Editorial Reviews
Product Description
A New York Times best-seller, and named by the National Geographic Society as one of the "One Hundred Best Adventure Books Ever Written," "Running the Amazon" is writer Joe Kane's eyewitness account of the first source-to-sea navigation of the world's mightiest river--a six-month, 4,200 mile journey by foot, whitewater raft, and sea kayak. The expedition began in 1985, when a hand-picked team of international adventurers climbed to the source of the Amazon, a trickle of glacial snowmelt above 17,000 in the southern Peruvian Andes. From there, the trip entails kayaking through one of the nastiest white-water canyons on the planet, a stretch of water that had previously claimed the lives or quickly halted the plans of all who had attempted to conquer it; navigating a two-mile-deep, unmapped gorge known as "The Acobamba Abyss"; sneaking through the "Red Zone," an area closed to foreigners, where the expedition was captured at gunpoint by Shining Path guerrillas; and, finally, paddling to the Atlantic by sea kayak through 3,000 miles of steaming rainforest. Ten people started the journey; only two reached the sea. Kane was one of them. Hired initially to chronicle the project from dry land, he quickly assumes a more integral role as a much-needed paddler, and as such he is able to provide vivid, first-hand descriptions of the treacherous water encountered. But in many ways the river is the least imposing obstacle to success. Along the way the team is beset by financial difficulties, a crisis of leadership, attacks from armed rebels, and the defection of team members. Kane's account of this six-month ordeal is much more than a travelogue of athletic endeavor--it's a fascinating portrait of the planning, politics, and personal struggles involved in mounting a modern-day expedition through a vast expanse of largely uncharted territory.
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