Ed Stafford on walking the Amazon

In 2010 Ed Stafford became the first person to walk the entire length of the Amazon. Starting at its source in southern Peru and arriving at the Atlantic ocean two and a half years later, he walked over 6,000 miles.

Were you surprised that such an iconic journey that hadn’t been done before?

Yeah, I was. Most of my initial research was on Google. I knew if it had been done before there’d be a reference to it online. I couldn’t believe it kept coming up blank. I tried Googling different combinations, different words, just to come up with something. Even after I’d done all that I still went to the Royal Geographic Society just to verify it.

What was surprising was not just that nobody had done it, no one had even conceived the idea of doing it. I was really lucky to have stumbled upon it.

Do you think it’s because it’s only now that the technology has evolved to a point to make such a trip possible?

There were two advancements, I think, that made the trip possible. One was the little inflatable pack raft I took. Without a craft you could carry in your rucksack, walking the Amazon would be nigh on impossible.

The other one was the data we got from NASA – satellite imagery that literally looked through the rainforest canopy. For the first time you were able to see the extent of the floodwaters in the flood season. Therefore we were able to annotate our maps. We knew where there was hard ground and where there was flooded forest.

The flooding was the reason most people were telling me it was impossible to do it. They were saying ‘Look, the whole thing’s flooded on the side of the river, you won’t be able to walk through it ‘ and I was like ‘Well actually I know where those floods are.’

Even though the data was from 1995, the topography hadn’t changed. The high flood lines are pretty accurate really. So with those two advances – the pack raft and the data from NASA suddenly it became possible.