Eco Challenge...




The Eco challenge will go to any lengths of hideousness to maintain its reputation as the world’s premier expedition race. This year’s setting was Sabah Borneo, with a 320 mile course that wound its way through malarial jungle lowlands and caves thigh-deep in bat poo, diving over coral reefs, climbing, biking, paddling, sailing, trekking and sliding on our backsides. We were also to cover long, long stretches at sea.

Before the race began, the 75 other teams of four from around the world paraded around the race hotel in Kota Kinabulu. Mostly enormous Yank marine types with close-cropped hair, khaki shorts and stubbly muscular legs. And that was just the women. The race began from the white sand beach of an idyllic tropical island, 300 racers in bathtub-sized native sailing boats surging out into the surf, a blaze of multi-coloured sails bright against a tropical sky.

Our jungle navigation began (after an excellent first sailing stretch that saw us come ashore in fifth position), on a series of densely forested islands linked by arduous swims. All teams had been split for this section, the organisers seeking to sneakily weed out early on those teams with only one decent navigator. We kind of played into their hands, getting lost and missing checkpoints, until we found ourselves on our third island, heading up through dense bush towards a distant peak. As we plunged into the bush, the sounds of chanting male cicadas cut the air with their astounding siren of noise, and the dusk chorus of birds, monkeys and mosquitoes turned their attentions on our eardrums. If there was one thing we had been advised, it was not to attack the jungle at night. However, having been on the go without water or food for twenty-four hours, all we could think of was reaching our team mates, and the salvation of hammocks and tuck boxes.

Within minutes, we were on our hands and knees looking for other people’s footprints to follow. The endless sogginess had managed to pry open my expensive head torch, which spluttered and died, and the growls in my stomach had transformed into a clawing out-of-gas emptiness in every cell of my body.

After several hours of blind slashing at malevolent bushes (that clearly couldn’t care less where we went as long as it wasn’t through them), we figured from the altimeter that we must be somewhere near the summit. So we began to descend, and very soon found ourselves at the brink of a black hole gully, which fell away into nothingness far beyond the feeble beam of our lone flashlight. No way down or on, it seemed the only was back. My captain however had different ideas. Spying some vines dangling over the precipice, he began a half-hearted attempt to Tarzan over the edge, entreating me to follow. I suggested this might not be such a good idea. He humbly agreed with me, and asked what I thought we should do. It was then I knew we were in trouble.

Martin stands about six foot three and is an experienced triathalete; totally focused on his own goals (while not caring much about those of his team mates) I’d thought him pretty much invincible. However, his vast bulk must have needed twice as much food and water as mine, it was clear he was well past his limits. I’ve never been scared of dying, but I knew I didn’t want to do it with Martin. It was now my turn to be leader and the decision was made to wait till dawn.

Those night hours were the longest of my life. The buttressed roots of an immense tree trunk provided something to lean on, Martin optimistically set his alarm. There was a hint of inevitability in those first few drops of rain. And I laughed quite genuinely, as the rain turned into a deluge that would have sent Noah racing for a big yacht. However, five hours later, as the gully we were sitting in became a small river, all humour was dead and buried. Fearing for trench foot so early on, my shoes were off and lots of flesh was exposed to the nasties of the forest floor, I was beyond caring. Martin was wrapped up like a Christmas turkey in his foil emergency blanket, and every few minutes would stand bolt upright, and whimper for a few minutes, in just the same manner as my dog when she wants some of my dinner.

Being lost in the jungle at night is like every childhood nightmare rolled into one. Constant boogeymen crawl around you, filling the air with eerie screeching noises, dropping deadfall logs into nearby bushes, and crawling over your toes in the shape of centipedes the size of draught excluders. Our team mates would be beside themselves, in fact even the officials would’ve already been waiting for 9 hours at the next checkpoint for us, and we weren’t even half way back to them. I missed my boyfriend, I missed my dog. This Eco Challenge lark was really starting to annoy me. I sipped slowly through my remaining quarter pint of water and formed my drybag into a bowl to collect rainwater for Martin.

Dawn came without promise. There was no trail in sight and within seconds I’d knocked over the precious rainwater. The daylight didn’t seem to improve our senses either and we pondered for ages over which mud slide to take. Only 500km to go to the nearest hotel.

Finally, after an infinity of scrambling, crashing waves welcomed us to the other side of the island. There was further delight in spotting two other bedraggled humans. Team North Face had had a little adventure of their own and their female, Naomi, had become possibly the only person in the world to lose her diving kit in the jungle. In a decade’s time, some hardened adventurer will be hacking through the forest to come upon a pair of flippers and a plastic snorkel halfway up a hill. I fear for their sanity.

We joined together, and bobbed and kicked feebly across the sea for two hours to the next action point. Here we met another couple of tailenders; the Uraguayans. We were now an aimlessly wandering team of six instead of two, with six opinions as to where we should go and how. And every one wrong.

We had one more col to cross and two more check points. The crossing on the col, however, was half a meter wide between great walls of limestone. I stuck with a dehydrated Naomi while they all burst off in different directions. Dead fall was everywhere and scrambling over huge logs and tumbling into rotten debris made exhausting work for us titches. Our route was steep, slippery and trapped with vines that hooked round ruckscaks and necks or just caught ankles at crucial moments. The ‘Wait-a-While’ bush hooked its barbed spines into our skin and every effort to calmly remove it resulted in another couple of branches eagerly latching on elsewhere. As we slipped through the mud, we grabbed trees for stability only to realise too late they were laced with tough spikes. Naomi’s legs were seriously shaky but she was dignified and didn’t whinge half as much as necessary. Interestingly, chivalry had been left back at the hotel in Kota Kinabalu so I made a heavy-handed job of assisting her over logs and hurling her deeper into the undergrowth.

We hit another wrong summit and descended to half way for the third time. Naomi had just made the heavenly suggestion that we should swim round which, despite open wounds in cruel infecting seawater, would be bliss over this. However, it was not to be. Squeezing down some slimy boulders, Naomi’s balance went. She was propelled irresistibly downwards like that scene in "Romancing the Stone". Except that this slide ended with a large "snap", a scream, and Naomi’s leg bending a different way to everyone else in the world.

Everyone assumed that she had just broken her leg, but I knew better, having done exactly the same on the ski slopes nearly a decade earlier. She had snapped all her knee ligaments. A few paces ahead, I stared at my feet and thought of the ghastly operation, and years of rehab she had ahead of her.

It was another eight hours before we staggered out of the jungle, Naomi borne over the shoulders of the broadest Uruguayan. We were just in time to see the checkpoint officials sailing off into the distance, though they did eventually come back to our rescue. The time we had lost was to disqualify all of us from the race, although we all managed to finish ten days later unranked. We found out later that we had actually got off lightly. One guy went airborne off the trail on his mountain bike, and put a branch through his chest, puncturing a lung. Another had to withdraw with a leech attached to his eyeball, while a tree fell on one poor American. A nameless competitor who had a leech swim up his uretha unbelievably carried on, and after returning from the race, (with our feet resembling pickled brains) the majority of racers went down with mysterious tropical illnesses that had many popping in and out of comas. I’m taking up knitting.