Rivergods: Exploring the World's Great Wild Rivers

John H. Gryfe is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon practicing in
Toronto.

Christian Kallen, a cultural anthropologist from California, and his co-author, Richard Bangs, a professional river guide and founder of the adventure travel outfitters Sobek Expeditions, have combined to toast a group of waterways that have “inspired” them and “have...formed, eroded and enlarged [their lives] with the same deliberation as a sandbar, gorge or watershed” may be fashioned by a river. Many of the names may toll a distant bell, conjuring up memories of long-forgotten geography classes and dog-eared atlases — the Colorado cascading majestically through the Grand Canyon or the Zambezi plunging over the mile-wide curtain of Victoria Falls. Others are just as mysterious as their names — Omo, leaving the Ethiopian Plateau near the birthplace of the Blue Nile; or Bio-Bio, Chile’s second-longest water highway, originating in the Andes and ultimately spilling into the Pacific Ocean; or Apurimac, tracking from its haven in the Peruvian Andes to become the source of the 4000-mile Amazon. In total, ten wild river forays are described, complete with their frustrations, fears, and fabulous scenery in articulate and fascinating detail while 25 others must suffer the ignominity of thumbnail sketches.

For the uninitiated, the authors include background history on the subjects of their quests. The Great Abbai Expedition of 1968 is described in sufficient detail to justify the author’s obsession for white water discovery and adventure. Because they feel that a journey down the Colorado allows one to “float through history and geology,” we are entertained with tales both tall and true that have become part of the lore of this river. Some of the serious problems encountered are treated in an off-hand manner (like the perplexities of dealing with upset crocodile solitudes and human gastrointestinal tracts) while others (like rescuing a man overboard in a deadly ice-cold thrashing whirlpool or subjugation to a pummelling in a battered and buckling boat) remind the reader of the potentially lethal exercises these white water journeys represent.

If descriptive details are the bricks of travel books, then photographs mortar these structures together. More than 200 colour photos reveal verdant mountains of New Guinea, ice sculpture afloat at the termination of the Tatshenshini River, and numerous studies of flora, fauna, faces, and the other singular features that make each of these trips a noteworthy experience. The dedication, physical demand, and determination of these river adventures are dramatically captured in a full-page photograph opposite the Introduction.

For the world traveller who has violent allergic reactions to insect bites and who invariably contracts pneumonia after every chill, hitching onto a river raft with Richard Bangs and Christian Kallen will ensure dry clothes, lesion-free skin, and large amounts of admiration for these sophisticated adventurers.