“Buenas lineas,” says Luigi. “Good lines.” Seconds later, Luchin passes me a bag of coca leaves and I cram some in my mouth for a little pick-me-up-get-me-through-the-hole. Dam, I love kayaking in Peru.
We’re above a Class IV rapid called San Lucas on northern Peru’s Marañón River, formed by the junction of the Nupe and Lauricocha rivers at 10,882 feet in the Andes. Billed as the “Grand Canyon of the South” and one of the country’s best multi-day river runs, it’s also known as the principal, mainstem source of the Amazon River, based on its discharge. Ahead of us, it’s all funneling into an Incan staircase of waves and holes. Kayaking toward the horizon line, I dig my blades in deep, hoping Luigi’s words are a prophecy rather than a suggestion. A half minute later I’m at the bottom waiting for the rafts to come through, drenched and grinning ear to ear, my coca leaves just a tad more damp.
After a short flight north from Lima, I meet our group at the Costa del Sol hotel in Cajamarca. I stretch my legs through the Plaza de Armas, discovering this is where Atahualpa got captured and executed by the Spaniards in 1533, after promising them a room filled of gold. Our group looks more trustworthy. Over pisco sours in the hotel bar, Pepe Lopez, owner of Apumayo Expeditions, outlines the trip, which will include four rafts, an inflatable kayak and Luigi and I in kayaks. Along are several of Lopez’s friends as well as clients from previous trips, eager to tap his expertise to explore another part of Peru.
For another Pepe, lead guide Pepe Negro, this will be his fourth time down the Marañón. On the first, they lost two rafts due to rising water, he says, adding this year’s “anti-cyclone” could spell a wetter and colder winter. It’s June 8, with winter starting.
We’ll put in at the small town of Balsas, at about 2,800 feet, then float 90 miles to Puerta Malleta, dropping 1,600 vertical feet. From there, the river will still have about 3,000 miles to go until it reaches the Atlantic via the Amazon, losing only 2.5 feet per mile. Pioneered by Rocky Contos of Sierra Ríos, who descended the entire Marañon from its headwaters to Iquitos in 2012, the Marañón separates the spine of the higher western Andes from the eastern Andes, arising about 100 miles northeast of Lima and flowing northwest for more than 600 miles from its high plateau through a deeply eroded valley until it approaches the border of Ecuador and picks up its rivers before turning southeast to its junction with the Amazon proper. Known by Peruvians as the Golden Serpent, also the title of a book written by Ciro Alegría, at 1,000 miles long it’s one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the world. But that title isn’t set in Incan stone. A vital corridor in Inca and pre-Inca days between the Andes and the Amazon Basin, in recent years 20 hydroelectric dam projects have been proposed on it, which would displace thousands of Peruvians and destroy its unique, endemic biodiversity. Something else we learn: how to make the perfect pisco sour. Three-one-one-one, advises Luis, one of five Peruvian clients along—three pisco, one lime, one syrup, and one egg white, all shaken up.
We get jiggled ourselves on the bumpy, six-hour ride over the Andes, listening to a playlist of Foreigner, Styx and Guns n’ Roses, which doesn’t help the nausea. We top out on an 11,000-foot pass, before descending another 8,000 to Balsas, our driver treating our bus like a Formula 1 car. At the end of the line, we meet Luigi Marmanillo in a local farmer’s beat-up truck. He knows the run better than anyone, clocking more than 50 descents. He shows me the halfslice Dagger Axiom kayak I’ll be using and I notice he’s in a far more stable DragoRossi creek boat. I wonder what he knows that I don’t. When I ask in Spanish if my boat is good for this river, he replies, “It will be sporty and playful.”
We spend the afternoon shuttling gear from our bus into the truck and down the river, under the shade of mango, coconut and lemon trees. Guide Luchin makes a fresh mango ceviche to fuel our efforts. Rigging finished, we sip homemade pisco around a fire and ogle the Southern Cross and the biggest shooting star any of us has ever seen.
