In 2002 Eli Rush and I flew to La Paz, Bolivia and embarked upon an expedition to float down the Rio Tahaumanu river for 2 weeks.
This is just a short sample of the edit in progress from the footage taken on that expedition.
I have 9 hours of video footage of us on the river. This little sample is about 2.5 minutes long!
I have had this footage for so long and have often though of editing it. Now I'm finally doing it.
Eli took many Large Format photographs and I shot the video of the journey using a Sony TRV900 camera. I created a charging system for the camera batteries using 2 solar panels that were strapped to the top of the my kayak.
Unfortunately the quality of the footage is not stellar as HD video was not available at the time, but it captures the mood and the extremely slow pace of life on the river.
This is a journey that I would like to repeat, this time with top quality video equipment.
The video looks a little sharper when viewed at this small size so I have not included a "Full Screen" button.
The bird call that you hear throughout the video is from the "Screaming Piha"
It's a bird call that is so prevalent in the Amazon jungle that you hear it in all films shot down there. "Fitzcaraldo" by Werner Herzog is a perfect example.
The footage below was not taken by me but it shows the bird enthusiastically creating the call.
The river meanders very slowly through the jungle as you can see in the aerial images below.
Each time the river makes a sharp turn a crescent shaped sandy beach forms which is a perfect place to stop and camp.
