Did anybody watch Walking the Amazon?? A somewhat spoiler

brewcitymike

brewcitymike

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On Discovery channel Saturday evening they premiered the documentary 'Walking the Amazon', which is the self filmed 2 hour film of Ed Stafford's journey from on side of South America to the other following(roughly) the entire length of the Amazon River. He started with the simple;) task of hiking up and over the Peruvian Andes. He also had his partner bail after only 90 days, his guides kept quitting due to his insistence on hiking through drug cartel controlled territories, and he got several nasty injury/ailments like a flesh eating disease I can't spell, a bot fly laid an egg in his head, and he had some ginormous boils or something that he had to self drain with a syringe. Some of the cools stuff was watching them eat a whole spider monkey and a pregnant tortoise who's eggs they had for breakfast. Now mind you this guy was hiking sometime a couple weeks between villages and could only carry so much food so he ended up in a few life or death survival situations regarding food and water. I know I'm being kind of a spoiler here but I can't do it justice in a paragraph. I was gonna try to find and post the video on this thread but I thought you'd rather find it and watch it from the comfort of your couch or bed and not a computer chair and desk. Remember its 2 hours. This was an amazing journey and the fact that he did it 99% with only a guy who didn't speak english was pretty insane. Its one of the best wilderness/survival type videos I've seen due to its true reality. I'm sure Discovery channel will re-run it but if not you can also buy it on dvd I believe. IMO its worth buying.
 
I saw the preview. I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I just can't sit through someone being that idiotic. The guy must have daddy issues to have the need to prove himself like that.
 
Well its not much different from all the people who climb Everest or K2, or who walk the AT or CDT.
 
It was interesting (I saw the last half of the show), but honestly his guide (Cho?) carried him through except for the time Cho got sick. Most of the time, the guide procured the food they needed, from what I saw (granted it was the later part).
 
He definately took risks that I wouldn't, but really admire his resolve to do it. Who knows the real motivating factor in his unrelenting determination to finish his journey but I found it interesting that he called himself an explorer. I wonder how different, if at all, Ed Stafford was from historic figures such as Lewis and Clark or say Cortez.
 
Yeah, ive seen the documentary. That guy didnt just sit in his couch all day dreaming about walking the amazon, he actually got off his couch and did it. Thats something i respect.
 
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FWIW, this latest showing was a rerun. They showed it a few months ago. But it was quite interesting. I would have liked to see it as a series instead of a one-time thing.
 
Saw it quite a while back. The high regard Ranulph Fiennes has for the effort carries an enormous amount of weight with me. Genuine people doing genuine stuff, what a refreshing change from the TV survival guru BS.
 
Thats what I liked about it too, that he was just a regular guy who enjoyed the outdoors and decided to do something extraordinary. To me his shear resilience to never stop and hardly even break was what intrigued me. He didn't give a rat's a$$ about going through cartel country or anything. And in the beginning, after his buddy left and before he picked up Cho, he walked for several weeks if not a couple months basically alone and tht's got to be trying in itself.
 
I saw the documentary a while back, enjoyed it enough to buy the book. I think the British tend to hold higher regard for the old romantic notion of bold exploration.
As anyone would, Stafford learned a lot about himself during the trip. The book disclosed more details about keeping the expedition moving, day to day hardships, finance, interacting with the locals and Cho's character. I enjoyed it enough that ill be reading it again. I think it was an amazing accomplishment.
 
Yes I've watched it two times and will buy the book when I find it. I will not spoil it for anybody but it is a great documetary. The two hours pass very fast and when it ended I wished there was more.
 
That's why I dvr'ed it. I'm planning on watching it again soon. It is available to buy on dvd if I'm not mistaken. So if the don't run it again you can always buy it.;)
 
I watched all but the last 20 minutes of it, the audio on my comp just gave up. This guy is awesome, I just wished the documentary showed more than just them walking, how about there camp life, cooking, eating, fishing. All I saw was one scene of fishing, a brief shot of a pot set and one shot of a simple hammock. Also, how is it that they can make 2 seasons of Dancing with the Stars per year, 2 episodes per week, each 2 hours long and this guy's 2 and a half year trip through the amazon gets cut to 90 minutes total run time? And it has to be asked.... why doesn't he mention what knife he carries in every scene?....
 
I bet he cared more about the pack he used than whether his knife was AUS 10 or 440V or had a trendy brand name stamped onto it.
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I saw it. Thae part where they cooked the spyder monkey was a bit much. Looked a bit to much like a kid. As if hiking the Amazon is not dumb enough he had to hike thru cartel controlled areas..
 
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