Walking the Amazon: 860 Days. The Impossible Task. The Incredible Journey

by Stafford, Ed

  On 1 June 2007 I went up to London to see Ben Major, an old mate from my time leading expeditions in Belize and Borneo. We met for lunch at a coffee shop inside the BBC Television Centre where Ben was now working as a presenter on a children’s TV series. He had promised me some maps of Peru from the BBC stores but they were of limited use and provided only a tiny fraction of the fifty-two Peruvian maps I actually needed. I was slightly disappointed but then Ben mentioned a company that might be able to give us some remote medical training (which I definitely needed) so the meeting wasn’t a complete waste of time.

  While we were having lunch Ben paused.

  ‘Ed – have you ever been to Guyana?’

  ‘No, Ben.’

  ‘Do you know how to set up an HF radio?’

  ‘No, mate, I don’t.’

  ‘Have you ever worked with a film crew?’

  ‘You know I haven’t, you cock.’

  ‘Do you fancy working for the BBC on a new expedition series as their jungle base camp manager?’

  ‘Let me think about that for a split second …’ I grinned.

  Ben had been offered the job but couldn’t take it as he had another children’s series to present. He got me the interview at the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol and, hardly able to see, having had laser surgery on both eyes the day before, I was interviewed by the series producer, Steve Greenwood. We got on well, Steve was fascinated by the corrective surgery that I’d just had, and within two days I was on the team. I had never done TV work before but it was all behind the camera and they were just looking for someone who could go into Guyana and manage a team of Amerindians for two months in the construction of a remote jungle base camp. Then, when the crew arrived, I was to manage the local guys and ensure that the camp didn’t run out of aviation fuel or toilet paper. A three-month contract and a dream job for an ex-army expedition leader – I could do that.

  Leading conservation expeditions pays peanuts so the BBC wage was more than I’d earned in years. Luke understood I’d be silly to turn it down. We were seven months away from our Amazon departure date and if I did this series I’d make enough money to enable me not to have to work for the four months immediately preceding our trip. I’d have enough to rent a flat in London where I needed to be to meet potential sponsors and to pay for my living costs. The negative was that it meant leaving all the preparations and fundraising to Luke while I was away.

  Meanwhile, Luke organised a meeting with the medical company Ex-Med, and we both travelled over to Hereford, in search of some advice on what to carry in our medical kits and hoping to organise some basic tropical medicine training. Knowing that the guys we would meet were all very experienced military guys meant that Luke and I were pretty respectful as we knocked on the door. Ged Healy, the director, answered.

  As we introduced ourselves Ged said, ‘Hi, Ed, you’re off out to Guyana with the BBC next month aren’t you?’ Slightly taken aback – and impressed – I confirmed that I was. They had already done their homework on us.

  We were led into a room in which there was a half-burned United Nations flag framed on the wall. Luke started giggling and, as he pointed out the brass plaque inscribed with ‘Herat, Western Region, Afghanistan, 2004’, I could feel the blood rushing to my face – what were the chances of this?

  ‘Shut up, Luke!’ I prayed silently.

  ‘You’ve got a story about that flag, haven’t you, Ed?’ Luke chirped as Ged looked on stony-faced.

  ‘What’s that, Ed?’ asked Ged.

  Fuck. With no other option, I launched into one of the most self-deprecating stories of my career. I had been working in Herat in 2004 advising the UN during the run-up to the first-ever presidential elections. I was based in a UN compound in the centre of the city when Ismail Khan, the warlord who was in power in Herat, was removed from office by the American ambassador. As was common in these times the local Afghan population decided to riot and the UN buildings with their high walls and their light-blue signs outside were obvious targets.

  I went out into the compound with a Zimbabwean consultant called Mugs, a vet from the Rhodesian Army. Mugs was a lovely old boy who had seen a lot in his time and was in Afghanistan to make a living to support his family, something that was becoming increasingly difficult to do for a white man living in Zimbabwe.