In the morning, client Denise finds a tarantula outside her tent. I give my trusty Big Agnes sleeping bag an extra shake before rolling it up. Later, after a breakfast of fried cauliflower, scrambled eggs, porridge and papaya and mango straight from the tree, I find what I call an “infinipede” under a drybag. After finishing rigging and packing, which means patching the floor of the raft, we put in. “Peruvians fix and reuse everything,” says Luigi as we shove off, his kayak taped over every screw.
The paddle begins
As we cross under the Balsas bridge and give a big beso to civilization goodbye, it’s easy to see why government officials were so eager to dam the river. It’s a Department of Interior’s dream, a tight, tall canyon lending itself perfectly to such environmental sabotage. The gauge upstream, says Luigi, reads 115 cubic meters, or (multiply by 35.3, carry the one..) 4,061 cubic feet per second—about, I pat myself on the back, what it looked like. Above us is another 60-mile section similar to the 90 miles we’re running, and above that “it gets more Class IV-Vish.” You could do a great 10-day trip linking both stretches; we’ll take seven on ours. June, Luigi says, is probably the best month, just entering the dry season so the river is higher than it is the rest of the “winter,” and not as hot.
After a day of big-water-feeling Class IIIs, we camp at a nature preserve on river right. People can access it via long, skinny metal speed boats, which ferry produce and people upstream, but the boats seldom venture lower where the rapids pick up. A handbridge crosses the river just above camp. Villages supported by orchards and legal coca plantations are all connected just by foot. Coca leaves, of course, are the most cost- and weight-efficient crop to grow and haul out of the canyon. It’s way more cost-effective to mule dried-out leaves up a trail for seven hours than it is fruit.
The canyon is known for its endemic bird species, and we see several—great egret, great blue heron, buff-bridled Inca finch, yellow faced parrotlets, and scarlet -fronted parakeets—flitting around groves of mango trees. At camp, Gonzalo takes his binos out and spies a condor cresting a thermal high on a canyon wall. A map by the preserve shows the lower canyon and side creeks, prompting Luigi to talk about the canyon’s close call with a series of dams. The uppermost one, at a spot called Pisuquia, would flood the canyon all the way up to Balsas, displacing hundreds of villagers. Another “represa” farther downstream would drown another 40 miles of river in the canyon. Corruption stalled the first proposal, he says, and now wind and solar have taken precedence over hydropower, with better government incentives. But the Chinese are courting dam development also, with plans to sell the power to local mining companies.
Biologists were the first to raise concern over the dams due to the region’s biodiversity and endemic bird life. Protesters even found a new lizard endemic to the area and named it ameiva, or “No Dam.” “It’s a very under-studied area,” says Luigi. “But the dams would be a very bad thing. They would ruin the endemic life here, much of which is found nowhere else.”
In the morning, we hike up the side creek under tamarindo, bamboo, lemon and 100-year-old mango trees to a series of Incan ruinas at Tuén, which have now been overtaken by sentries of saguaro-like cactus. The Chacopayas, from the Quechua dialect for “cloud warriors” or “people from the clouds,” always made their buildings round and the Incas, who inhabited the area later from 800 to 1450 AD, square. Offering commanding views of the canyon downstream, these all have corners. The region was an important trade route between Indians from the Amazon Basin and those from the Andes, with the Marañón the barrier and communal rendezvous spot.
We put in on Peruvian time, hoping to make miles. We pass the village of Mendan and its coconut and other fruit trees, as well as single-family farms growing coca high on the hillsides. We made about 12 miles yesterday, so today we’re hoping for 18. Unfortunately, we get stymied by (don’t say it) el viento (wind) and camp above another Class III rapid after about mile 14. We celebrate the evening with cold Cusqueña cervezas.
The next day we pass two small, family-run pueblos, all growing fruit and coca. It’s a seven-hour hike out of the canyon to the nearest town. When Luigi asked the villagers what he could bring for them on one of his trips, they replied “stretchers” (the nearest doctor is a day’s hike away). The villagers’ most common ailment, he says, is kidney stones—from dehydration and the high-alkaline lye they use chewing coca leaves.
