Fluid Kayaks Team

After about a year of estimates, quotes, invoices, LPO’s, port seizures, delays, extra charges and other assorted African treats… Fluid kayaks touch down in Kenya!

Two fleets of Spices and Solos for International School clients, plus a kayak school fleet for Savage Wilderness Safaris were imported by Kris Collyer of Savage Wilderness Safaris in Kenya.

Adventure Sport Tourism is a big growth area within Kenya, in particular kayaking. The main kayaking company in Kenya is Savage Wilderness Safaris (Whitewater Adventures) who started commercial rafting trips on the Athi and Tana Rivers in the early nineties. Since 2002, James Savage, Kris and other usual suspects have been pushing out first descents in this virtually unknown gem of whitewater. Many different styles of river are on offer from class 1 – 5+ Ranging in volume, gradient and length, they can be found in fantastically diverse locations. You can run low volume Class 4 creeks next to Mt Kenya, dodge crocs & hippo’s on remote multi day gorges in Northern Kenya, carve up big Indian Ocean surf and huck clean 30ft drops on the commercial section of the Tana river just an hour from Nairobi!

The initial delivery of 30 boats to Kenya consisted of Medium and Large sized Spices, and the Large Solo, the Nemesis followed soon(ish) after and the Element is on order. A number of sit on tops look set to arrive for South Coast Hotels in 2009.

The boats are used on a weekly basis in schools for swimming pool sessions. Whitewater courses are run for adults and kids on the Tana River. Flat water sessions on the Rift Valleys Lake Naivasha are provided as part of schools adventure holidays. Surf kayaking courses are run in Malindi and other coastal areas. They have also taken part in several first descents.

Thuchi River First Descent

With the arrival of the rainy season in Kenya comes the desire to escape from river guiding and explore seasonal and new rivers. In late Oct 2008 James, Kris, Adam Harmer (Team Pyranha UK) and Titus Mukundi (a river guide with Whitewater Adventures and ranked No. 4 in Africa for K1 Slalom) ran the first descent of the Thuchi River near Mt Kenya. Savage and Harmer inspected the maps for a couple of hours one evening and chose what they thought to be a suitable river, bearing in mind that the only maps available were Savages Dads 1:250,000 flying maps from the 60s.

The new 1:50,000 maps were found after the trip.

A bleary eyed start saw us arrive mid morning at a potential road bridge put in. Volume looked good, gradient sweet and a loose RV with the shuttle bunnies arranged. Savages idea of packing overnight gear was universally poo poo’ed by all. After all, on the old map it only looked like 15 to 20 km of river to paddle with a constant easy gradient and no waterfalls marked on the map (past experience showed that big drops are marked on the maps). So why would we? This turned out to be the sweetest new river adventure any of us had had in a long time!

We were straight into a short gorge with blind horizons and tree jams / strainers everywhere. One kilometer later we began the first of several portages up out of the gorge, slipping back down on wet red clay. Pretty soon we were all covered in mud and ripped to pieces by various types of thorn bushes! We started to wonder if we were in for an epic and if we should call it an early day. We pushed on and after the first few kilometers the river opened out slightly and we started to encounter more run able sections with some cool rapids up to class 4+

The run was quite edgy for all concerned as the gradient / whitewater was constant, line of sight impaired by vegetation and strainers / siphons / potential pins everywhere. I watched in horror as James back looped in a crease and fell off a pour over instantly trying to hand roll after losing his paddle. He bailed and had one of those head over heels swims that leaves spectators wincing with every hit. Lucky not to break anything, we soon had him back into his boat and again we were on our way.

More of the same type of stuff saw us through the majority of the day with a welcome class 2 / 3 section taking us up till about 6.30 in the evening. The light was fading; volume had doubled thanks to a bunch of flooded stream tributaries. Time to make some decisions!

After chatting to some locals we had established that the road where we put in was either 10 or 30kms away depending on who you asked, same for the take out! We should know by now that when asking rural Kenyans how far to a place, they have zero accuracy on distance and time. We had expected up to 20km in total and estimated we had done between 15 and 18km. After extended questioning, Titus established that a road suitable for 4x4’s was less than a kilometer away. We decided to split the group and with light fading fast James and Titus would go see if the road was ok and talk to the shuttle crew, Adam and I would prep for an overnight. A fire was lit and space to sleep cleared under an overhanging rock. After an hour the guys returned with the news… in for the night! They also returned with dinner; sodas and biscuits. James had managed to sweet talk a girl into lending him 200/- shillings ($3) to buy the food by saying he would give her 400/- when he returned to the “camp.” As far as enforced overnights go we had it pretty sweet (but not if anyone asked that is) . We had just enough emergency gear, just enough dry kit and a killer spot to sleep. We were all so mentally drained and physically exhausted that everybody slept straight through the night (and in spite of the unplanned emergency spooning all remain not gay).

The next morning saw us on the river by 7am doing what we hoped was the final distance of easiness to our planned take out. The start of the second day saw mostly easy class 3 with a few blind bends, more class 4 was run and we portaged a few run able class 5 sections as we didn’t need any epics at that stage of the game thank you very much.

Just as everyone was about to stall due to lack of food, water and tiredness… civilization! We’ll, not really civilization, just a few gnarly weirs with our shuttle crew waiting at the bottom of one. With the news that it was only 3k by river to the road bridge take out we universally decided to push on and finish what we started.

Instantly around the next bend we encountered multiple drops above and below more broken weirs and ancient hydro power schemes. More hairy runs and 2 portages saw us down to the horizon line from hell about 4k later. The river was getting hairier and hairier, steeper and steeper, fuller and fuller and our nerves… frayed to say the least! We took out and inspected a 250ft tiered drop sent from Satan himself. No way, no how and never!

As a group we decided to call it a day. We were all well into our reserves of energy and almost running on empty. Local children were swiftly employed to carry our boats to the road, helping keep truancy alive in rural Africa and the world was rejoined after a 2k trek through the bush.

All told an amazing run. On return to Nairobi and studying the better maps we established we ran 23km and dropped 375m. What was even more amazing was the four other rivers we crossed on the way back to Meru (on the east side of Mt Kenya). All had water, all had gradient and most would bee 2 to 5 days minimum. At least one would take rafts and ran down into some of the remotest and beautiful bush in Kenya.

None have seen a boat… yet.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Kenya is that as a stand alone creeking destination it is simply world class. If you are a budding Fischer or Berman you’ll have a cool trip with some good river support, game parks and beaches. If you’re ‘A’ list then massive un run drops, rapids and whole rivers with serious amounts of gnarr await you!

Kenya is a great stopover point for play boaters visiting the Nile or Zambezi Rivers, and now you can find quality Fluid creek boats to rent, avoiding the need for compromise when choosing a boat for travel to Africa.

Solo’s and Spices can be rented from Savage Wilderness Safaris www.whitewaterkenya.com along with all the resources needed for a trip to Kenya. They also run a kayak school staffed by coaches from all over the world.

All Fluid boats can be demoed & purchased through Kris kriscollyer@hotmail.com.

So what are you waiting for…? Book that ticket now!

Photo Credits:

James Savage
Kris Collyer
Adam Harmer
Mark & Michelle Basso
Simon Coward