Running the Amazon

321 Pages·2011·4.82 MB·English

by  Joe Kane

Joe Kane’s
RUNNING THE AMAZON
“For all of the river’s 4,200 exotic miles, Running the Amazon is a crisp
book, the offering of a narrator who followed his instincts to a
fabulously rich strike and then spent the proceeds wisely.”
—Washington Post Book World
“A good adventurer is rarer than a good adventure; an easygoing book
about fear and bravado is a very rare thing indeed.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“The reader will feel the bruises and the exhilaration as they battle the
river, Indians, guerrillas, drug dealers and each other … It’s a wonderful
adventure story.”
—Dallas Morning News
“An extraordinary adventure … Borne along by well-crafted, muscular
prose, we survive close calls with rapids and revolutionaries, encounter
strange species (human and otherwise), endure the heat and insects and
white water—all without leaving the comfort of the den.”
—New York Newsday
“Kane’s eloquence lends his story a you-are-there quality.”
—Cleveland Plain Dealer

FIRST VINTAGE DEPARTURES EDITION, MAY 1990
Copyright © 1989 by Joe Kane
Photographs Copyright © 1989 by Zbigniew Bzdak/Canoandes, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in
the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and
simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published,
in hardcover, by Alfred A. Knopf Inc., in 1989.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Kane, Joe.
Running the Amazon / by Joe Kane.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-30780990-2
1. Amazon River—Description and travel. 2. Kane, Joe—Journeys—
Amazon River. I. Title.
[F2546.K19 1990] 89-40610
981.1—dc20
v3.1
for Elyse
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Map of the Amazon River
ONE • HIGH COUNTRY
1. The Pacific
2. The Colca
3. Headwaters
4. The Upper Apurimac
5. The Black Canyon
6. Trail’s End
TWO • WHITE WATER
7. Meeting the Great Speaker
8. The Acobamba Abyss
9. The Middle Apurimac
10. The Lower Apurimac (The Red Zone)
11. The Ene
12. The Tambo
THREE • THE RIVER SEA
13. The Upper Ucayali
14. The Lower Ucayali
15. The Marañón
16. The Solimões
17. The Amazon
18. The Pará
19. The Atlantic
Afterword to the Vintage Edition
About the Author
ILLUSTRATIONS
Following this page:
6.1 “El Condorito.”
6.2 At, 15,000 feet on the approach to the source: François Odendaal,
Tim Biggs, Pastor.
6.3 Base camp at the source of the Amazon (17,000 feet).
6.4 Zbyszek Bzdak at the source of the Amazon.
6.5 Dr. Kate Durrant and the author in San Juan.
6.6 Portaging the upper Apurimac: Piotr Chmielinski, Tim Biggs,
François Odendaal, Jerome Truran.
6.7 The last Inca hanging bridge, woven entirely of hammered grass.
6.8 Kate Durrant consulting patients near the Hanging Bridge, and
Jerome Truran on the upper Apurimac.
6.9 Piotr Chmielinski, Jerome Truran, Tim Biggs.
6.10 Tim Biggs on the upper Apurimac.
6.11 Quechua man and son.
6.12 Shakedown run on the Apurimac: Piotr Chmielinski, the author,
Sergio Leon, Kate Durrant.
6.13 Jerome Truran in the Acobamba Abyss.
6.14 Lining the raft through the Acobamba Abyss.
6.15 In the Acobamba Abyss (note high-water mark).
6.16 Jerome Truran in the Acobamba Abyss.
6.17 Tim Biggs executing an Eskimo roll.
6.18 Cloud Forest in the Red Zone: Jerome Truran, Tim Biggs, François
Odendaal.
6.19 Piotr Chmielinski, Jerome Truran, Peruvian marine in the Red
Zone.
6.20 In the Red Zone: Jerome Truran, the author, Kate Durrant.
6.21Asháninka man.
6.22 On the lower Tambo: Kate Durrant and Jerome Truran on native
raft; Piotr Chmielinski and the author on gringo equivalent.
6.23 Piotr Chmielinski, Kate Durrant, and the author with sea kayaks
and the Jhuliana in Pucallpa.
Following this page:
12.24 Sea kayak with Christmas tree, Iquitos.
12.25 On the River Sea: Piotr Chmielinski and the author near the
Brazilian border, two thousand miles from the Atlantic.
12.26 Friends in Tabatinga.
12.27 Piotr Chmielinski and caboclo fisherman with the author’s
birthday dinner.
12.28 In storm’s wake on the Solimões.
12.29 Piotr Chmielinski (foreground) and the author. Sea kayak with
bushmaster.
12.30 The author and Piotr Chmielinski in sea kayaks; Kate Durrant
aboard the Roberto II.
12.31 Downtown Gurupá.
12.32 The author, Piotr Chmielinski, and caboclo fishermen near
Marajó Bay.
12.33 Oz: the author and Piotr Chmielinski at the mouth of the
Amazon.
12.34 All photographs by Zbigniew Bzdak/Canoandes, Inc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The experiences on which this book is based reflect a shared effort by
the members of the Amazon Source to Sea Expedition: Tim Biggs,
Zbyszek Bzdak, Piotr Chmielinski, Kate Durrant, Jack Jourgensen, Sergio
Leon, François Odendaal, Jerome Truran, Fanie Van der Merwe, and
Pierre Van Heerden. That they would commit themselves not only to
running the Amazon but to being observed and written about by me, a
stranger to all of them when I arrived in Peru, bespeaks a profound
collective courage, one from which I continue to draw inspiration.
Without the encouragement, guidance, hard work, and friendship of
my agent, Joe Spieler, I would have had neither the wherewithal to
embark on such a journey nor the confidence to write about it; to him I
extend my deepest thanks. My editor, Ashbel Green, patiently guided me
out of the disaster area that is a first draft into the Promised Land of a
finished book; without him this story would not have been told. Of the
many people who also read and commented on the manuscript, I wish
especially to thank K. Patrick Conner and Daniel Ben-Horin, who waded
through several swampy drafts with keen eyes and unflagging pencils. I
am eternally in their debt.
The expedition itself would not have succeeded without the off-the-
water support—financial, logistical, and emotional—of Bryce Anderson,
Patricia Moore, Jim Allison, Jacek and Teresa Bogucki, Kaye Reed and
the people of Casper, Wyoming, Canoandes, Inc. and Michael and Selma
Kon, Jerzy Majcherczyk, and Andrzej Pietowski of Canoandes
Expeditions, Jerzy Dylski and Polonia of New York, Boleslaw
Wierzbianski of Nowy Dziennik, New York, John Tichenor, Wilbur E.
Garrett and National Geographic Magazine, Mark Bryant and Outside
Magazine, and the South American Explorers Club. A special thanks also
to Marc Reisner, Jim Keller, Randall Hayes and the Rainforest Action
Network, and Manuel Lizarralde.
We were provided with excellent equipment and supplies by Bill
Masters of Perception and Aquaterra kayaks, whose vessels we came to