We stop and hike to the village of Tupen through mango, mango plum, guava and other delicious fruit trees, as well as coca plants, whose leaves flutter in the Andean sun. Life here is simple, but they have everything they need. Luigi rafted in the village’s only solar panels just six years earlier. It has a store, church, school with dirt soccer field, and even a “ronda,” a sort of self-governing roundtable on citizens to deal with infractions and other issues. When surveyors for the dam came, the village—the first that would have been drowned—held them hostage for two days saying they weren’t welcome. “No Represa!” is still painted on a town walls. We buy cold beer from the store and enjoy it on a shaded bench. Ronaldo gets an Inca Cola. “Peruvian Red Bull,” he says.
A Close Call with Dams, But the Threat’s Not Over
A few hours later we pass the dam site. On their first visit, the surveyors rafted down with some of Luigi’s friends (hey, even raft guides have to make a buck). But it’s an ironic way to arrive; floating with the intent to destroy the medium that got you there. Still, the surveyors picked a good spot for the potential represa, with canyon walls rising starkly overhead. The rapids pick up quickly, a smattering of big water Class IIIs as well as a couple of IVs, including San Lucas, named for a small community along the bank. “We didn’t get to name much down here,” Luigi says. “Locals already had names for it all.”
The next morning begins like the others. I stuff my hand into a bag of coca leaves, press them between my lips and gums para masticar, and add a sprinkle of lye. Luchin says you can also make the catalyst from agave, chocolate and even a certain type of mint. Then I paddle off to meet the day’s first horizon line. “Bring it,” I think, the mini pick-me-up kicking in where the day’s coffee left off. I liken the river to 100 miles of Westwater, a Class III-IV stretch of the Colorado River back home. The rapids and volume seem similar. Only the canyon is way bigger and you’re way more remote. In the heart of the Andes, everything gets treated more deliberately and with more respect; it’s not a place to get hurt.
Shortly later we pass under what I affectionately coin “Incan drones,” hand-pulled cable cars spanning the river built to get irrigation water and produce to the opposite side. “It’s also how they send emails,” chimes in Lopez. We camp at Playa Inca, a broad expanse of sand on river left across from a creek and more ruins. Unlike on rivers back home, here we bury all our food scraps, a task that falls to me. They’ll decompose quickly enough throughout the rainy season. That’s not all that decomposes—so do the side canyons. Shortly after putting on, we come to Magdalena, a new rapid formed by a flash flood and landslide just two months ago in March. The flood backed up the river for a mile, with rafters on the season’s first trip in April not even knowing about it. When they saw the horizon line, Luigi says, they tried to pull over but couldn’t because of the mud (one scouter reportedly stepped in up to his shoulder). Left with no choice, they ran it, flipping two rafts. That’s how Luigi first heard about the new rapid. Later, two Canadians rented kayaks from him to run it, and Luigi told them to look out for it. They, too, couldn’t scout it because of the mud, but were able to bounce down a sneak line. Luigi has run the river three times this season, lining their rafts once here and running them without clients the other two times. That’s what we do, as well.
I believe him about the mud. We’re three months later and drier and I still sink in up past my knee when I try to get out of my kayak. It’s pure muck. Luckily, it dries into a plate-sized, checkerboarded maze of dried mud as we hike inland to scout. After giving it a look, Luigi and I run first to set up safety, sneaking the three main holes on the left. While the clients walk around, Pepe Negro runs it with two guides as bow paddlers, losing an oar before the last hole but missing it. Luchin follows, getting hung up on a rock but also missing the meat. Then Pepe hikes back up to run the third raft down, also without mishap. While we had hoped to run the next Class IV rapid, Lin Lin, as well, we pull over at 4 p.m. and camp for the night. We don’t want something to happen this late in the day.
Over more pisco sours under the protection of kapoc trees (used to make eco-friendly lifejacket flotation), we listen to the howls of screech owls while taking in the constellations of Scorpion and the Southern Cross against a jet-black sky. The constellations surprisingly match the bug bite patterns of on my calves.
