Kayakers plunge down waterfalls and navigate through churning rapids

It's amazing how calm, even happy, the kayakers in this 
video look as they make the first descent down Brazil's 
Mambucaba River, which drops more than 4,000 feet 
over 20 miles – half of that in just 6.5 miles.

Discovery News - The video features some hairy moments, like when one paddler gets sucked upside down in fast-moving water and trapped beneath a tree branch. Sometimes, the kayakers have to scamper down sheer, wet cliffs to get around treacherous, impassable waters.

For the most part though, they plunge down waterfalls and navigate through churning rapids with skill and style. They almost make it look easy.

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Pictures: Baby Gorilla Rescued in Armed Sting Operation

Path to Recovery

Photograph courtesy LuAnne Cadd, Virunga Gorilla Park


Ranger Christian Shamavu carries a baby eastern lowland gorilla, which he and his team from Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) rescued from poachers in a dramatic undercover operation last week.

Posing as black market gorilla buyers, the rangers recovered the infant male unharmed inside a backpack and arrested three poachers, who were seeking to sell the gorilla—now named Shamavu after his rescuer-for as much as U.S. $40,000, according to park authorities.

Shamavu is the fourth baby gorilla Virunga rangers have recovered from poachers in 2011—the highest number on record in a single year, suggesting that baby-gorilla trafficking may be on the rise in the region.

“We are very concerned about a growing market for baby gorillas that is feeding a dangerous trafficking activity in rebel-controlled areas of eastern DRC,” Virunga National Park Warden Emmanuel de Merode said in a statement.

“We are powerless to control the international trade in baby gorillas, but our rangers are doing everything they can to stamp it out on the ground.”

(See “Inside the Gorilla Wars: Rangers on Risking It All.”)

—Stefan Lovgren              

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