Starting at the Source
The Nileteers started at a small spring on the Kagera River in Burundi, Central Africa, which flows into Lake Victoria and feeds 14 additional rivers. They’d been paddling for less than an hour when John was charged by an adult bull hippo. At first, John paddled leisurely in his attempt to escape, not yet knowing that hippos kill more people than any other animal in Africa annually. (They continue to be a threat even now. In 2005, 205 people were killed by hippos.) When it had almost caught up with his boat, he put his back into the effort and never again made the mistake of underestimating the power of a hippo.

A short while later, they were caught in the first of the Nile’s many rapids, and all three dumped into the river and nearly drowned. John lost his spray skirt and a 12-gauge shotgun, the only weapon they had, leaving him unarmed for a journey through some of the regions of Africa most densely populated with wild animals. One boat was damaged beyond repair. It was replaced with a wooden dugout purchased from local tribesmen. It wasn’t the last rough water they’d encounter on the Nile. In all, they survived 33 rapids in six major cataracts.

As expedition leader, John set the pace pushing off each morning, followed by André and Jean soon after. This was the pattern for the journey. Disparate energy levels and radically different personalities usually kept the paddlers miles apart on the river, but they camped together each evening. John would stop at dusk and start a bonfire to guide his companions to the landing site.

During the expedition, John contracted several tropical diseases including amoebic dysentery, malaria and bilharzia, a disease caused by parasitic worms. Tsetse flies were a constant irritant, and although they carry sleeping sickness, none of the paddlers was affected.

On a solo shore excursion, in the midst of the torrid Sahara desert, John lost his way under the blazing sun and became seriously dehydrated and disoriented. He was near death from sunstroke when he heard the chirp of a small plover overhead. John knew plovers to be water birds and followed it over a sand dune to find his boat resting far below on the riverbank. He had never seen a plover venture out of the shade into the intense midday sun, and even now considers the appearance of the bird to be a miracle that saved his life.

On a different occasion, John was paddling beneath a rock overhang when a dark shadow passed over him and entered the water with a tremendous splash right next to his boat. It seemed that a very large crocodile decided to slide off its rocky ledge several feet above him and into the water just as he was passing underneath. If John had been a few inches to the side, the croc would have landed squarely on his boat.

During another excursion ashore, John was filming a large bull elephant. The elephant charged twice, but John held his ground, and the elephant pulled up short. The bull finally came at him full tilt, and this time it was no bluff. John dived into his kayak and escaped, just inches ahead of the bull’s tusks.

In Upper Egypt, John had been given a human skull from the nearby excavation of an ancient Egyptian general’s tomb. This skull was that of a slave, killed to serve the general in the next life, and had been given to John by the local archeologist out of gratitude for Polaroid photos John had taken and given to him. A short time later, when John paddled ashore to visit a riverside village, a rifle-toting guard discovered the skull in the rear compartment of the kayak and was immediately convinced he had caught a murderer even though the skull was 4,600 years old. The guard grabbed John, intending to arrest him and put him in jail, but John pushed the guard away, made a mad dash back to his boat and paddled away in a great hurry.

After surviving numerous hippo and crocodile attacks, John was nearly killed while paddling alone in a remote area during the final miles of his descent of the Nile. Not far from Cairo, Egypt, he was hailed from shore by a group of tribesmen. Wary, John continued to paddle and soon had bullets kicking up the water around his boat. More men appeared along the shore and fired their rifles at John. He picked up his pace and some of the bandits raced along the shore, trying to get ahead of him for a better shot. He realized they were trying to intercept him at a narrow channel where they could wade out and capture him. Paddling for his life, John raced through the channel just ahead of his pursuers. He was pelted with rocks as he passed by them and out into the safety of more open waters.