disease risk, how to find water that's fit

for drinking, how to mitigate the risk of getting things like cholera or yellow fever

or dip theory, you know, a lot of the things that we don't worry too much about in the West,

how have you, I guess, gained the skill set to know what to expect in that regard?

Well, I've lived and worked on the continent for almost 20 years and I've traveled to 36

countries in Africa so far.

Yeah, I think over that time you just kind of, you pick it up, I am vaccinated against

all the things that it is possible to be vaccinated against when it comes to exotic diseases.

I actually recently in Indonesia had the new dengue vaccine that they have, dengue being

a particularly horrible mosquito-borne disease that you definitely don't want to get, especially

in an isolated location.

As soon as they bring out a malaria vaccine, I'll be first in the queue for that one, but

up until that point, I have, on expeditions like this, we take the antibiotic doxycycline

as a prophylaxis to, to stop you being, to stop you getting it, basically.

Not great to be taking antibiotics for a month at a time, but it's also not great to get

malaria in the middle of nowhere, so I think you have to balance those two things out.

Oh, my word.

Were there a lot of mosquitoes?

Yes, there were, absolutely.

I mean, you're hanging out by a river, mosquitoes love rivers, so yeah, if you're camping

by the river, you are getting bitten constantly, so we were always very aware, whenever I sort

of give talks about these trips, especially in schools, the students always ask about the

dangerous animals, and what immediately pops into their mind is crocodiles, lions, these

sorts of exotic, sure, fauna, and I always tell them, the most dangerous animals, the mosquito,

that's always the biggest source of stress for us, because they carry so many diseases,

some of which we cannot mitigate against, we just need to hope we don't happen to get

bitten by one of these mosquitoes, so yeah, so making big smoky fires in the evening,

making sure we sort of cover it up when we're sat around in the evenings, make sure we're

zipped into the tent at night, that kind of thing, taking the prophylaxis when you can,

but yeah, I think there are lots of websites where you can go and find out what is, what

fun and exotic diseases are on offer in a particular country, and then you can work

out whether you can actually do something about it or not.

Oh, no, offer, yeah, for Madagascar actually, one positive thing, again, this is to do with

the evolutionary branch of having split off from mainland Africa and developed differently,

there is not a single venomous anything in Madagascar.

Oh, really?

Yeah, which is perfect, again, I love the fact there's no hippos, I love the fact that

we're not at risk of getting bitten by a venomous snake while we're camping or stepping

on a scorpion or something like that or a weird spider getting in your tent.

So yeah, no idea why that is, but there's no venomous anything in Madagascar.

Wow, good to know.

I think there would be a lot of people who would consider all the pathology, you know,

all the disease risk and might just say, is it worth it?

Can you address that for us?

I think it's absolutely worth it.

I think, yeah, there are things you can do to mitigate those risks, deities fantastic.

I mean, it doesn't smell good, but it'll certainly keep the mosquitoes off you, especially

for a short trip, if you're going as a tourist for a week or two, you can absolutely take

Dr. Cycle and for a week or two, or you could even get slightly fancier anti-malarials

like malarone, those kinds of things, which are not antibiotics and have far less side

effects.

So yeah, I think I think it's not as big a deal as some people make it.

I don't think it has to be a big part of your planning if you don't want it to be.

Okay, so here's a question and then we'll leave this subject behind, but last question

in this genre of questions, if you go to the World Health Organization, you look up an

area in Africa or maybe Madagascar, different places, it just says, stay out of fresh water.

Don't get in it.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm always, I'm always hesitant because you're kayaking in the water.

You're going to be in the water.

You're drinking from the river, of course you'd be purifying it, but still, whatever you

see those sorts of warnings, just don't get in the water, I mean, can you address that

for us?

I've been getting in the water for however many years and I've had no issues, although

I'll add the caveat on the Madagascar trip, Ben got Shisto or Bill Hartzier and that definitely

came from the water.

So Bill Hartzier is not a very nice parasite.

It's basically a parasitic snail and it burrows into your legs or feet as you're in the water.

It sort of migrates through your body and then it lays eggs in your internal organs and

obviously through this reproduction cycle, it greatly upsets your immune system and makes

you very, very sick and it just keeps going on a sort of three week cycle.

So I don't know how it is that Ben managed to get it and I didn't because we were trudging

through the same disgusting mud and we're in the same river for the whole time.

But yeah, part way through the trip, Ben just got really, really sick and we could not

work out what it was.

I could see actually all of the red marks on his legs but we just assumed it was mosquito

bites because we were both getting bitten by mosquitoes quite frequently.

