Dr. Livingston, I presume?

When I was waiting for the next available chair at the barbershop, I read this article in Outside magazine. It's about two groups in late 2003 who were attempting to do simultaneous runs of the Nile from the rivers two sources. Here's a short summary of some of the obstacles:

For decades, no one has dared to run the treacherous lengths of the waters that helped launch the modern age of exploration. Civil war, freelance rebels, capricious bandits, irascible hippos, surly crocs, billions of malarial mosquitoes, and scores of rapids so deadly they're rated a suicidal Class VI—all have conspired to keep paddlers from navigating the full 4,160 miles of the storied, sacred, and cursed river Nile.

Yikes. I didn't even know there were Class VI rapids. I like the adventurous spirit. I hope they both made it. I'm going to look into that later, and also into the IMAX movie that one of the teams was shooting.