European exploration - Blue Nile River

European exploration - Blue Nile River 

The first European to have seen the Blue Nile in Ethiopia and the river's source was Pedro Páez, a Spanish Jesuit who reached the river's source 21 April 1613. Nevertheless, the Portuguese João Bermudes, the self-described "Patriarch of Ethiopia," provided the first description of the Blue Nile Falls in his memoirs published in 1565, and a number of Europeans who lived in Ethiopia in the late 15th century such as Pêro da Covilhã could have seen the river long before Páez, but not reached its places of source.

The source of the Blue Nile was also reached in 1629 by the Portuguese Jesuit missionary Jerónimo Lobo and in 1770 by the Scottish explorer James Bruce.

Blue Nile Gorge in Ethiopia

Although a number of European explorers contemplated tracing the course of the Abay from its confluence with the White Nile to Lake Tana, its gorge, which begins a few kilometres inside the Ethiopian border, has discouraged all attempts since Frédéric Cailliaud's attempt in 1821. The first serious attempt by a non-local to explore this reach of the river was undertaken by the American W.W. Macmillan in 1902, assisted by the Norwegian explorer B.H. Jenssen; Jenssen would proceed upriver from Khartoum while Macmillan sailed downstream from Lake Tana. However, Jenssen's boats were blocked by the rapids at Famaka short of the Sudan-Ethiopian border, and Macmillan's boats were wrecked shortly after they had been launched. Macmillan encouraged Jenssen to try to sail upstream from Khartoum again in 1905, but he was forced to stop 500 kilometres (300 mi) short of Lake Tana. R.E. Cheesman, who records his surprise on arriving in Ethiopia at finding that the upper waters of "one of the most famous of the rivers of the world, and one whose name was well known to the ancients" was in his lifetime "marked on the map by dotted lines", managed to map the upper course of the Blue Nile between 1925 and 1933. He did this not by following the river along its banks and through its impassable canyon, but following it from the highlands above, travelling some 8,000 km (5,000 mi) by mule in the adjacent country.

In the 1950s-1960s several kayakers paddled parts of the Blue Nile's canyon. In 1968, at the request of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, a team of 60 British and Ethiopian servicemen and scientists made the first full descent of the Abay from Lake Tana to a point near the Sudan border led by the explorer John Blashford-Snell.The team used specially-built Avon Inflatables and modified Royal Engineers assault boats to navigate the formidable rapids. Subsequent rafting expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s generally only covered parts of the river canyon.

In 1999, writer Virginia Morell and photographer Nevada Wier made the journey by raft from Lake Tana to the Sudan, afterwards publishing a documentary about their journey. In 2000, American and National Geographic reader, Kenneth Frantz, saw a photo taken by Nevada Wier for National Geographic which would lead him to found the charity Bridges to Prosperity. This photo showed a bridge broken during World War II, with 10 men on either side of the broken span pulling each other across the dangerous gap by rope. This historic bridge was built by Emperor Fasilides in approximately 1660 with Roman bridge technology brought to Ethiopia by Portuguese soldiers during the battle with the Muslim invaders in 1507. In both 2001 and 2009, Bridges to Prosperity volunteers travelled from the United States to repair the broken bridge across the Blue Nile river and later build a new suspension bridge not susceptible to flood.

On 28 April 2004, geologist Pasquale Scaturro and his partner, kayaker and documentary filmmaker Gordon Brown, became the first known people to navigate the Blue Nile. Though their expedition included a number of others, Brown and Scaturro were the only ones to remain on the expedition for the entire journey. They chronicled their adventure with an IMAX camera and two handheld video cams, sharing their story in the IMAX film Mystery of the Nile and in a book of the same title.

On 29 January 2005, Canadian Les Jickling and his teammate New Zealander Mark Tanner completed the first fully human powered transit of the entire Blue Nile. Their journey of over 5,000 kilometres (3,100 mi) took five months and travelled through the countries of Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt. They recount that they paddled through civil war conflict zones, regions known for bandits, and encountered multiple hazards and rapids.