  At first we stood by and watched as the crowd pounded on the huge metal vehicle gates from outside. Then rocks started to rain in on us in the inner compound. This was nothing unusual and so we calmly kept an eye out for missiles that might hit us. Then the missiles turned in to petrol bombs and various parts of the building caught fire.

  The fire, visible to the rioting crowd outside, fuelled their frenzy and the pounding on the gates grew more violent and sustained. When a bright UN worker drove a UN 4x4 up against the vehicle gates to stop them bursting inwards, in a thick Zimbabwean accent Mugs turned to me and said, ‘Someone should do the same with that pedestrian gate. That’s going to go any minute.’

  I agreed – someone should. Neither of us acted for what must have been over a minute. We just watched and then, sure enough, the small metal gate exploded inwards and the furious, crazed crowd rushed in brandishing metal bars and petrol bombs.

  Unarmed we had no option but to escape down into the basement behind another metal gate where the UN workers had retreated earlier. From the open gates we could see the computers from the electoral planning centre being looted and carried out into the street.

  The building was now burning all around us and above us, and if we didn’t act we would all be burned to death in the basement. We requested an escort from the nearby US military base and fairly soon two Hummers arrived and forced their way through the angry crowd and into the compound. With one Hummer at the front and one at the rear, all the UN workers and consultants piled into the white vehicles and formed a long convoy. I was driving a white UN 4×4 as we sped up the ramp from the basement through the seething crowd.

  This was the first time I’d driven in Afghanistan and I knew that, if I stopped or stalled, the crowd would descend on the vehicle and we would be at their mercy. After time in Northern Ireland as an occupying force, I knew what that potentially meant.

  We wound the windows down to stop shattering glass from spraying all over us and we were stoned relentlessly as we sped through the crowd. Rocks entered the vehicle, cutting the arm that was covering my head. People had to jump out of the way of the vehicle at the last minute as I drove like a maniac through the lawless streets.

  As the gate was shut behind us in the US military base, the adrenaline started to subside. Reports came back over the radio from the military units on the ground that many of the UN buildings in the city had been burned to the ground.

  Mugs and I could not look each other in the eye from that day onwards. Our inaction had caused a catastrophe. Ex-Med had had a medic in the same compound as us and he’d grabbed the burning flag before evacuating the building. And that was what I was now staring at in a meeting in which it had been my intention to impress Ged with how professional and experienced Luke and I were. Christ.

  But Ged didn’t react at all, leaving me with absolutely no idea what he really felt. As the conversation turned to our expedition, he questioned us about some basic practices. What hammocks would we use? What about water purification methods? What boots did we have in mind? He was testing us – trying to find out if we were competent enough to attempt an expedition such as this.

  At a certain point he was clearly satisfied and he asked us what we were after. I told him my wish list and he started to tell us what he could provide. He offered to do a complete disease profile on the Amazon Basin, making up specialist kits for us, and then talk us through what they included. Great, we thought, but we can’t afford that sort of service. Ged asked how much money we had for medical kits: £500 each we said. Fine, then we’ll do it for that. Slightly bemused, Luke and I both started to glow internally. Amazingly, Ged seemed to be onside.


  He moved on to training. We wanted a couple of days of general stuff to help us get out of a tricky situation. Ged offered a five-day intensive trauma course and then a three-day tropical medicine course, too. Our tiny budget in mind, I told Ged that we couldn’t possibly afford courses like this. Once again, Ged asked how much we had and we told him. ‘We’ll do it all for that amount,’ he said. Luke and I were pretty dumbfounded at this stage.

  He then asked if we had a physician on twenty-four-hour call in case we needed advice. Clearly we had not. He then proceeded to offer this service, too – for free.

  Finally, Ged said, ‘If you two get in real trouble and you can’t move for medical help – what are you going to do?’ Luke and I started to churn out our answer about that being one of the inherent risks of the expedition; that we wouldn’t have a solution and we accepted that there was a greater risk of death.

