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Firstly a HUGE thanks to Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ Transglobe Expedition Trust who have just saved my bacon and funded us another £2,000. To Peter Bowring, Anton Bowring, Alan Britten, George Capon, Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Simon Gault, Susannah Gault, Richard Jackson, Oliver Shepard, Kevin Traverse-Healy and everyone involved - thanks so much – it could not have come at a more crucial time. Thanks Mum and George too for putting all the approaches together

Sam’s in his sleeping bag having had a night of vomiting and pooing through the eye of a needle so his camera (and our photos) will have to wait til next week.

We’ve spent a lot of time recently with our heads in maps. Well satellite photography from NASA and Brazilian river navigational charts. Real topographic maps (with contour lines) exist theoretically - but we can’t get hold of any.

If you look at the Amazon River from afar (zoomed out) on the map there is a meander just to the East of the Brazil-Colombian border that is more prominent than any other. This is where the varzea (flooded) forest is horrific (unwalkable) and we have to do a large crossing away from the river.

If we walk well, this crossing should start the day after the National Geographic talk on 7th July [see video below]. It will be 350 km and an estimated two full months until we hit the main river again.

Dangers increase with distance from the river. The river is our evacuation route and our safety net. The river provides population to re-supply from. We’ve calculated we can afford to carry enough food to give each man 1,100 calories a day for a month. This will come from rice, noodles, farine and sardines. We can’t physically carry any more food than that and will supplement it with fresh fish, nuts and fruits that we can find in the forest. After that if we haven’t found a community or become sustainable we will go hungry.

The less contacted indigenous peoples pose a higher risk too as they have not been as exposed to the river trade and traffic. That said Cho and I have a lot of confidence with people who are less contacted now. And finally we enter territory when the big Amazonian creatures become far more of a possibility: bushmasters, pumas, black caiman, and you never know – maybe even jaguars.

This week’s video is a bit different – it is to highlight the National Geographic talk that I’m taking part in via satellite on Monday July 7th.

Ed

National Geographic Talk Ad, 7th July from Walking the Amazon Videos on Vimeo

Admission is free. 18:30 start.