Brits discover supply of Amazon river whereas being stalked by jaguars and their poo

A British explorer has discovered the source of an uncharted Amazon river while being stalked by jaguars and ravaged by insects.

Daring Ash Dykes beamed with joy after finding the start of the Coppename River in Suriname with fellow adventurers Jacob Hudson, Dick Lock and Matt Wallace.

Ash, 33, originally from St Asaph, Wales, but now living in London, said the most chilling moment was when they awoke to find fresh jaguar poo just yards from where they had been sleeping in their tarpaulin-covered hammocks.

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He said: “A jaguar must have entered through our camp. We couldn’t see it, but who knows how long it was potentially following us for, following our tracks to camp.

“Seeing jaguar poo…was pretty creepy.”

The fearless group then bagged a world record the next day by becoming the fastest group to ascend the South American country’s tallest mountain, Julianatop.

They also named two undocumented waterfalls – ‘Dykes Falls’ and ‘Wallace Falls’ – after the team members who first spotted them in largely unexplored jungle.

Speaking for the first time about their stunning achievement, Ash said: “It feels crazy to find the source. We were all screaming and getting excited.

“We’ve mapped the coordinates and took a screenshot for any mapping associations who want that. It is crazy to think that we are going to some places that the forest hasn’t ever seen a human footprint before.

“And it’s not surprising. It is brutal in the jungle.”

Ash headed into the centre of the ex-Dutch colony, which is 93% forested, in a helicopter on August 29. He and his team then spent the next six days fighting their way upstream in kayaks with 50kg of supplies – while being bitten by 300 ticks and vicious army ants.

The group also came across a terrifying goliath tarantula – the world’s largest spider – along with snakes and vicious alligators called caiman.

“We had a scorpion enter the camp, Jacob almost stood on it. We also had army ants just take over our camp completely,” he said. “They were all over our hammocks and our tarp, and they made four grown men stand at the side of the river bank, waiting for them to pass.

“Jacob got hit by them. He got bitten, he had ants in his pants.”

Extreme athlete Ash said the team had so far survived off around 500 to 600 calories a day by consuming ration packs and wolf fish they caught in the river.

But they had been left “cut up” and “bruised” from trekking for up to 16 hours and a half hours at a time through the jungle and fast-flowing river rapids.

Ash said his feet had taken a particular pounding and he had lost three toenails during the arduous first section of the journey. But the team were thrilled to name two waterfalls that they discovered as they ventured towards the source of the Coppename River.

Ash said: “We were pretty cut open and bruised for the majority of the first two days, and that’s when we came across an undiscovered waterfall – called ‘Wallace Falls’.

“Matt Wallace, who was the team expedition member who saw it first, he claimed it and named it. It’s a big 15m falls that stopped us in our tracks. It’s not on any GPS, it hasn’t been mapped.

“We discovered a smaller falls right near the source, which I named ‘Dykes Falls’, and that one is even more remote. It’s probably about 100m from the source of the Coppename River.”

Ash has taken coordinates of the finds in Suriname’s dense interior – which has barely been explored since Victorian missions failed due to disease and injury in the 1800s.

And he said one of the most striking aspects of the journey so far was the complete lack of any civilisation. He added: “It’s crazy remote here. We’ve not seen another human at all or any signs of another human.

“We probably won’t for at least another two to three weeks. We’ll probably go a month without seeing any human activity. It’s very wild.”

Ash will now travel from the source of the Coppename River to its mouth – in an epic journey which could take another 40 days. And the team also hopes to break a further world record by climbing Suriname’s second-highest peak along the way in the fastest time.

Ash – who has three previous world records following his expeditions in Mongolia, Madagascar and China – said he loved taking part in physical challenges.

He said: “I kind of think it’s almost in my DNA. There’s no dark or bad upbringing story. But after the Yangtze, which was my third world record, I thought I’d never come across a genuine world first again.

“This is one of those where we’re being thrown back in time. I didn’t expect to experience something like this in the 21st Century – with expeditions taking place in the 1800s.”

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