Real Survival Stories - Rainforest Rafting: White Water Odyssey

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

In Papua New Guinea, deep in the jungle, a group sets off on a rafting trip. 17-year-old Zamon Kingi and his friend Andrew are having a blast… until the fun abruptly stops. When their raft hits a waterfall, Andrew and another member of the party are separated from the group. Zamon will join the rescue effort, on a mission to find his friend - before the crocodiles do… A Noiser production, written by Joe Viner. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TD Direct Investing offers live support, so whether you're a newbie or a seasoned pro, you can make your investing steps count. And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. It's March 1986, deep in the jungle of Papua New Guinea. Beneath a canopy of tangled vines, a swollen, muddy river snakes its way through the forest. After months of monsoon, the river has burst its banks. Sluggish brown water spills into the surrounding grasslands and bamboo groves, turning this tropical jungle into a fetid swamp. As the rain continues to hammer the canopy, the forest is alive with noise. But for 17-year-old Zaymon Kingi, submerged deep beneath the river's surface, the only sound is the blood rushing in his ears.

The teenager opens his mouth and lets out a muffled scream. Far above him, thin shafts of light slice through the water, cutting through the murky green depths to the riverbed where Zaymon lies helpless. He tries to move his arms, but they won't budge. Something is binding him tight, like his body is strapped into a straitjacket. Zaymon can feel the current rushing past him. He can feel the slimy weeds coiling around his limbs, pulling him deeper into the mud. His lungs are on fire as his body consumes the last traces of oxygen and suddenly

zamon wakes in a cold sweat he looks around at the dark jungle and the kind concerned faces of his adult companions he was only dreaming and i remember just thrashing around violently and screaming and shouting and Mike waking me up and then consoling me you know burst into tears and was crying and I remember him giving me a hug and saying you know you're okay you're gonna be alright. Zaymont takes several steadying breaths, and slowly he remembers where he is and why he is here. In the darkness, he can hear the rain pattering against the surface of the river, the river they've been trying to navigate down for the past two days. Covered in stinging bites and painful bruises, shaken by the horrors of the past 24 hours,

Zayman lies back and closes his eyes. He may have just woken up from one bad dream, but he's stumbled straight back into a waking nightmare. To be continued... are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Zaymon Kingi. In March 1986, he and his best friend Andrew are on a rafting trip through the jungle of Papua New Guinea. They're having a blast until the fun abruptly stops. The entire boat is submerged, right? The whole wave kind of explodes over us. Everyone's underwater and then we're just pushing through.

So we were out of control by this stage. When the raft hits a waterfall, Andrew and another member of the party are separated from the group. With no idea if they're dead or alive, Zaymon will join the rescue effort, setting off back down the river, on a mission to find his friend

before the crocodiles do. And then I could see that actually this log has a couple of nostrils on the end of it and there's some eyes behind those nostrils. That's not a log. I'm John Hopkins. From Noisa, this is Real Survival Stories. It's Saturday, March the 8th, 1986, in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea. A lanky, dark-haired 17-year-old strolls along the city's main oceanfront promenade.

To his left, the waves of the Coral Sea lap gently against the white sand beach. To his right, a lush green hillside is dotted with hotels and low-rise condominiums. Zaymont glances both ways before trotting across the road, weaving deftly between the traffic. Though he's a New Zealander by birth, he's grown up here in New Guinea. His father is an accountant for a local airline, and his mother is a teacher. For the past few years, Zaymon has been abroad, at boarding school. After graduating last summer, he moved back to Port Moresby for a gap year before starting university.

It was an opportunity for him to spend some quality time in the country he is proud to call home. I was very attached to Papua New Guinea. New Guinea has a quarter of the world's languages. It has 720 languages in that country. It has 720 or even more cultures. With that you have a pantheon of gods, you have amazing art, you have all of this incredible diversity.

