Church organist required for jungle meteorite hunt
Jack Malvern
Wanted: one organist for concert in remote Bolivian jungle accessible only by raft. Must be prepared to face rapids, alligators and 30C (86F) temperatures. Ability to swim a bonus.
Church organists are rarely an essential part of expeditions into the Amazonian rainforest, but a team of scientists about to embark on a journey to a far-flung meteorite impact site in Bolivia believe that one will be key to achieving their mission.
Colonel John Blashford-Snell, a professional adventurer who made headlines in 2000 when he took a grand piano 350 miles (560km) along the Amazon River as a present for the Wai Wai tribe in Guyana, intends to deliver a pedal organ to the isolated Ojaki community as a way of persuading its people to help his expedition.
The colonel’s team, which will also help to install a clean water supply and perform medical duties for the Ojaki people, are reliant on local expertise to build bridges to the impact site, which is five miles wide. The locals are religious and have asked the visitors to install an organ in their newly built church.
The organ — a pedal-powered Harmonium donated by St James’s church in Milton Abbas, Dorset — will be flown to La Paz and then transported by lorry 120 miles over the Andes to the Beni river. It will then be loaded on to a 59ft (18m) boat for a 430-mile journey over rapids and more dangerous, man-made hazards.
Colonel Blashford-Snell, 70, told The Times that the main obstacle would be logs floated down the river by timber companies. “You get around those by gunning the engine before pulling the prop out of the water,” he said. “God willing, your bow comes out of the water and you shoot over the log and land on the other side.”
Natural hazards include alligators, although these are not a problem “unless you step on them”, he said.
The explorer made a reconnaissance expedition two years ago but had to stop within seven miles of the crater when his party got down to their last bottle of water. He suggests that any organist willing to join should be prepared to face discomforts such as swarms of bees and 30C temperratures. “The organist should be fit enough to catch a bus and it would be very nice if he or she could swim,” he said. The successful applicant will also be expected to pay a share of the costs of about £2,000.
The team hopes to be the first to bring back traces of the meteorite, which is estimated to have landed between 5,000 and 30,000 years ago.
It will also try formally to identify the Andean double-nosed tiger hound, a dog first observed in Bolivia in 1913 by Percy Fawcett, a British adventurer. :shock:
Derring-do
—Colonel John Blashford-Snell is a former officer in the Royal Engineers who helped to found Operation Raleigh. He will lead the 20-person team on the two-month trip on June 21
—He has twice been shot at by Ethiopian bandits, bitten by a vampire bat and ate a Panamanian spider monkey
—Blashford-Snell is the founder of the Scientific Exploration Society
—He led the first descent of the Ethiopian Blue Nile in 1968 and the first vehicle crossing of the Darien Gap in Panama in 1972
—He invented a jungle hat that is mosquito-repellent, Teflon-coated and has a refrigerated headband
—He said recently: “I often say at 6am as I climb out of a soaking wet hammock, ‘God, I must be mad. Why am I doing this?’ ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/u ... 499849.ece