  ‘What about if we have a four-man ex-military squad that is on sixteen hours’ notice to move that would fly out to any grid reference that you send to us?’

  ‘That would be good,’ we stammered, ‘but, again, we can’t afford that level of support.’ Ged told us about an insurance company they had dealings with that, for a price, would include this four-man quick-reaction team in the package.

  The meeting came to its natural conclusion and we thanked Ged and his partner and left, still somewhat bemused. We went straight to the pub in Hereford for a celebratory pint. Ex-Med had offered us a tailored medical kit, extensive training, constant medical advice for the entire journey and an insurance package that included the best trained remote medics in the world coming in and getting us out of the shit. We could hardly believe our luck. Grinning inanely, we drank our beers in the knowledge that our amateur expedition had just got a whole lot safer in one short meeting.

  On 3 August 2007 I flew to Guyana. The programme was called Lost Land of the Jaguar and it was a privilege to work alongside the local Amerindians and the very down-to-earth BBC Natural History Unit team.

  My role was to make sure the camp was built for the crew and that the locals were well managed. When the crew came in I became the natural link between the locals and the crew and managed the day-to-day running of the camp.

  I returned to England in late October after three months with renewed vigour, ready to tackle the final preparations for walking the Amazon, and I now had the money to rent a room in London. Things hadn’t moved on much since I’d left but now I would be where things happened and could sink my teeth into getting the expedition off the ground.

  But despite overriding feelings about the expedition still being positive, I started to experience occasional waves of worry. The worry was not about being killed by previously uncontacted tribes or being smashed into rocks while crossing a tributary; it was about not finding a sponsor, not getting our extended visas and not raising enough money for charity.

  Although these worries were very real, I had been through enough stressful periods in my life to believe that, just by sticking at it and biding my time, something positive would happen to make our run of good fortune continue.

  I moved in with an old mate, James Wakefield. He had a spare room in his Stockwell flat and I set up my office in the attic. I started working in earnest on getting the visas and permits sorted.

  In November 2007 Luke and I took part in the Royal Geographical Society’s Explore weekend. It wasn’t aimed at people like Luke or me but we took the opportunity to network and as a direct result AST agreed to sponsor us and give us two BGAN satellite internet links. Now we had communications – not just satellite phones but broadband internet links that we could use in the jungle. These units were so good that later in the expedition I would use them to do live streamed video interviews with CNN broadcast to 240 international territories. Each was roughly the weight of a hardback book.

  Despite all this good fortune the bottom line was that we needed a financial sponsor so badly that if one didn’t come in we would have to cancel the expedition. I hated begging companies for money and I wasn’t very good at it either. I wrote to hundreds of companies explaining why aligning themselves with Luke and me would be fantastic for their business. I didn’t believe it myself and so, not surprisingly, I had no takers. I felt that I should be making more personal calls so I started to feel guilty that I was wasting my time and that, because of my lack of action, the expedition would fail before it had even started.

  At 10.30 p.m. on 13 December I was sitting on the couch with my flatmate James watching Top Gear and smoking flavoured tobacco through a hookah when the phone rang.

  ‘Ed, would you like to go shooting tomorrow?’

  It was an old friend, Saul Shanagher, a pleasantly eccentric individual who was formerly an officer in the Irish Guards.

  ‘Clays?’ I enquired, pretending to know what I was talking about.

  ‘No – pheasants,’ said Saul. At this point I had that feeling I often get when I envisage a social situation in which I know I am going to be out of my depth and uncomfortable.

  ‘Saul, I’m not posh, I’ve never shot pheasants before,’ I whined, trying to get out of it.

  ‘Well, you’ve got a tweed jacket, haven’t you? And green wellies?’ Saul’s tone suggested they were standard items in every respectable gentleman’s wardrobe.

  ‘Of course I haven’t,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a hooded sweatshirt, ripped jeans and a pair of Nike trainers.’