Still, Zaymon doesn't let his cultural interests interrupt his beach time. As a keen windsurfer, he spends most days out beyond the breakwater, fully enjoying this rare, carefree interlude before university starts in the autumn. Of course, none of this would be nearly as much fun without a friend to share it with. As he walks along the pavement, Zaymon catches sight of a group of people gathered outside the entrance of a hotel. Among them is a skinny, suntanned teenager leaning against a wall. When he spots Zaymon, the boy grins and waves. Andrew Mulholland is Zaymon's best friend.

They've got a lot in common. Both are outgoing and adventurous. Both are the children of expats. And both attended boarding school in different countries. Andrew in the UK, Zayman in New Zealand. But we would come back during holidays and we would hang out together. We'd usually end up playing squash all day or going exploring and doing things. So it was a pretty lucky childhood. He and I were good friends. Recently, Andrew revealed some bad news.

The Mulhollands are moving back to the UK in a few months. They'll be leaving New Guinea for good. Though the boys have promised to stay in touch, it's a sad moment. Perhaps in recognition of this fact, Andrew's parents, Shuna and Mike, have invited Zayman on a family rafting trip. And so they thought they were leaving, this would be a fun thing for the boys would be to go and have an adventure like this and not long after that they were returning back to the UK so it's kind of like a farewell trip. The trip is a two-day rafting expedition down the Ungabunga River, a meandering waterway

that flows through the New Guinean Mountains. They'll be going with an organized tour group, Pacific Expeditions, who have promised the Mulhollands a gentle float trip, with only one short whitewater section. Still, when he first heard about the proposed excursion, Zaymon's excitement was tempered by nerves. Rivers are something of an unknown quantity to him. My world was windsurfing, was being on the ocean, was sailing, and the ocean was something that I was deeply attached to and felt completely comfortable with.

But rivers were a different thing. You know, I didn't understand the currents. In New Guinea, You've got crocodiles you've got lots of things that swim around the rivers and So there was an unknown entity. So there was hesitation But at the same time I had the opportunity to go with my best buddy and to go experience something new. So I said yes Later that morning, Zayman sits in the backseat of a Land Rover as it trundles deeper into the mountains. Pacific Expeditions is a new tour company. This will be their first commercial outing with paying clients.

The two guides have carefully scouted out the route beforehand. But still, today is a day of firsts for everyone. Among the group, excitement and trepidation builds. The entire team was the two rough guides, Dave and Grant Truenak. They were the owners of Pacific Expeditions. And then we had our driver, Alu, and myself, Andrew, his parents, Shuna, and Mike Sr., and then his brother, Michael. Finally, there's Don, a family friend of the Mulhollands, who was invited along for the ride. After six hours, the Land Rover pulls up. Zaymon jumps out of the vehicle and, along with the rest of the group, makes his way

down to an old, disused steel bridge, abandoned by the Australian Army after World War II. As he steps onto the bridge, Zaymon looks down at the river, a broad, muddy stripe splitting the rainforest canopy in places overflowing after heavy rain. All we could see is this very large chocolate brown river underneath us. And the river had also gone into the local grasses and it was obviously high, which we thought was great because it meant we didn't have to walk too far down the slope and drag the raft down to the river. With the group assembled along the riverbank, Dave begins the safety briefing.

First he hands out personal flotation devices, PFDs or life jackets. He issues helmets and wooden paddles. Then he explains the protocol should anyone fall overboard. The instructions are simple. Get to the banks, stay by the river, and don't wander off. And I remember this clearly because he said the reason for this is if you try and walk out on this river, it's about five, six days walk to the nearest road, if you know where you're going. Zaymon glances up at the tree-covered mountains beyond the valley walls. They seem to stretch on forever. Gauzy white clouds drift between the hills like smoke. The Papua New Guinean jungle is the world's third largest tropical rainforest.

Covering over 100,000 square miles, it's also one of the most biodiverse places anywhere on the planet. A seemingly infinite array of reptiles, birds, and insects dwell among its luscious valleys, lowland swamps, twisting rivers, lagoons, and gorges. For anyone lost in this gargantuan green maze, the likelihood of survival is slim. There's just so many accounts when you look at the history of New Guinea, for example, I know of accounts of battalions of Japanese who were moving from one base to the next to completely disappear into the mountains. These mountains are treacherous, so the country is really unforgiving. It's super tough.