In the morning, Luigi receives a satellite text from his girlfriend saying there’s been another landslide farther up from where we put in. We need to be aware of either rising or falling water. But it happened 100 miles or so upstream, so its effects will take a while to arrive. “But it made the news, so it was probably pretty big,” Luigi says. Shortly later, we come to the horizon line marking Lin Lin, now the stretch’s second biggest rapid. It’s a big Class IV, with a couple of Andean-sized holes. A wave breaks into my face, diluting my coca juice, as I follow Luigi into a squirrely eddy on the right. There, we bob up and down watching the rafts come through. Pepe Negro loses an oar halfway down, but one-oars it through the wave train before popping it back in from its leash.
That night we camp at a beach Luigi purchased a few years earlier, with plans to turn it into a preserve. Like choosing his lines through a rapid, he picked a good spot. We hike up a side creek to a series of waterfalls and swim in their pools. An irrigation system waters coconut, mango and guava trees. Affirming our approach to the Amazon Basin, our first real rainstorm rolls in from the east, forcing us to put up our tarp. Unloading gear from the raft, I add two new Spanish words to my vocabulary: mojado (wet) and pesado (heavy). Like the bag holding all our tents. Good words to know if you’re running a river down here.
The next morning, we break camp early, pulling over at a giant riverside cave a few hours later for breakfast. From here down, the canyon starts turning roja, its red walls rising in stark contrast to the increasing jungle foliage of the Amazon Basin. The water flattens out a bit and I learn that, as in the U.S., some superstitions are shared. Like don’t say the word “wind.” Since I said it in Spanish, I hope it won’t jinx things. But el vientocomes early and sticks with us all day. Shortly later, Luigi utters the “L” word again: landslide. “This rapid is new from last year,” he says as we paddle up to friendly looking horizon line. “Another landslide.” It’s just another Class III, but I’m sensing a theme.
Now in Amazon country, we pass the white flowers of ceiba trees in full bloom, juxtaposed with the pink and magenta blooms of bougainvilleas. It’s also more humid; none of our gear dried-out overnight. In the flats, we pass a dual-outboard motorboat laden with bags of coca leaves. I paddle close for a photo. More Class IIIs keep us busy, including one that changed into a IV just this year. “Rapids here change all the time,” says Luigi. “It keeps things interesting.”
Just as I’m getting the hang of river and Peruvian time after seven days, we reach the take-out at Puerta Malleta. It’s Father’s Day and the town’s anniversary and the locals are partying, with a band playing in the plaza. That doesn’t stop an army of kids from swarming us as we unload our mojado and pesado gear. A few children try my kayak in the eddy. Luigi’s girlfriend, Vera, helps us load his truck and trailer before we pile into a van for a two-hour drive to the town of Jaen. There, we toast our trip over pisco sours and carne asada before turning in for a seven-hour drive back over the western Andes to Chiclayo to fly home. I hope our driver has buenas lineas as well.
If You Go: For flights, check with LATAM Airlines, arriving in Cajamarca through Lima and departing from Chiclayo. Try to tack on an extra few days to visit the pre-Inca archeological sites of Chachapoyas and Kuelap, as well as the 2,500-foot Gocta waterfall, the fifth highest in the world, with a stay at the Gocta Lodge. Want to raft the Marañón? Contact Apumayo Expediciones, which is scheduling trips for June 14 and 28, 2025. It also offers custom itineraries, in addition to its fleet of outfitted services around Cusco and Machu Picchu. For more information on traveling in Peru, visit Our https://www.peru.travel/en
Marañón Section-by-Section Breakdown two of four Grand Canyon sections: courtesy Sierra Rios)
Upper: 127 km; Class IV; ~7 days; Puchka-to-Huchus
InnerGorge: 81 km; Class IV(V); ~5 days; Huchus-to-Chagual
Central:149 km; Class II-III (IV); ~7 days; Chagual-to-Balsas
Lower: 143 km; Class III-IV; ~7 days; Balsas-to-Puerta Malleta
