May 1981
Four days into the first descent of the Colca River, Andrzej Pietowski, the expedition leader, slammed into a rock in the middle of a boulder-choked rapid. His hand-built fiberglass kayak splintered upon impact. Unable to recover, he was ejected, forced to swim the rest of the steep, sieved-out section. He emerged, eye bloody, teeth shooting with pain. His paddle was in hand, his kayak was torn to shreds, but he was alive.
His team of six Polish paddlers, known as the Canoandes, were in the high desert of the Peruvian Andes, suffering their way down what was argued to be the deepest canyon in the world: the Colca Canyon. Resting at the bottom of the Valley of Volcanoes, the Colca is over 4,000 meters deep—twice as deep as the Grand Canyon of the US—its superlative drawing the Canoandes to its depths.
"ORIGINALLY THEY WANTED TO LEAVE TO GO ON THIS GREAT ADVENTURE, BUT THEIR GREAT ADVENTURE BECOMES THE THING THAT IS THE UNDOING OF LIFE AS THEY KNOW IT."
Andrzej's swim was only the beginning of the group's woes. They were covering just four kilometers a day and realizing that they would run out of food well before they would finish their descent—if they finished. They attempted to climb out of the Colca multiple times, but it was impossible. The margin of success was approaching null, and so was survival. "We were locked between two walls," Andrzej recounts. "Not knowing if we would live."
From Bystrze to Godspeed, Los Polacos!
The first descent of the Colca Canyon occurred over 40 years ago. It is a story chronicled in paddling circles, in books, and even on the pages of National Geographic. Yet we are still discussing it today. The story of the Canoandes themselves, how they ended up in Peru in the
first place, and what occurred since is a conversation reignited, and for some like myself first indulged, thanks to the documentary Godspeed, Los Polacos!, released in 2021.
“It's important to understand they set out to go on a fun kayaking expedition, the same way any kayaker does now,” says director and paddler Adam Nawrot of the Canoandes’ plan to leave Eastern Europe in the throes of the Cold War.
There were six men involved with the Colca. Andrzej Pietowski, the expedition leader; Piotr Chmielinski, a skilled kayaker; the raft captain Jerzy “Yurek'' Majcherczyk; cinematographer Jacek Bogucki; and raft crew members Stefan Danielski and Krzysztof Krasniewski. Back in
Lima, the Canoandes photographer Zbigniew Bzdak was battling a life-threatening case of malaria. When the Canoandes arrived at the canyon, they were two years into what was meant to be a six-month paddling expedition to South America beginning in June 1979. They had tackled first descents on many of what are now popular Latin American runs, the Rio Pescados and Santa Maria in Mexico, and the Pacuare of Costa Rica, among others.
On the surface, this was a group of paddlers on a perpetual boating trip not unlike their surfing counterparts in the 1966 film The Endless Summer, the type of trip which whitewater paddlers have aspired to since. But the members of the Canoandes weren't golden-haired Californians, flashing US passports at exotic locales of their choosing. They were university students from Cold War Poland, governed under Soviet rule.
Their families had survived World War II only to be transitioned under another oppressive regime, another life of meager wages, standing in line at grocery stores to shop bare shelves and being watched under state surveillance.
The futures of each member of the Canoandes were predetermined, their passports locked in a local government office. They were in their late twenties, nearing their graduation and obligations as Soviet citizens. Communism was the only system they had known, and they never felt as though it would end. Experiencing a world beyond the Berlin Wall seemed impossible. Yet the hunger to explore wild rivers motivated them to put it all out there before accepting their fate.
The beginning of Godspeed, Los Polacos!, which took Nawrot and producer Sonia Szczesna took four years to create, can make the Canoandes expedition appear lighthearted, improbable, even foolhardy. It helps that the members of the Colca crew look back on their exploits of decades past with humor, appreciating how absurd life can be. But the film also shows the group working their asses off and wielding deals to pull an expedition together in an economy where purchasing equipment individually was out of the question, and securing a visa needed a damn good reason.
The Canoandes were conceived through the birth of a university paddling club in Krakow called Bystrze, which translates to rapid. Yurek and Piotr were co-founders of the paddling club, which
began in 1972, the same year canoe slalom debuted at the Munich Olympic Games. What started that year with less than 20 members would grow to over 400 on a weekend outing by the end of the decade.
“Bystrze was great,” says Yurek. “It was young people who were trying to do something with their lives. And something united us. There was a dream for adventure. We were trying to find people who had a similar thinking like us.”