And as they said, if you were to try and attempt to walk to a road, chances are you probably wouldn't make it. With Dave's sober warning ringing in their ears, the six tourists and two guides clamber inside the bright yellow 14-foot inflatable raft. Zayman is seated in the front alongside Dave. Behind them it's Mike and Don, then Shuna and 13-year-old Mike Jr., with Andrew and Grant sitting in the back. After a brief tutorial going through paddling techniques and commands,

they push off from the bank and immediately pick up the river's brisk center current. The plan for the day is a four-hour float to the halfway point, twelve miles downstream, where a pre-made campsite is waiting for them. Tomorrow, another four or five hours will bring them to the takeout, where they'll be picked up by driver alu and taken home zaymon savors the sensation of the wind in his hair cutting through the midday heat and humidity he grins as somebody probably andrew playfully splashes him with water

as the river unspools before them the nerves rec recede. You know, the guides are excited, we're excited. You know, it's just like a giant adventure was about to unfold. You're a podcast listener, and this is a podcast ad heard only in Canada. Reach great Canadian listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre-produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience with Libsyn Ads. Email bob

at libsyn.com to learn more. That's b-o-b at l-i-b-s-y-n dot com. The first stretch of the river takes them past rows of cultivated gardens, lush emerald green lawns and colorful flowerbeds planted by local villages. Very soon, however, the vegetation grows denser, wilder. Giant ferns and towering bamboo crowd the riverbanks. Weeping fig trees extend their branches over the water, trailing mossy tendrils in the stream. After rounding a few more bends in the river, a vast, rocky canyon opens up around them. Soaring, hundred-foot cliffs loom on either side, craggy precipices draped in hanging vines.

All that was missing was like a giant pterodactyl flying up the gorge. It was kind of like Jurassic Park, you know, green and vines and water, but on a big scale, you know, you had a lot of water moving down and a big angry river charging down the gorge. Zaymon peers around in awe. But he doesn't have time to enjoy the scenery. He needs to concentrate. Because as the water funnels into the gorge, the current grows stronger.

Immediately the river started to pick up. So you go from little riffles on on the river, right, so things are starting to kind of splash and then you'd have these tiny little standing waves that you're punching through. You got kind of a little bit of water coming over the bow a wee bit and then these waves start to pick up in size. So this was fun. We were getting splashed and wow, this is getting exciting. But then the haystack started to build up,

and they came at us with greater intensity. So you've got people that are now bailing, and we had a large kind of empty paint bucket that we're using to bail. As they crash over haystack after haystack, more and more water sloshes into the raft. Zaymon can hear the nervous laughter behind him turning into panic. Things are getting dicey. He glances across at Dave, hoping for some reassurance. But the guide is preoccupied, his face a mask of concentration. He barks a command at Zaymon, telling him to lean forward over the bow

and drive down hard with his paddle. If they're not careful, they could lose control of the raft entirely. When Dave said, you've got to really kind of paddle in and hold on because we don't want to flip over, then I realized that, okay, things have changed now. You know, this is not what we're being sold. This is no longer a float trip. The raft is being swept along like a leaf in a storm drain.

They careen across the rapids, powerless against the current. They spin 90 degrees until they're horizontal across the river. They're wildly out of control. Zaymon twists and looks over his right shoulder, and his stomach drops. Up ahead, you can see a length of white foam spanning the width of the river before it drops away. It's a waterfall. Just remember it being a furious white water section with a ton of waves coming at you,

but then I do recall hearing hang on. It's now a river-wide waterfall and we're falling over it sideways and it's about a six to eight foot drop beneath us, and that's where the raft capsized. At the bottom of a gorge in the jungle of Papua New Guinea, an upturned raft is trapped in the churning froth at the base of an eight-foot waterfall. Suddenly, a head appears amid the roiling foam. Zaymon gasps and splutters, his life jacket shoved up around his ears. Acting on survival instinct alone, he grabs hold of the side of the raft and tries to clamber on.

