The other day we went aground for the first time on our Rio Macareo trip -- heck, it was our first grounding in about a year, due less to our great skill than to our usually being in deep water. We'd all gone up the Caño Lau Lau to the Lau Lau Lagoon, which is an abandoned meander of the main river, shaped sort of like the letter E. According to the cruising notes we had, both of the main lobes of the meander (the top and bottom crossbars of the E) were blocked, choked by rafts of water hyacinth. The middle stream led back out to the main Macareo across a bar with only 1.6 meters of water over it. (Our draft of 5'2", translated into metric, is just about 1.6 meters.)
We would anchor there that night, but before we stopped for the day we all carefully drove into the middle stream to check it out. Kajsa, with their four and a half foot draft, went first. "The good news is that my depthsounder says eight and a half," Patrick called back. "The bad news is that it's flashing, which means it's probably broken." Right about then, Alsager, which has a 7 foot draft, hit bottom. We came up the other side of the channel, looking for deeper water, and with 10 feet on the display, abruptly plowed into the mud. Alsager headed back to the anchorage area, while we messed around a little, failing to find a deep channel but frequently finding too-shallow water. Fortunately, it was easy to slide off the mud humps we kept slamming into, as the current was pouring in from the other side and pushing us back off.
So we couldn't make a loop, big deal, we'd just backtrack the next day. After anchoring in the lagoon, we dropped the dinghy to explore. The first place we went was the northern lobe of the E; we scooted along, looking at birds, until all of a sudden, hey presto, we were in the main river! I guess that when the cruising notes were written up three years ago, this branch was blocked by water hyacinths, but they must have broken up and drifted free since. In the morning we headed out in the big boats that way, feeling quite adventurous as we weren't absolutely sure the depths would hold, and in contrast to the middle branch the current was with us, which would push us further onto any mud bars we found. We all reported our depthsounder readings to each other, ready to slam our engines into reverse at the least sign of shoaling. But the channel turned out to be adequately deep, and soon we were out on the main Macareo again.
So, woo hoo, we are big explorers. But really, is this such an "adventure"? Sure, we are off the chart; sure, we are trading toothpaste, fishing line, and thread for baskets and beaded necklaces with little brown people in dugout canoes, people who have almost certainly never seen a web page or ridden in an automobile or eaten french fries, people for whom the outboard engine is the pinnacle of technology.[*] But we are following notes which although frequently outdated or wrong are at least the work of people who have gone before us. The little brown people have seen enough fat white people in funny-looking boats that they know to bring out their baskets and woodcarvings. Even when we go up an "unknown" side stream, all we really have to do is watch the depthsounder and make sure our mast doesn't hit any overhanging trees.
This part of the Orinoco delta is fairly unvisited by white people, even unvisited by non-Wareo Venezuelans. There are no regular boat services out here, and the "adventure tours" which visit the Wareo people go to villages on other tributaries. Only 35 yachts came this way last year. But that's still far from a "first ascent". I've been reading the writings of H. W. Tilman lately -- now he's an adventurer. Sailing to the Southern Ocean, hoping to bump into some tiny uninhabited islets on the strength of occasional poor sextant sights, planning to climb mountains there that nobody had ever set foot on and few people had even seen. Our adventure, by comparison, is as tame as walking the dog around the block.
After feeling our way through the Lau Lau Lagoon, I thought for a while about writing up a new page for the cruising notes. It would include our experiences in October 2001, as an addendum to the circa-1999 guide; I'd mention the new configuration of the Lau Lau Lagoon, our foray up the Caño Cojuma, the side streams on the Caño Jarwana. I'd fill in the holes in the current guide, answer the questions, clarify the fuzzy areas. I thought: it would increase the available information. And then I thought: it would decrease the available adventure.
Adventure is a commodity which is hard to find in today's world, where nearly everything is known, charted, packaged up, and available for a fee. Certainly, most people don't really want to be on the edge of the map, no soundings and no forecasts and here there be dragons, eating hardtack and sleeping with scorpions -- I don't want it either -- but a few blank spots on the map feed our souls. You can't get the thrill of discovery unless there's something left to be discovered. So the blank spots on the map will remain, for future travelers on the Macareo to figure out for themselves.