THE blog Hendrik Coetzee was writing when he died was called greatwhiteexplorer.com. It was a joke in a way, but not inaccurate. He was white sure enough, a South African from Ottosdal. And he was an explorer. He trod explicitly in the footsteps of Mungo Park and Stanley or, preferably, he didn't tread in anyone's footsteps at all. The part of central Africa he was investigating, round the headwaters of the Nile and the Great Lakes, was the darkest part of the continent's dark heart. Very possibly no one had ever glimpsed those trees or bays before. And he was seeing them not from dry land but from the midst of churning whitewater, as he paddled his kayak through the rapids and the rocks. That certainly had not been done by anyone, just as nobody before him in 2004 had kayaked down the Nile, four months and 4,200 miles, from source to sea.

What he was doing was dangerous; no doubt about that. His little plastic boat was expected to plunge straight through huge rapids and plummet down vast waterfalls, while he had no more protection in his cockpit than the deck, a drysuit, a helmet and a paddle. He was used to that, though. You learned very soon how to read a clear line before the put-in, then how to swerve and carve the whitewater, avoiding holes, trying not to be rag-dolled by the flow. You learned too how to deal with the wildlife, deadly crocodiles and hippos, that lay submerged in wait where the water flattened out. What was odd, as he posted his irregular blogs about his latest adventure, was how much fear he felt this time.

People usually called him brave, even reckless. He didn't agree. He was impelled to launch himself into unspoilt rivers simply out of love and compulsion, and because, ever since he had first sat in a kayak, picked up a paddle and found himself alone in wild Nature, he didn't want to do anything else quite as badly. It didn't need courage. Courage, he reflected, was when a village woman in war-torn Congo left her house and walked to the well, knowing that she would probably be raped by marauding soldiers before she got there. The more serious side of Mr Coetzee's exploits was the mapping of these remote rivers and analysis of their water, to help ensure that villagers had clean, accessible supplies. Sometimes it took courage even to drink from the foul public puddles Africans used as wells.

It was true, however, that he usually didn't feel fear when others did. When a huge green wall of water towered before him, he would think: “I might possibly shoot through that.” When he heard of high-volume rapids and tumultuous cascades, his reaction was “Yes please.” Swinging up on a vine as two charging hippos thundered underneath him, he felt like Tarzan. And when he and his companions got into a tussle with a crocodile on the Nile, beating it off with helmets and paddles as the beast's great green and white belly reared over their hulls, so close that he could even see the plaque on its teeth, he turned to the others afterwards and cried, “How fucking cool was that?”

Towards the unknown

Yet fear seemed to be trailing him, and he couldn't tell whether it was something rational, or too much coffee, that made his lips dry and his river-readings unsure. When he started out, in mid-October, he could put it down to the usual jitters before a trip, made worse because he had been approached to lead this expedition by two experienced but daredevil Americans, when he had been happily ensconced in a sort of semi-retirement in the “paradise” of Jinja in Uganda, near the source of the Nile. Encouraged by them, in a way, he'd planned to explore the Ruzizi, the Lukuga and the Lualaba rivers, the most extensive exploration of uncharted African waters yet undertaken. It was daunting, especially when he was still on straight-look terms with his new companions. “But if I wanted to be safe”, he argued with himself, “I'd have stayed home in Jinja.”

War was also raging again between two of the countries that bordered the Ruzizi, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda. The Rwandan army, short on humour and apt to “kick serious ass”, demanded papers they didn't have and insisted they get permission to use the river. Congolese rebels added to his nerves. But the river looked beautiful, drawing him in deeper, and “inside it felt right” to launch into it. Local people enthusiastically offered to carry their gear, and on his last long portage, as a storm drenched him with “hard, warm drops” and he stood on a dangerous, unknown hill, he reflected that he might never live a better day.

Some people, he blogged, thought that there was nothing more to find out or explore. If that was their boring truth, keep him out of it. He preferred to assume that plenty was still unknown, and to accept that fear was the price you paid for paddling into Nature's secrets. He was intrigued by the idea that in some turmoil of spray, as when shooting through an unknown waterfall, he might “become everything”, and “live permanently in that place of Boundlessness, also known as Happiness.” This was what was lingering in his mind as, miles down the Lukuga on December 7th, another crocodile charged him that couldn't be beaten off, dragging him out of the boat and under the foaming water. Risk was “the nature of the beast”.