So now the raft is upturned. I'm on the bottom of it. Super slippery. You know, there's nothing to grab onto. You kind of like, like a limpet, right? You're trying to suck on like a gecko and hang onto the surface while it's being pulled into the falls behind you. Amid the watery chaos, Zaymon just about manages to get a grip on the raft. Breathing heavily, he scans the white water.

Dave and Grant appear first, gasping for breath, their helmets wrenched askew. Zaymon helps both guides clamber up. Then he looks around for the others. Andrew's mum Shuna pops up and she's now bleeding. She had hit her teeth and she's got blood on her face. The dad pops up, Mike, and he's in shock. We're all in shock, right? What it occurred. And then Mike Jr., Andrew's brother, he also is bleeding as well. He hit himself, whether it be from the paddle or from the rocks. And then we cannot find Don or Andrew. Neither of them pop up. The churning white water crashes around them in a deafening, thunderous roar.

There's no sign of Don or Andrew. Then suddenly, the raft shoots forward, ejected from the base of the falls and back into the surging current. Now, Zaymon sees a new problem rapidly approaching. The headwall of the gorge is up ahead, less than a hundred feet away. The river slams against it with the force of a runaway train as the Unger Bunger follows a dogleg in the canyon floor. The upturned raft hurtles towards this next obstacle. It seems inevitable that all six of its remaining passengers will be violently tossed into the seething maelstrom once again. Seconds are all they have. Zayman presses himself against the slippery underbelly of the raft, digging his fingers into the taut rubber as they go shooting up the sheer headwall

like a surfboard climbing a wave. We then wash up into the headwall. We're pretty much standing vertical on this thing we somehow managed to stay on and then wash down and then we go along the wall and sweep around the corner and we've gone curving around a sharp bend the steepest part of the canyon is now behind them. And at last, the gorge widens and the current eases. The raft flows forward into an eddy of calm, where Dave and Grant can navigate to the riverbank. They jump off and drag the boat onto a stony beach. And we sat there for about a good 30 minutes,

waiting to see if those guys would show up, right? Hoping that they would swim around the corner and come to us. And so we sat there for as long as we could in the hope that they would appear. But Andrew and Don don't appear. The guides begin an immediate inquest. Did anyone see them back at the waterfall? Everyone shakes their heads. As Shuna starts to panic, Dave and Grant offer some reassurance.

They explain that after becoming separated from the raft, Don and Andrew will most likely have followed protocol. They will have swum to the shore and stayed there. If that is the case, then the best course of action is for the rest of them to continue downriver to the takeout, then drive back upriver and begin the search effort tomorrow. They can't walk back upstream from here. The gorge is way too steep, the current too strong. Dave and Grant took over and made the executive decision that, you know what, we're going to go to the halfway point to the shelter and we're going to spend the night here because, hey, you know, light is fading. We're getting now into the end of the day and darkness is going to come real fast here.

We're in the gorge and also we needed to attend to Andrew's mum, Shuna, and his brother who had been injured. For Shuna and Mike Senior, leaving their son behind goes against every parental instinct. But the guides insist it's the safest way. And so they climb back into the raft and float downstream. Half an hour later, they reach a point where a campsite has been set up on a raised platform above the riverbank. They disembark and unload the raft. While one of the guides starts tending to Shuna and Mike Jr., Zaymon helps prepare dinner

in the gathering dusk. Up on the raised wooden platform, you can hear Shuna crying. The sounds of a mother's grief echoing around the twilight jungle. I remember taking food up to Shuna and climbing up onto the platform and giving her this food. And she kind of looks at me and then she stops and she points past my shoulder and she screams and she says there's a man and is screaming and i i remember just i didn't drop the food but i turned around and it was just the light and the shadows in the jungle that were playing with her and then she burst into tears and mike's consoling her and obviously yeah extremely distressed by the loss of her son.