They started with limited equipment and little skill. Bystrze members would build their fiberglass kayaks and paddles, taking them out regularly on the local Vistula River. They lacked rolls or any challenging local rivers. By 1976 though, Yurek and other members of Bystrze were traveling to places like Yugoslavia, where they took on stretches like the Tara, the deepest canyon in Europe, which at the time they declared the continent’s most difficult navigable river, and aspired to write guidebooks on Eastern Europe.
Bystrze was about more than paddling; it was also a social club. The Soviet government did not oppose outdoor clubs—they encouraged them, as they felt active youth would be less involved in politics. Whether the government or the club’s members realized it, they were wrong. Bystrze provided a space for students to express their beliefs without fear of arrest. Out on the river, members could speak their minds and imagine a world beyond the currents of their home state. The glue of Bystrze was song. On the river, around campfires, the students belted Polish folk tunes—anthems to their country and culture, of a deep national pride at odds with the Soviet world they were born into.
"THE MOMENT WE KNEW THE MOST PROMINENT SON OF OUR COUNTRY’S HISTORY WAS BEING TAKEN FROM US, WE DIDN’T CARE IF WE LIVED ON COLCA OR DIDN T LIVE. IF THERE WAS A CHANCE TO DO IT, WE HAD TO, ANDREZJ EXPLAINS."
"It was freedom," says Andrezj, who joined the club in 1973 and served as president. "The one freedom we had at that time, total freedom, was in our club." That sense of space would lead club members to begin hatching the plan to explore the rivers of South America and the group called the Canoandes.
Why would the regionally supervising authorities allow a group of young paddlers to take an extended holiday in the West? Easy. Poland was seeking a way to assert some display of conquest. “You have to understand, it's like today's China or Korea; they would invest lots of money in sport to show the world they have success,” Andrzej explains. “They would say, okay, we have to help our sport show off to the world that Poland exists and that Poland is achieving success in this field.” Around the same time as the Canoandes trip, a Polish mountaineering team would be in the Himalayas bagging winter first ascents.
The Canoandes approached their government for an expedition endorsement as professionals, convincing them with assignments from the International Canoe Federation to write about their intended destination. “To be able to even ask permission for such a big magnitude expedition, we had to become the best in Poland,” says Andrzej of the Bystrze kayak club and the notoriety it had gained as the most active whitewater club in the country.
When the Canoandes expedition arrived in Mexico in June 1979, there were ten members, 21 kayaks, and 25 tons worth of equipment and supplies, including their beloved all-terrain Star266 military rig. They intended to spend six months pursuing rivers with the ultimate goal of reaching the tip of Argentina at Tierra del Fuego. Some were skilled paddlers. Others, including drivers and media personnel, had no paddling experience. They were taking off to South America with a majority crew that didn’t even know how to roll and going after unexplored rivers across the globe. The results were—interesting. Early on, a near-disastrous first descent on Mexico’s Rio Pescados at high water consumed seven kayaks and caused ceaseless swims. “Fortunately, we didn't lose any of the people,” says Piotr. “That was lucky. That's not even a difficult river. We knew there would be more challenging rivers in front of us. So we had to shake ourselves. We needed to be prepared.” They spent pool sessions training and building their skills until they were an efficient river running crew.
There were the off-river antics as well. “We went to Las Vegas, and after two, three days, we lost our driver,” says Piotr. They eventually found him in the casino but ran into a group of Polish acrobats when attempting to leave. “We had to go with them to the Flamingo hotel. They gave us accommodations. Can you imagine ten men in Las Vegas, in the casino, behind the stage with topless girls? We thought that we would never get out of there!”
They convinced Central American authorities concerned about allowing citizens from a communist country across their border with photos of the Pope. And then there was the fact that though they had started with a military vehicle and official endorsement from the Polish government, they were driving a blue Chevy pickup with a camper by the time they reached the Colca. What had begun as a pursuit of collective self-interest to hold back the tide of obligations as Soviet citizens became a counter-culture rebellion, and it was pissing off authorities back home.
After a year on the road, bouncing from Mexico to the US and back, not venturing further south, the Polish government ended the official expedition and requested the return of major equipment, like the truck. A crew of five stayed on, and Stefan and Krzysztof joined in Ecuador.
