Middle East Times 11 June, 2003 A group of six rafters pulled their boat out of the world’s longest river at Rosetta on the Mediterranean coast exhausted but ecstatic after completing the first full descent of the White Nile in an epic four-and-a-half month journey.
“It feels wonderful, we are ecstatic. It’s been magic,” said 32-year-old team member Natalie McComb from New Zealand.
The group – which also included two South Africans, two Englishmen, and a Frenchwoman – filmed the almost 7,000-kilometer (4,400-mile) trip for television documentaries. The two sources of the Nile, the White Nile and the Blue Nile, merge in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum.
Last month two Americans were the first people to raft the full length of the Blue Nile, more than 5,000 kilometers.
“There’s about a 100-kilometer stretch of massive white water with some of Africa’s biggest crocodiles and hippos,” said McComb. “The banks are thick jungle and generally the area is very wild and remote and full of wild animals.” |