Later that night, Zaymon lies wide awake beneath the canopy shelter, listening as the driving rain drowns out Shuna's sobs. He can sympathize, but for his own part, he tries to remain pragmatic. I can't recall having that sense of death, you know, like I didn't feel like they were dead. For me, there was a sense of hope that they were okay, but maybe they were injured or it was more so, where were they? How can we get to them? It's the following morning. After a restless night, Zayman, the Mulhollands and the two raft guides are back on the river,

continuing their journey downstream. The rain has cleared, leaving another hot, sunny day in its wake. The group paddles with purpose, intent on getting to the takeout and heading back upstream as soon as possible. The atmosphere is tense, heavy with uncertainty. All around, the jungle buzzes with life. As the river started to widen out, you get these kunai grasses and big grass that grows along the side of the riverbanks. You've got bamboo, you've got big trees, jungle, you've got beautiful birds flying, brahmini kites and toucans and parrots.

Papua New Guinea has amazing bird life. And then you get kind of these beaches with the grasses and things, and that's where we see our first crocodiles sunning themselves. From a distance, they look like logs. But a closer inspection reveals several pairs of unblinking reptilian eyes, long warty snouts, and rows of yellow, snaggled teeth. The crocs lazily eye the raft as it drifts quietly by. We're looking at them, and we're trying to get downstream as fast as we can. So we see them, we notice them, but we keep moving.

New Guinea's inland waterways are home to approximately 100,000 crocodiles, both freshwater and the more fearsome saltwater variety. Seeing them only reaffirms the need to find Andrew and Don ASAP. A couple of hours later, they arrive at the takeout. Zaymon helps the guides pull the raft onto land. They deflate it, then hurry up the road to meet Alu, the driver, who's waiting with a Land Rover. It's decided that a second car will be arranged to take Shuna and Mike Jr. back to Port Moresby. They need to get their injuries checked at the hospital.

Meanwhile, the others, Grant, Dave, and Mike Sr. will go with Alu back up to the Put-In where they'll begin the search for Andrew and Don. As for Zaymon, he's given a choice. Return to Port Moresby or join the search effort. They said, this is the plan. We're not forcing you to say yes to this plan, but if you want to go home, understood Alu can take you back. And yeah, I said, no, I'm coming with you.

There was not a moment of doubt in my mind that I was not going down the river again because it was my friend that needed rescuing. You know, my buddy is on the river. We have to go find him. It's mid-morning. Zaymon and the others sit in the Land Rover as they hurtle back to the Put-In. He watches the quivering speedometer creep higher and higher. Alu has been told to floor it.

On route, they stop briefly to stock up on provisions, buying food, water, and four car-tie inner tubes for additional buoyancy When they get to the river, they waste no time in launching the raft and setting off downstream Soon, the roar of the rapids can be heard, a distant, ominous rumble. To avoid losing control of the raft again, the team has devised a new approach for navigating the whitewater. Instead of paddling, they plan to get out of the raft and walk along the bank, guiding the boat through the rough water with ropes. We were going to line the boat down the river like that because there was no way that we were going to run the rapids. We knew that if we were going to run the rapids, we were going to line the boat down the river like that because there was no way that we were going to run the rapids.

We knew that if we were going to run the rapids, we were going to capsize again. We may be killed. First, they paddle the raft across to a beach on the far bank. They stash the inner tubes as an insurance plan if anything happens to the raft. Then they prepare two ropes, one extending from the bow at the front of the boat, the other from the happens to the raft. Then they prepare two ropes, one extending

from the bow at the front of the boat, the other from the stern at the back. And then we began the process of lying the boat down the river. And so it was Dave and I were on the stern. We go downstream. We secure the line. Mike and Grant are upstream. They release the bow line. Ra swings around. we now become the bow, they go down. So we do this a couple of times, right? And we're making our way down the gorge and we're feeling pretty proud of ourselves that so far this is working. It's slow, methodical work, but rope length by rope length, they walk the raft down river. As Mike and Grant secure the bow for a third time,

Zaymon and Dave start picking their way along the side of the gorge, looking for a place to tie off the stern line. But they won't get far. Unbeknownst to them, the raft has become caught behind a semi-submerged boulder. As water continues to surge over it, it steadily fills. So now the raft is filling up with water and it's becoming heavier and heavier and heavier and as a result it's starting to pull on the d-ring. So the d-ring that's where the bowline is attached to is getting pulled out and all of a sudden, bam!

