Move over pandas I need bamboo to launch my straw boat from Peru
Very occasionally in this mostly awkward, inconvenient, out-toget-us world, things just unexpectedly... fit. And when these little moments of perfection happen it’s a truly wonderful feeling, as if for that one instant the universe has found a point of equilibrium, a split second of harmony, before everything starts going wrong again.
When I got home from Eyemouth the other week with a 12-foot long Peruvian surfing raft strapped to the roof of the car, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to squeeze it into the shed. I’d vaguely hoped that the shed would be big enough, but I hadn’t actually done anything as scientific as bothering to get out a tape measure. Unfortunately, the shed turned out to be exactly one inch shorter than the raft. Fortunately, however, the raft was slightly flexible, being made out of bundles of sun-dried California bulrushes lashed together with rope, so with a firm upward tweak of its elegantly curved nose I was able to shuffle it juuuust far enough forward to get the door closed. For a second, as the latch on the door slid home with a satisfying click, the sun seemed to shine more brightly. Raft successfully acquired and squared away. Now all I had to do was find something to paddle it with.
Before getting onto the vexed question of paddles, however, let’s rewind a bit for the benefit of any readers who may have missed the last couple of columns, and who may reasonably be wondering what I’m doing with a 12-foot straw boat. To trim an already overly-shaggy shaggy dog story down to a few closecropped bullet points: the Maritime Museum in Eyemouth went bust recently and sold off all of its boats; I realised that among the items for sale were several caballitos de totora – believed by some to be the very first wave-riding craft; I bought one for 50
quid, brought it home and decided it would be fun to try surfing it. But in order to do that in the correct Peruvian style, I discovered, I would need a paddle.
Most people I spoke to advised me to make do with a kayak paddle, but as I trawled kayaking websites and read up on what length of paddle would work best for someone of my height and build, I began to feel as if I was cheating. Not only would buying a kayak paddle be too easy, it wouldn’t really be in keeping with the majestic craft sitting out in the shed.
It’s estimated that caballitos have been used in north-western Peru for 5,000 years – in some places they are still used today – and as far as I could tell from watching Youtube clips and looking at ancient ceramics (some of them quite raunchy by the way – they certainly knew how to have a good time in Olde Worlde Peru), no caballista worth his salt would allow himself to be seen heading out to sea wielding a plastic paddle. No, if I was going to do this properly I’d need what looked like a massive bamboo cane split down the middle. That was what little ceramic figures from hundreds of years ago were using in the Museo del BCR in Lima (when they weren’t busy engaging in acrobatic sex acts) and that’s what modern-day caballito surfers were using on Youtube. The question was: where was I going to find a bamboo plant big and thick enough in nontropical Scotland?
Happily, Xanic J Rondon, Sandra Anne Bannack and Wilfredo Diazhuamanchumo provided me with the answer in their paper “Ethnobotanical investigation of Caballitos in Huanchaco, Peru.” I’d be lying if I said I’d read all of it. Mostly, they seemed to concern themselves with Schoenoplectus californicus –the California bulrush from which the caballito itself is made – but they did also mention in passing that caballito paddles are made from the stem of the Guadua angustifolia, a giant species of bamboo native to South America of which both Simon Bolivar and Alexander von Humboldt were big fans. Turns out this plant is good for a lot more than making paddles – it grows quickly, it’s so strong that it’s widely used for house-building, and because people in the UK are increasingly taking an interest in sustainable building practices, I didn’t have to search for too long before finding a UK company that sells it. Not only did this company sell whole stems, they also sold presplit ones, so – enjoying another brief moment of serendipity – I ordered a two-metre long split stem 12 centimetres in diameter, which I hoped would prove wide enough to work as a paddle but also be narrow enough to grip easily.
So any day now I’m due to receive a very odd-looking package in the post, and when it arrives I’ll finally be able to put my caballito in the water and find out if it works. Or, more accurately, if I can make it work. I’ve tried Googling “caballito de totora + instructors + Scotland” but nothing comes up.
No caballista worth his salt would be seen heading out to sea wielding a plastic paddle