But then he sort of a few days after getting very sick, he made a miraculous recovery which

we assumed maybe he'd just upset his stomach through some dirty water or sunstroke or

whatever, but it actually turned out that that was just that's just the natural cycle.

So your body gets very upset when they first go in, immune system calms down while they

lay their eggs and whatever and then when the eggs hatch your immune system freaks out

again and luckily by the time we finished the expedition before Ben got to the hatching

stage.

So he managed to, as a preventative measure, one of our guides said we had to take these

essentially deworming, de parasite tablets at the end to kill anything that might have

got into our systems.

So we both did and I took the tablets and fell completely fine because obviously they

just went straight through and didn't do anything.

Ben took the tablets and again his immune system freaked out because suddenly there's a bunch

of like parasites dying inside him and a whole other day of feeling atrocious and then

that's when we realized we'll wait a minute, he must have had something like Bill Hartzier

because otherwise he wouldn't be having this reaction to these tablets.

Amazing.

And that's adventure on the whole other level, Oscar, I think, meh.

Yeah, it was pretty rough and I felt bad for Ben because there was quite a short window

between us finishing and us actually having to go to the airport and leave the country.

And one of our very important final jobs we had to do was in the capital and Tan and Ariev

we went to meet our official sponsor.

So we were sponsored by an NGO called Vision Madagascar which is a Malagassi organization.

They do great work.

And the head of Vision Madagascar, a gentleman called Mr. Zuzalbuka, we went for a meeting

with him basically and we haven't actually met him face-to-face at the beginning of

the expedition.

So we wanted to go and say thanks for believing us, thanks for your support and he also

wanted to talk to us about a couple of sort of things he wanted to do after the expedition

of finish.

We're both sat there in a boardroom listening politely and interacting and I'm sort of

looking at Ben and he's just sat there like sheet white sweating, just feeling awful.

Yeah, yeah.

And I said to him, I said, whatever you do, do not throw up in this boardroom like that

is not a good look.

If you're feeling sick, like, save, gotta go and walk out because yeah, this wouldn't

be a good impression to make on the sponsors, but he managed to hold it together.

Oh my word.

Well, hey, do you have a story for us about something that happened on this trip that

was just completely not the way you would have wanted it to go, you know, when things

went sideways on you?

Yeah, we had, well, we had quite a few sideways experiences.

We had a very frustrating interaction with a local official on a section of the river,

on a town on the river called Breroa.

And it was particularly frustrating because that was one of the first times we'd actually

reached a large settlement.

And so we got out the river, we were actually going to camp in town that night and we were

actually able to go and get some food, like, buy some food in the market.

And so we were, it was supposed to be a day of relaxing with our guides.

And it kind of didn't go that way because this local official just took an interest in

us and he was, he was drinking in a bar, he was already drunk by the time we went into

the bar and he just kind of latched onto us, yeah, and just, he was quite aggressive.

So he was telling us in French and he was telling the guides in Malagasy that we needed

to pay him money because he's a very important man and yada yada yada and it's just really

not what you want to be dealing with when you're exhausted and you just want to have

some food and relax.

And so we sort of took ourselves away from him, you know, apologetic, like, sorry, we

got to go, we left and walked across town to go somewhere else and he followed us.

So like an hour later he came and found us and then continued berating us and saying

how he's going to get the police to arrest us if we don't pay him money and you know,

it was all, it was all deeply frustrating but at the same time there was a certain comic

element to it because he was, he was trying to justify, he said we had to pay for it,

I think the way he described it was that we had to pay a snake tax and I'll never forget

that phrase, a snake tax because it made me laugh.

I was like, what do you mean snake tax?

He said, oh, foreigners come here to Breweroa and we have like an endemic species called

the Breweroa Python and it only lives here in Madagascar and foreigners like you come

here and you steal the Python so you can go and sell them abroad and make money.

And so you have to pay a tax so that we can protect the snakes and we're just looking

at him like, if this is, I don't know if this is true, if there is this Python,

but this is the most imaginative shake down I've ever heard.