It sounds like a gunshot. Startled, Zaymon looks around for the source of the noise, and then he sees it. The raft, free of its tether, is racing off downstream. He and Dave are still holding on to the stern line, but the force of the river and the heavily weighted boat is too great, and the rope is ripped from their hands. And our raft heads off downstream without us, and now we're in the gorge. With no raft. Not up the creek without a paddle, we're down the river without a boat. Zaymon, Dave, Mike, and Grant stand there, trying to process what has just happened.

We're absolutely devastated. We're gutted. And we're standing there. You're listening to this incredible roar. And I remember looking up and just kind of looking up at the gorge and at the same time of being gobsmacked and devastated, just being overwhelmed by the beauty that I'm looking at, these falls that are cascading down

and just this incredible gorge that we're standing in. It was an overpowering sensation. Zaymon's in a daze. But gradually Dave's voice bubbles back to the surface. He can hear him shouting across to the others. They're discussing next steps. We never lost hope. We never had a moment to say, oh, is me you know like it was always okay this has occurred what are we going to do next we kind of had a huddle and we knew that we had the four rubber tubes that were sitting on the bank time to regroup and recalibrate. Don and Andrew are still out here somewhere. They've got to find them. And so the four stranded rescuers pick their way upstream to where they stashed the rubber rings. The plan is to fashion a makeshift raft out of the four tire inner tubes and continue downriver.

But there is a problem. A deep, turbulent, violent problem. To try and run the rapids on a makeshift vessel like that would be madness. Instead, they'll need to carry the tubes as far as possible along the base of the cliff before launching into calmer waters. The end of the gorge is only a few hundred meters away, but stretches of the bank are impassable, repeatedly forcing them to wade through the treacherous water. We started walking down, but the walls of the gorge were super steep and in some places

vertical so you're in the water, you know, with the tube kind of navigating around rocks and trying to make your way without getting pulled into the current inch by inch they make progress along the gorge after a while they bypassed the waterfall where they capsized yesterday but there's still no sign of don or andrew at one stage their route is blocked by a fallen tree. They manage to find a way underneath it by squeezing through the gap between the roots and the rock wall. And so we get into this little gap and we're up against this tree. And as we're going through, someone starts yelling and then we all start yelling and we're all getting stung by these

wasps. Blindly swatting at the stinging insects, the team scrambled through the tunnel and out the other side. Red hot welts begin to burn all over Zayman's face and arms. We come out the other end and we're all stung and lips and all our faces were all swollen and hands and everything.

And I remember Dave telling us that, put mud on it because the mud will take away the pain. Smeared in clay, their skin throbbing, Zaymon and the others continue making their way along the inside of the gorge. As they go, they scour the river for Andrew and Don, to no avail. By now, evening is approaching,

forcing the team into yet another tough choice. Do they keep searching, or do they find somewhere safe to camp? So the decision was made that we were going to spend the night there in the gorge. We weren't going to swim in the river, and we were going to try and climb up as high as we could up into the corner of this gorge, as high as we could,

because we knew it was going to rain again that night, and the river was going to rise, right? So we wanted to get away from the rising water. They climb up to a patch of trees overlooking the gorge, high enough that even with more heavy rain, the rising river won't touch them. Hopefully, wherever they are, Don and Andrew have taken the same precaution.