  ‘Well, borrow some then, and I’ll pick you up tomorrow at six.’ The phone went dead.

  Luckily, James had been in the army, too, but he was a conventional officer who, unlike me, had collected the full line of appropriate clothing for such occasions. He kindly lent me a tweed jacket, some moleskin trousers and a pair of green wellies. Lifesaver. Even if I was going to feel out of place I would at least look as if I belonged there. Well, apart from the shaven head and stubble.

  The shoot started as I had feared it would: lots of wealthy, highly successful men who worked in the City gathering for a day of backslapping and bragging about the lengths of their barrels. Saul is a good mate, though, and these were his friends and business associates and so I made the effort to get on with everyone. As so often in such circumstances, when you do make the effort and genuinely try to get on with people, the barriers come down and you end up enjoying yourself. They were nice people, of course – they just lived in a different world from me.

  The first ‘drive’ was embarrassing – I didn’t hit a thing. ‘This is going to be painful,’ I thought as we all stood in a circle discussing how many birds we had hit. I feigned the nonchalance of someone who was just there for the laugh and didn’t care if I hit anything. I did, of course – I was pissed off.

  The change came in the second shoot. I had been assigned a beater to act as a coach and he got me to move the barrel of the gun with the bird, saying, ‘Tail, body, beak, bang!’ It was a magic formula. I hit bird after bird and, as cruel as it may seem, I enjoyed it. What a feeling to see the feathers burst like a firework and the bird stop in its tracks and drop to the ground with a thud. Bang – I had hit another. Bang – another. This was incredible – I was shocked at how my primal instincts for hunting had come alive. By the time the second drive was finished I had shot nine birds and was brimming with cockiness.

  At lunchtime we adjourned to a large manor house where a fantastic meal was served and the red wine was flowing. I was relaxed enough to talk freely about my upcoming expedition and, because it was a quite adventurous and male subject, my companions were receptive to and interested in what I was doing.

  At the end of the day everybody said, ‘Bloody good day!’ to each other, shook hands vigorously, slung their brace of birds into their respective car boots and departed. Before we went our separate ways, one of them pulled me to one side: ‘Ed – great to meet you. I didn’t want to say anything in the house with the others listening, but your expedition is exactly the sort of thing that my company would be interested in sponsoring. Here is my
card. Call me next week.’

  ‘Fuck me!’ I thought to myself. ‘Did I hear that right?’ It was nothing definite, but he had actually approached me to offer me money!

  Within a month we had the money and the expedition was 100 per cent paid for and I was feeling like the luckiest man on earth. A guilty day of bunking off expedition fundraising and shooting pheasants had turned into the most profitable day of the year. Luke and I were going to the Amazon courtesy of Jonathan ‘Long Barrel’ Stokes and his company JBS Associates. It ain’t what you know …

  We did our excellent medical training at Ex-Med and we bought far too much kit with our newfound wealth. We paid for the inordinately expensive insurance (that included the Ex-Med quick reaction team) and we booked our flights. With the Guyana money now gone, we ran up a big bill on my credit card. It was mostly alcohol. We partied hard like men about to go to war and our physical training was completely neglected. Luke got engaged to his girlfriend. We boarded the plane to Peru on 1 March 2008 with overflowing bags, bloodshot eyes and several chins between us.

  The Amazon beckoned. Were we prepared for what lay ahead? The stresses, the dangers, the hard work and the adversity? I don’t think we had a clue. We hoped we were, worried a bit, then had another drink.

  Chapter Two

  The Search for the Source of the

  Amazon

  ON THE PLANE out of Europe we hid our nerves below our usual self-deprecating humour but, deep down, I think we both realised we’d committed to doing something that would push us further than we’d ever been pushed in our lives. If you believed the experts, we had a good chance of dying. Thinking about the expedition in its entirety could make us both distinctly edgy and stressed and so we focused on more tangible specifics and details, ignoring the ominous shadow of the whole.