Like we have paid tax to, like specifically a snake conservation tax to you, you were

the official. So yeah, but it all ended rather happily actually because in the end a police

chief who we had bumped into weeks prior on the side of the river and he'd asked us

at the time, he was like, what are you guys doing? And we told him we're kayaking the

whole river and he's just like, no, you're not. That's ridiculous. Like, I don't believe

it. Like, there's too far. You can't do that. And we said, but he was very nice. And

we said goodbye and we thought, obviously, that's the last time we're ever going to see

that guy. But anyway, he appeared in this restaurant where we were getting berated

by this guy. And it turns out that he had family in this town. So it was such a coincidence

and he kind of walked in. And because he's quite a senior police official, the body language

and the attitude of this other official changed instantly when he realized that we were

sort of quite, because he came and sat, we invited him. We said, oh, do you want to join

us for lunch? Come and sit with us. And obviously he did. And then then this official changed

his story immediately and was like, oh, I can't be saying this in front of this senior

police chief basically. Yeah. And then we actually explained to the police chief, we're

like, oh, could you talk us through the snake tax and like whether we have to pay or not

please. He was just sat there laughing. He was like, no, no, no, like you're not paying

a snake tax. Like this guy needs to go away. So yeah, it ended. It sounds like it was

snake oil tax to me. Exactly. But it was an hour's frustration getting to that point.

Oh, my word, the vast majority of people around the world won't do that to you. But they're

just a few, you know? Yeah. Yeah. So I was a little bit reluctant to include any of that

both in the documentary film and them and in the book because you're right. That is not

representative of how we were treated by the people of Madagascar. It's not even representative

of how we were treated by the officials and security forces of Madagascar. Everyone

else we met, whether they were a fisherman by the side of the river or whether they were

a police officer or a John Darm or a member of the military in an air check point, they

were super supportive, super friendly. You know, they helped us in all sorts of different

ways, whether it was letting us camp in their village or whether it was giving us directions

and advice, that kind of thing. We felt very welcome and very safe the whole time. So

he was literally the only person we met where that wasn't the case. I think that's why

it stood out so much. Yeah. And it makes a good story. Absolutely. I mean, we can look

back on it in laugh now, although we weren't really laughing much at the time. Right.

So how can people find your book? Well, they can go to our website, kayak, the Mangoc

or Mangockey, M-A-N-G-O-K-Y.com. And it's all up there. But also, I think it's the book

is linked under the video on YouTube. So if you just look up kayak, the Mangockey on YouTube,

you can find it there. And we are actually donating 25% of the profits from the book to a charity

that we raise money for with the expedition. So it's an educational charity called our kids,

our future Madagascar. So I think the expedition itself raised like four or five thousand

U.S. dollars for them. And we're very enthusiastic about continuing to raise money for them

through telling the story. So, so yeah. Please, please. That's fantastic. So the name of the book is

kayak, the Mangockey. Yes, kayak, the Mangockey. It's also to see a long Madagascar's longest river.

Well, that should have a little asterix and say portage somewhere as well, I think, because I'm

portage kayak, portage, the Mangoc, yes. Yes. And the name of your website is it the same?

Yes, it's just kayak, the Mangockey.com. Yeah.

Kayak, the Mangoc. Okay, with a Y, Mangockey. With a Y. All right, fantastic. Well, it sounds like

a world-class adventure. What is your, just to kind of close this out, what is your one of your

favorite memories from that trip? One that you're going to treasure for the rest of your life?

I think once we got to the, once we got over the mountain range and to the Mangoc proper,

I mean, at the top of the mountains, as we saw the river for the first time,

that really stood out to me firstly because it was the end of a traumatic nine days of carrying

an extremely heavy kayak over a mountain range. But also, we arrived in the evening,

it's sunset and we just saw this beautiful river. It was wide, it was fast flowing,

there were no rapids, there were no waterfalls. And we could see all along the river plumes of

smoke going up as each village was lighting their fire to cook their dinner. And all of those

things just represented a massive change from what we've just done for the previous three weeks.

So we knew that from that point onwards, no more portage, no more waterfalls, no more rapids,

no more isolation. And we were so excited about that. So it was visually beautiful, but also

what it represented really stood out to Ben and I. That's cool. And what a beautiful word picture

you just painted for us. I can see it, you know, with a smoke coming up and the river reflecting

the evening light. And it's beautiful. Yeah. Oh, fantastic. Well, Oscar, thank you very much

for sharing this with us. I thoroughly enjoyed that. And once again, the book is kayak

the Mangaq with a Y, Mangaqi. And there's a film on YouTube, same name, the website, same name.

That's how people can learn more. And good on you, man. It just sounds like in an amazing time.

Thank you very much. And yeah, I look forward to the next adventure.

Well, would you have the next adventure? Let us know so that we can find out what you're up to

because these are not small things. This is awesome sauce. So everyone out there, man, kayaking

rivers and Madagascar. It just sounds so romantic, but I know it's really hard, but that's

what makes adventure real. Right? That's what makes adventure real. Whatever your adventure is,

do get out there and have some fun.