The sun has dropped behind the mountains now, taking the heat of the day with it. Soaking wet, filthy, and covered with wasp stings, it is going to be a long, uncomfortable night. To stay warm as the temperature drops, Zaymont crosses his arms over his chest and asks Mike to tighten the straps of his life jacket. I recall putting my hands inside my PFD and asking Mike to kind of just cinch down on the PFD so that I could be snug like this. And I remember falling asleep with my arms inside my PFD and then having this nightmare.

I had this dream that all of a sudden I'm in the river, right? And now I can't swim. And I remember just thrashing around violently and screaming and shouting and Mike waking me up and then consoling me. You know, I burst into tears and was crying. and I remember him giving me a hug and saying, you're okay, you're going to be alright. It's daybreak. Down at the water's edge, Zaymon, Dave, Mike, and Grant stand looking out of the river.

Where it meets the headwall at the top of the canyon, the violent, thundering wave of white water crashes up the rock face and around the bend in the gorge. It's a terrifying sight. After another near-sleepless night, the toughest part of this assault courses upon them. They've managed to lash the four inner tubes together with a length of rope. Not a bad piece of improvisation under the circumstances.

But will it survive the headwall wave? Only one way to find out. We lashed everything, walked upstream, looked at each other. And I remember Grant saying, whatever you do, do not let go of the tubes, right? And so, yeah, we jump in and we start kicking as hard as we can into the center current. And immediately we were just swept underwater, pushed up against this wall. Zaymon holds his breath as he's engulfed by the wave. His world goes dark. Pushed up against this wall. He clamps down with his forearm, even as he's flipped upside down. He braces himself for a fatal impact with rock. But instead, he feels a sudden upward jolt.

And then next thing is we pop up and we look around and all four of us are still attached to the tubes, right? We're like, yes, we survived. And swept around the corner and we knew from that point on we'd survived the gorge and we'd survived all the worst rapids and we'd made it now what we had to do was to find andrew and don any sense of relief doesn't last long scanning the calm stretch of river in front of them, there's still no sign of the missing pair. Are they running out of luck? Was it ludicrous to think they could ever find them in this vast, dark jungle?

They continue floating downstream, calling out for Andrew and Don. Zayman cranes his neck and shields his eyes from the sun. And that's when he sees something strange up ahead. I'm looking up and I remember looking downstream and seeing two helmets on a rock, right? And I yell out and I'm like, oh, you know, what's that? And then all of a sudden we see these two heads pop up. And then we start yelling and waving. And then these guys start waving back to us.

And sure enough, it's Andrew and Don. And we couldn't believe it. Zayman paddles harder than ever over to the rock where Andrew and Don are waiting. We're able to kind of pull in behind that rock, clamber out. Mike was able to give his son a giant hug. And we all hugged each other. We just couldn't believe that they were alive and that they were safe and that they were okay. In this giddy, joyous atmosphere, Andrew and Don start recounting their epic story.

Turns out when the raft capsized two days ago, they were pulled back underneath the waterfall. By the time they swam out, the raft had already vanished around the corner. They then heeded Dave's advice and positioned themselves on a rock in view of the river. Only as the water rose, they had to keep climbing higher and higher. When they saw the empty raft float by yesterday, they were forced into a high-stakes decision. Are we supposed to jump into this raft and make our way down? Or are we supposed to wait? And so there was that conflict between what they should do and what they'd been told to

do. And they decided to let the raft go. And they said it was just a really traumatic decision because afterwards they kept questioning and asking themselves, was that the right decision to do? Thankfully, they made the right call. But now the six adventurers must confront the scale of the challenge that remains. They've still got a long way to go, a journey of around 12 miles,

and they'll have to make it squeezed onto what are effectively four small rubber rings. They come up with a system whereby four people will take turns sitting in the rings while the remaining two do shifts swimming alongside. They paddle out into the middle of the river, picking up the center current, and for a while things are going to plan they're making progress perhaps this nightmare is nearing its end then zaymon spots something in the distance just above the surface of the water i remember sitting up and looking downstream and kind of watching and seeing what I thought was a log. And then looking and then I could see that actually this log has a couple of nostrils on the end of it and there's some eyes behind those nostrils.