The Canoandes wanted to return home; it was always the plan. To do so, they would need the right conquest to subdue all the trouble they caused. The Colca became their hope of a crowning accomplishment, one worthy of returning to Poland as heroes rather than deserters of the Soviet-controlled nation. “Originally, they wanted to leave to go on this great adventure,” observes Nawrot, “but their great adventure becomes the thing that is the undoing of life as they know it.”
Into the Canyon
On May 13th, 1981, the Canoandes expedition arrived at the edge of the Colca Canyon in the provincial town of Chivay, unsure if the canyon would be navigable— in Chivay, the river lacked enough volume to float a raft. But not long after the team arrived, they received news from Europe that changed their resolve. The Pope, John Paul II, had been shot in St. Peter’s Square.
Poland has constantly been under siege, its borders and even existence in flux since it declared itself a nation. Through centuries, what has bound the Poles together is their cultural identity, with Catholicism the cornerstone of this cultural identity. Having a pope from Poland, born outside Krakow, was one of the most pivotal and celebrated moments of hope for the Polish people during the Cold War, the Canoandes team members included. Hearing the world attempting to strip Poland of its symbolic cultural hero devastated and hardened them. "The moment we knew the most prominent son of our country's history was being taken from us, we didn't care if we lived on Colca or didn't live. If there was a chance to do it, we had to," Andrzej explains.
"BUT THE MEMBERS OF THE CANOANDES WEREN’T GOLDEN-HAIRED CALIFORNIANS, FLASHING A US PASSPORT AND CHECKING IN TO EXOTIC LOCALES OF THEIR CHOOSING. THEY WERE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS FROM COLD WAR POLAND, GOVERNED UNDER SOVIET RULE."
With no water in Chivay, the Canoandes traversed 60 kilometers along the canyon rim, traveling dirt roads constructed just a few years prior in hopes of developing irrigation projects. Andean condors flew overhead. At the Cruz del Condor, a wooden cross erected by conquistadors 400 years prior, the massive, foreboding birds gathered.
At Cabanaconde, the Canoandes found reasonable access. With local assistance and pack mules, they switchbacked some 1500 meters down to the canyon floor at the small oasis of Sangalle. Packing the rafts and preparing their kayaks, there was no knowledge of what was ahead. Even if there had been, the river carving through volcanic rock is geologically young; centered beneath active volcanoes, the Colca is prone to earthquakes, landslides, and floods and easily susceptible to change.
The upper section of the canyon was horrendous: low volume and steep. At times, the walls were just meters wide. There were countless portages. They had brought enough food and supplies for five days. By the third day, they had covered less than 20 kilometers out of 100, with over 1000 meters of gradient.
On day four, Andrzej slammed into the boulder. By day eight, the group began to starve. They had no food left. In the canyon, they could hear the rumbling of the walls and passed fresh rock falls. "At night, we slept with our helmets on," says Jacek, afraid the walls would crumble on them at camp. Eleven days in, they reached Hacienda Canco, 44 kilometers from their start. The
indigenous people of Canco gave them some food, but the group would need much more, not to mention medical attention, supplies, and glue, to repair their raft.
Stefan and Krzysztof stayed with the equipment in Canco. The rest climbed out of the gorge to return to Arequipa. They reached out to Zbigniew, recovering from malaria in Lima, who was able to send the glue they needed for raft repair. “It was a tough climb out, about 10,000 feet. We were very weak. We didn’t eat much in the Hacienda; we found probably a few eggs and maybe some cheese. That was all that we could eat there, but we knew we needed to get out,” Piotr remembers. Ten days later, they returned and launched from Canco to complete the remaining 56 kilometers.
The second half had more volume and more navigable rapids. Around every bend, the Colca provided new stretches of hard whitewater. The crew bequeathed names which hold today: Chocolate Canyon, Canoandes Canyon, Reparaz Canyon, Poles' Canyon. The waters were turquoise, and the walls stretched above them. The banks held reminders of ancient human culture and hot springs. At night they looked up at the stars, which like their home, felt further away than ever before.
Jacek would sometimes stand in the raft during the rapids to film the descent. He would jump out, skip across rocks like a mountain goat, and swim back. The footage was important. The Canoandes had been offered much-needed payment by the Peruvian government to document the descent in hopes of promoting Peru as a tourist destination. Piotr, the lone remaining kayak, acted as a scout, often paddling ahead.
