What do you do in your offtime if you’re Darcy Gaechter and Don Beveridge of Amazon Woman and Small World Adventures fame? Well, if you’re not too tired from guiding clients down Ecuador’s world-class whitewater rivers, you head to something bigger and deeper. The deepest in the world, in fact.
In July, Gaechter and Beveridge headed to Peru’s Colca Canyon, the deepest gorge in the world (or at least vying with Peru’s Cotahuasi Canyon), to spend five days running—and portaging—their way down its upper and lower canyons, first run by a team of Polish rafters and kayaks known as CanoAndes in 1983. The descent was a bonafide feather in the kayaking cap for both adventurers, augmenting their descent of the entire Amazon in 2014, Gaechter becoming the first woman to ever do so.
In a post on FaceBook about the descent, Gaechter writes:
“We just emerged from the incredible Colca Canyon. We paddled the Upper and Lower Colca from Cabanaconde to Aploa over 5 mind-blowing days. There was great whitewater, stunning canyon scenery, very scary sieves, lots of condor sightings, and a couple of tricky, portages that made us work hard on our creativity (luckily Don is very good at this)! The whole time we couldn’t stop thinking about the Canoandes crew who did the first descent in 1981 in a non-self-bailing raft and fiberglass kayaks! OMG! 
It was a huge mental and physical challenge for us and we had the knowledge that it had been done before and we have all the technological advantages of kayaks and camping gear in 2025. If you haven’t yet, check out @godspeedlospolacos those guys are amazing and the film about their adventures is one of the best kayaking/history/culture films out there!”:
Want to paddle with them (on something slightly easier)? Visit https://smallworldadventures.com
(Photos courtesy Darcy Gaechter/Small World Adventures)