That's not a log. That's a crocodile. And a big one at that Zaymon can't tell from here but this beast could well be a saltwater croc more territorial and aggressive than their freshwater cousins he yells to the group who freeze barely daring to breathe

the group watches the crocodile watching them we see it coming towards us and then you see the tail kind of swish and it goes under, right? So this thing kind of submerges and we're now floating towards where it was. And you've got six guys on four rubber tubes. You got bums in the tubes, you got legs sticking out, you got arms out to the side. And we're all looking at each other thinking who's it gonna be.

Zaymon waits for a sharp tug to pull him beneath the surface. But it doesn't come. They float on downriver. A few miles on they make a discovery. The raft. It's caught in a bamboo thicket near the bank, but seems to be unscathed. Grant swims over to it and drags it back over to the others. They all gratefully climb inside.

We all get back into the raft and then we discover we've got all this food on the raft and we think, okay, great. Let's have a feast. You know, we've survived. Thankfully we're now all alive. We're on the raft. We're out of the river. Here we are.

We can get to the takeout and now we can go home. And that's exactly what they do. With renewed strength, they make light work of the final stretch. A few hours later, exhausted, aching, scratched and sunburnt, Zaymon sits in the back of the Landruva as Alu drives them home to Port Moresby. After three long days in the jungle, they finally made it out, all of them in one piece. I just remember getting home, Dave dropping me off and then saying to my mum, Mrs. Kingy, we left with two boys and we came back with two men.

In the months that follow, the full impact of Zaymon's three days in the jungle takes time to sink in. He soon moves on to the next adventure, university. But as the years pass, Zaymon comes to see his experience on the Angabunga as one of the most significant moments in his life, an incident that would shape things to come. It opened the door to all of these other ventures that, to use the metaphor, came downstream as a result of this. During his first week at university in Auckland, New Zealand, while signing up to various clubs and societies at the Freshers' Fair, one stand catches Zayman's eye. The university rafting club.

He approaches and strikes up a conversation. They said, have you been rafting before? And I said, yeah. And they said, where have you rafted? And I said, Papua New Guinea. And they go, oh man, we've got a raft guide. And I'd only been as a passenger twice before. I mean, it was just a whole bunch of super enthusiastic people who wanted to go down rivers

and then became a commercial raft guide, went back to New Guinea and worked on a lot of my holidays. So I would go back and work in PNG for Pacific Expeditions and then became great friends with Dave and Grant. And to this day, we're still in touch. Zaymon's experience on the Angabunga sparks a lifelong love of rivers, inspiring him to travel all around the world on epic kayaking trips. But what about the others?

In the following years, Zaymon often wonders about the Mulhollands, how the event impacted their lives. He and Andrew lost touch after leaving for university. But in 2018, Zaymon arranges to meet up with Andrew, Shuna and Mike in a London pub to hear the story from their perspective. And for a brief moment, the separate tributaries of their lives come together in the same river again. For all of us, it was such a defining moment in our lives.

It was a major event, you know? It was a bucket list item of mine to take them out for dinner and sit down and say, what happened to you? For me, that full circle moment of meeting again in that London pub and sitting down with Andrew and his mom and dad and seeing them face to face. And, you know, we cried, we hugged each other.

Yeah. It was pretty awesome. It was a full circle moment. Sorry, man. Just getting a little overwhelmed. But, yeah, as you can tell. Sorry, man. Just getting a little overwhelmed, but... Yeah, as you... As you can tell...

Um... Yeah, this story's had a deep impact on my life. Next time on Real Survival Stories, we meet Viv Bird, a British aviator whose plane is thrown off course by an arctic blizzard. When Viv and her friends crash land into a frozen wilderness, no one knows they're alive. Their radio batteries are dying and they have no idea where they are. Rescue appears almost impossible. As a freezing tempest swirls around them and darkness sets in, the three friends settle down for the longest night of their lives.

That's next time on Real Survival Stories. Listen to Viv's story today without waiting a week by subscribing to Noisa Plus.