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Click
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25th
March 1998
Due to numerous hardware problems
and the fact that I was out of action in hospital for
several days, there have not been any reports for a while.
Therefore, in order to catch up, this one is huge. Due
to numerous requests, from now on we will be including
many more photos in our reports. So here is report
three.
On Monday March 16th we reached the town of Desaguadero
at the river's mouth on the Bolivian-Peruvian border.
On Sunday many Bolivian VIPs came to a celebration on
the beach where we were to launch our boats. Speeches
were made, flags hoisted, the boats blessed by the town
priest and a good time had by all. Prudently we waited
until our guests had gone before launching the boats into
a strong following wind. When Capt. Jim Masters, Capt.
Lee Smart and Lt. Luke Cox had organised the crews we
pushed the boats off. For a few moments there was confusion
as the wind filled the sails and drove two of the boats
into reeds on the Peruvian bank. But they soon got the
hang of things and made a brave sight as they drifted
down the river.
In the late afternoon they approached a place on the Bolivian
bank that Colonel John Blashford-Snell had chosen for
our overnight camp. Then, just as before Sir Francis Drake
left Plymouth in 1577, a tremendous storm broke. "Virachocha"
one of the two smaller boats came near the bank as the
heavens opened. Lightning flashed down in Peru and the
entire expedition team was drenched in minutes. The first
night was spent by tired crew members putting up tents
in a downpour with numbed fingers. But as someone said,
it is, after all, an expedition.
On Thursday March 19th a significant archaeological discovery
was made.
The Spanish overwhelmed the Inca,
Empire in the 1530s but before the Inca a civilisation
called the Tiwanaku ruled the land around Lake Titicaca,
the highest navigable lake in the world at 3820 metres
above sea level. Until today only one Tiwanaku centre
was known but the Kota Mama expedition, along with archaeologist
Oswaldo Rivera Sundt have discovered evidence of a settlement
20kms south of Lake Titicaca on the banks of the river
Desaguadero at Iruhito.
Here it seems there was an ancient city populated by fishermen
and farmers. Two man-made mounds rise on the east bank
of the river, high enough to escape occasional floods.
One, the domestic quarter, lies near the Desaguadero.
Further inland is the ceremonial mound on which no doubt
Tiwanaku rituals took place. We know this because local
people directed the expedition to a point in the ground
where a plough had once hit stone. A local woman took
Richard Snailham, the expedition historian, to the area.
Prodding the ground with a spike he soon struck stone
and with Capt. Lee Smart began scraping away the earth
to reveal a half metre stone slab.
The expedition party was ready to move on down river.
The challenge in Col Blashford-Snell's previous river
journeys has been the volume and power of the water. Here
the problems were different; the river was too sluggish
and too shallow and the weather was extreme, searing hot
sun one minute and storms of hail the next.
At a place called Aguallamaya where there is an impressive
foot suspension bridge it was decided that the river had
too little water in it for the reed boats. So a portage
was necessary. We hired a local truck and with some difficulty
lifted the biggest and next biggest on to it. The convoy
of two trucks and two range rovers then drove to a small
town called Nazacara and the two boats were unloaded.
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