The most difficult rapid of the lower canyon was two-thirds of the way down. In a calm pool of green water, Piotr could hear the river growling. He signaled the raft to stop, and they pulled into an eddy beneath an overhanging cliff. They clung to the cave until they could hammer rebar pitons into the rock with their ax to tie off. Piotr climbed up and saw three drops ahead with a runout of calm water below. They pulled Piotr's kayak into the raft and prepared to run the multi-tiered falls.
The Canoandes often sang with one another above difficult rapids to quell their nerves. Just as with the Bystrze in Krakow, they joined together, Polish folk songs echoing in the gorge as they descended. The last drop of the rapid tombstoned the raft, and the crew yard-saled into the Colca. They survived (barely) and named the rapid Reparaz in honor of a professor in Lima who had provided them with as much intel as was available on the canyon.
Five days after leaving Canco, the Canoandes emerged from the western mouth of the Colca Canyon, alive, victorious, and craving more. They returned to Arequipa on June 14th, 1981. In all, the expedition took them 33 days. The Canoandes had accomplished the improbable and could return home to Poland heroes.
Swift currents across the globe
The Polish kayakers would, however, not return home. Back in Lima, nearing departure in December of 1981, they watched as tensions in Poland came to a long-brewing eruption.
A labor movement known as Solidarity and led by future president Lech Walesa had been founded over a year earlier to protest for workers' rights in the Soviet Union. As Solidarity grew, it became a pronounced crack in Russia's control over the Polish populace. To subdue the uprising, the Polish government declared martial law on December 13th, 1981. Authoritarian violence broke out. In Peru, the members of the Canoandes read newspapers declaring war in Poland.
The Canoandes could get on the next plane to Poland, or they could use their fame from the Colca Canyon as a platform in the western world to speak out against the actions of their government. They decided on the latter. As they began to make public appearances and organize marches from Peru, the Canoandes went from expedition kayakers to part of one of the largest civil movements of the twentieth century.
"We … decided there was no way we were returning. We need to do something," Piotr recalls. "We were known in Peru. People were hungry to get our opinion about what was happening in Poland. So we went to the news stations and said what we thought about the martial law declared in Poland. We organized some marches, some meetings, and concerts to collect money to send through the church through the Vatican to Poland for help."
The choice of the Canoandes is difficult to put in perspective for many of us who live in a time and place when protesting against the government is commonplace, and we can do so simply by posting on social media. By taking a public stance, the Canoandes risked their lives and the lives of family members back in Poland. Speaking out in support of Solidarity, over two years of their accomplishments as river runners in South America were dismissed by Polish officials. They were essentially erased from existence back home, and any chance of return vanished. If they tried, they would undoubtedly be imprisoned.
With support from efforts like the Canoandes, Solidarity would slowly be the foundation of undoing Soviet control in Poland and an eventual end to the Cold War. But in the meantime, the homeland the Canoandes had long sought to return to was lost to them; they would have to begin new lives. "We lost the country. We couldn't go back," Piotr adds. "We knew after those political activities in Lima we would be sentenced to jail. "
What began as an expedition to enjoy wild rivers and put off responsibility hurled them on a course that drastically altered their lives. It started the moment they began kayaking. Bystrze had taken them from paddlers to explorers to activists and political refugees.
Nawrot, pulling back from the actions of the Canoandes and the subsequent chain of events, says it's not a film he could have made about an expedition today. Not because epic expeditions and
athletes taking part in social protest don't occur, but because it's only through the lens of time can you see how interconnected the actions you’ve taken have become. Still, Nawrot believes that it’s no surprise that kayakers are the type of people to embark on this type of course. “Kayaking brings together people of a certain persuasion,” he explains. “It's a sport that attracts a level of independence, but you also depend on other people for your safety. You put trust in your partners. It attracts people predisposed to take heroic actions, the way the Canoandes did.”
As paddlers, we regularly throw around words like freedom and liberation, existential senses we pursue on a river or a trip with friends. As I watched the Canoandes expedition visually unfold in Nawrot’s film, I felt the words pairing with what the Canoandes were chasing and continually fighting for around every bend.
In some ways, their pursuits of freedom on and off the river were the same as any paddler; put in context with the place and time, they carry a substantially heavier weight. With each river, and each day in the Americas, the Canoandes paddlers became stronger as a team and more empowered as individuals. Their accomplishments could have easily remained self-glorifying. Instead, when they sensed a shift in the political tides back home they never thought possible, they made a choice to benefit not themselves but Poland—the people and place they loved; those in need of what they found on desert roads and in the depths of canyons.
This story originally appeared in Kayak Session Issue 82.