End of discussion.
He hasn’t been in a national park like the celebs, but in the Amazon – the land of the pit viper and the jaguar, the narco-terrorist and the piranha. There, the bush tucker is you.
Former British Army captain Ed Stafford, 33, is well on the way to becoming the first man in history to walk from the source of the Amazon in the mountains of Peru to its mouth in Brazil. And he’s not doing it in the hope of achieving notoriety, nor is he being paid handsomely for his efforts. No, he’s doing it out of a sense of adventure – for the sheer derring-do.
Ironically, the guy was called ‘Spice Girl’ in the Army, but even if his name was ‘Creampuff-Daffodil-Candycane-Cherry’, if you knew how tough this guy was, you wouldn’t refer to him as anything less than Magnum or Butch.
He has no satellite navigation system, no food other than a few pounds of salt (for preserving piranhas that he catches to eat later), and no director that can yell “Cut!” and call it a day.
It’s like clearing the thickest hedge you could imagine for a whole working day. Only this hedge is filled with razor grass – which is pretty much as the name implies, grass that will cut exposed flesh to ribbons – huge thorns and spines on trees sharp enough to go straight through a carelessly placed hand, deadly snakes, poisonous
spiders and foot-long centipedes so venomous that they can blister your skin with a touch. Oh, and the odd man-eating big cat. Specifically, jaguars.
This summer was particularly adventurous for me; I got out and did some hiking and exploring. I ran into a few bears, rolled my ankle a time or two, and forgot to bring water on a five-mile hike for me and my wife.
(That last one was a much more dangerous situation than running into the brown bear sow and cubs — my wife is vicious when she’s thirsty.)
However, this guy makes me feel as if I spent the summer stuffing teddybears and knitting baby-blankets.
Anyhow, be sure to read the whole story, then tell me how tough you are.
So glad to see you back in stride. I really missed you during your break.
I admit this is only the second or third time I have looked at your blog though I like the name. I guess we have some things in common, I dig up gravel. IOW I am an exploration geologist and have worked in the Amazon (including those parts in Venezuela, Columbia, Peru and Bolivia for a little more than 30 years, not to mention a few jungles elsewhere, such as Congo, Angola, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia.
Not to put too fine a point on it but I had to laugh a little at that article. Now that is not to say the Ed is probably not a fine person and no doubt as you put it, ‘tough’. Still you are aware I hope that there are indigenous people in the Amazon who live the entire lives there without a GPS, baseball cap, or backpack, let alone boots. There are a goodly number of non-indigenous Brasilians who spend most of their lives there as well and of the ones I have known the majority of them were quite tough. They and I all have one thing in common, trying to accomplish something useful not just to ourselves though admittedly earning a living is a common goal. In any event though the Amazon is a dark and mysterious place to most people, to me it is rather more on the order of a forbidding paradise. The reality is perhaps not grand enough in scale to be as appealing as foolishness such as “the odd man-eating cat”. Jaguars are truly spectacular creatures, one of the few cats on earth well adapted to water, they are in fact effective fishers. I have never seen one in the wild. I have seen their tracks, tracks so fresh that in a sandbank on a creek they are still filling with water when you notice them. Yes there are posisonous spiders, in fact there is only one species of spider known that is not wholly carnivorous, so virtually all of them have poison. Yes some of them have painful bites, but you almost have to go out of your way to get bitten. Yes, there are also centipedes though I have never seen one a foot long even 4-5 inches seems tremendous. The are poisonous as well, but they have to bite you, to the best of my knowledge they won’t blister your skin if you were to pick one up, though I wouldn’t recommend that because then they will bite you. And there are plenty of snakes. Many of which are extremely venemous, beautifully camoflaged, quick as lightning. I have seen a few, probably would have seen far more if I was really looking for snakes per se. Back to the Jaguars for just a moment, or at least the general topic. There are other, smaller wild cats, such as the ocelot, they are also almost impossible to encounter in the wild unless you know how to hunt them. So far as I can tell virtually no one who lives in the bush has much of any fear for big cats. The Peccary or wild pig on the other hand will induce people who are well armed to climb trees to get out of their way. They have a wicked set of tusks and in my very limited experience with them, mostly observing them from up some tree (with or without thorns), they are bellicose and mad at the world. I guess it just isn’t sufficiently Hollywood to be badly gored by a wild pig.
Moving on, as is usual with the adventure narrative intended for bulk consumption, the real dangers, like flies that bite and carry a whole menu of diseases, mosquitos of course (different menu), and a baker’s dozen of other creepy crawlies also can inflict unpleasantness on the odd human carcass that blunders into their midst. Not to mention just driving you slowly mad. Did I mention the vampire bats?
I should mention the razor grass as well, it is a common inhabitant of areas that have been logged, farmed until the minimal organic matter in the laterite soil is exhausted and then revert to these tall crasses that have the property of tiny (you can see them with a 10 x loupe) claw like bits of silica all along the edges of their leaves. Yes they are like a razor, if you just try to plunge through them like a water buffalo you will get cut up pretty seriously. Curiously enough the antidote for the papercut like pain from such cuts is to use your focao (aka machete) to dig up the rooks of some of the grass and split open the bulbous parts rubbing the sap on the wounds. Better than topical coca.
But to be serious for a moment, the Amazon is an amazing place on so many levels that you could write a few books about it. Like everything else on earth, it is slowly being destroyed by humans. It is a sad but grimly true reality. I have devoted the better parts of my life to aiding and abetting the process. Everyone does to one extent or the other. I won’t go into details but I have tried to make sure that I only worked for responsible clients, and to cite that my success rate is typical, 2% or so. That is not because I am no good at my job, it is because there is not much out there left to find, and what there is left to find is not much like the historical precedents. So even though I have tried my best to find new mines and fuck up the planet thereby, I haven’t been very successful.
But the fact is, it is getting harder and harder, and you have to bear in mind why. Because almost 7 billion people are demanding resources. I am beginning to wander from the point in trying to give myself some credibility. Actually
I don’t so much care about that but that’s another story, what I really am interested in putting across is that reality is not a lot like what most people experience through the very penurious filters of the media.
The essence of the Amazon is that it is a still mostly complete ecosystem in dynamic balance. It is still possible to venture into pristine places, pristine in that they have not been logged. But every day that passes, means less of it exists. Because of humanity’s gnawing hunger for resources. And because of our perverse tendency to despoil those resources, we, the only species in the history of life on earth that has had the opportunity to throw off the shackles of our genes, and actually give purpose to existence, are perparing by our elective ignorance to bring about out own extinction.
If I were Ed, and I am twice his age, I would make the purpose of my rather absurd epic something constructive, like “Save the Amazon”.
As someone once said, you can’t eat more than you can grow.
Krubozumo Nyankoye –
I’m so happy that you took the time to comment on this post. You’re right, there are many native inhabitants that live their whole lives in this environment and I find that impressive itself. But, I think there’s a certain extra amount of impressiveness considering the fact that Ed hasn’t had a lifetime in this environment. He’s having to learn each day what inhabitants of the area have spent their lives learning.
Your comments about the Amazon and your time spent there was inspiring to me as well. I would love to hear more about your travels on this pale blue dot. If you have some journals or general observations, send me an email at (ryan at ieatgravel.com)
Love the post. Perhaps hiking boots might guide someone out there.