Amazon Extreme
Three Ordinary Guys, One Rubber Raft, and the Most Dangerous River on Earth
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The hair-raising true story of the first team to raft the entire length of the Amazon.
To a trio of twenty-something adrenaline junkies, it sounded like an irresistible challenge: Tackle the Amazon with nothing more than a rubber raft between them and fate.
In Amazon Extreme Colin Angus provides a you-are-there account of his expedition’s terrors and triumphs. In spite of Shining Path gunmen, mosquito-laden drinking water, and, of course, the terrifying rapids themselves, his crew also found a reverence for the equally compelling beauty that makes this region so renowned. Graceful dolphins, lush forests, and the intriguing people who live along the river complete the backdrop as Angus’s five-month excursion unfolds. Culminating in an astonishing victory that garnered major media coverage, this is the story of three guys who truly went off the deep end, and one who came back to write a riveting recollection of it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If the word "ordinary" in the subtitle was changed to "irresponsible," it would be a more precise description of this wild tale of three young adventurers who decide to become "the first to extreme raft the Amazon." Beginning with a description of the team's disastrous dehydrating hike to the river, just "three gringos in a foreign desert, slowly dying," first-time author and one of the trio Angus presents himself as a none-too-intellectual buccaneer, "a doer, not a couch potato or an Internet geek." But a little time on the Internet would have helped Angus, since the entire trip is marked by the trio's inability to correctly calculate how much food and water they need, their almost total lack of mapping or directional information, a somewhat condescending attitude toward the poverty-ridden locals they meet on the river and a complete disregard for the dangers of the trip itself, especially the possibility of running into the members of the revolutionary Shining Path, who don't take kindly to strangers. Angus's "Wow, isn't this weird!" journalism is strangely undercut by knowledgeable factoids and historical descriptions of the Amazon's people and landscape that suggest Angus has more "geek" in him than he's let on. But if the adventuring na f conceit doesn't quite hold up, the well-paced, hair-raising tale should still please outdoor adventure junkies if they don't get fed up with the lunatic arrogance of its heroes.
