3,278-mile swim down the Amazon River
[ Cross-posted on trigeeks.
Related post: "Running the Sahara" and "Expedition 360."]
Story of the world's greatest endurance swimmer. I just ordered his new book: The Man Who Swam the Amazon!
Watch the funny and touching trailer of his upcoming documentary, "Big River Man." Click on "pilot" link:A 3274 mile swim on the Amazon river in 66 days, piranha, crocodiles, anaconda, river sharks, blistering and relentless sun, dangerous currents, river pirates and drug runners, and the insidious candirú.
However many world records he may hold, Martin is not your typical athlete. He is a pudgy ex-professional gambler and a heavy drinker. He is the most famous man in Slovenia, so famous that, when he's not swimming, he makes a living by judging beauty contests and selling mattresses on late night TV. He is also a Flamenco guitar teacher, as well as an amateur wine maker, who makes his own brand of hooch, Cvicek, of which he drinks 2 bottles a day, even while swimming. But Martin's real passion is the environment. He made it his mission to raise awareness of this global problem.
Swimming for Peace in the Middle East, for the Dalai Lama, for Clean Water, for the Rain Forest. We’ll Drink to That. (NYT Play Magazine):
After completing his 67-day, 3,278-mile swim down the Amazon River on April 8, Martin Strel, a 53-year-old Slovene, did not make the same mistake he made after finishing his 2,360-mile swim down the Mississippi in 2002 - this time, instead of going home to Trebnje, he came to Hollywood. “Jay Leno called us 37 times,” says Strel’s son, Borut, who manages his swimming expeditions, “but we had appointments in Slovenia.”
Strel breaking for lunch in Peru ("Wine, by me, one bottle a day must be").
But not today. Fifteen days after climbing out of the Amazon in Belém, Brazil, where he was promptly loaded into an ambulance for a ride to a local hospital (“with blood pressure at near heart attack levels,” his official Web site reported), Strel and Borut are in Los Angeles, sipping red wine with a documentary filmmaker at a yellow-walled Italian restaurant in Marina del Rey. The filmmaker and his crew were with Strel for every stroke of his journey from Atalaya, Peru, to the Amazon’s mouth, shooting a documentary, “Big River Man,” which is now being edited. Strel and Borut are in California to help with the editing, to brush up Strel’s English in preparation for the film’s publicity tour (and, they hope, a string of speaking engagements) and to field calls from the news media. “I tell him, ‘Why suffer again?’ ” Borut explains. “ ‘Why should we swim another river now? We should do show business. This is much more comfortable.’ ”
No kidding. Strel averaged 50 miles a day - about 10 hours of swimming - on his journey down the Amazon. He wore a wet suit to protect himself against snakes, spiders, mosquitoes, poisonous insects, microbes and the candiru, a small parasitic fish known to swim up the opening of the penis and then lodge itself in the urethra with a spike. The sun was so strong that Strel suffered second-degree burns on the exposed skin of his face. His crew finally shrouded him in a pillowcase with holes cut for his eyes and his mouth, a “Halloween”-esque get-up that evoked a local legend about a white demon called pishtaco and sent Peruvian villagers fleeing and screaming when Strel landed onshore. During much of the swim, Strel and his support team were afflicted with diarrhea, which Strel had to relieve inside his wet suit or risk exposing himself to the above-mentioned snakes, spiders, etc. There were also crocodiles, whirlpools, waves, tides, drug smugglers and pirates to overcome or evade. And predatory women.
“Women in Brazil are very dangerous,” Strel explains. “You have many places in the jungle where is 20 times more women than men.” When he emerged from the river in some of those places, women would literally grab him and try to drag him away. “They want to go with you,” Borut says. “They never stop. That’s why we say they’re like piranhas.”
Oh yes, piranhas. Strel smeared his body with lanolin and Vaseline to seal cuts and scratches, and his support vessel carried buckets of pig and chicken blood to dump in the river to lure away the carnivorous fish. (To be effective, the blood had to be old and smelly, so smelly that the crew eventually stopped keeping it in stock.) Strel nevertheless felt himself being nibbled one morning downriver from Manaus. “He started screaming,” Borut says. “Then we took him out.”
“Here,” Strel says, pulling down a sock to display abrasions above his right ankle. “Piranha.”...
Strel is a powerfully built man, 5-foot-9 and 253 pounds when he started his Amazon swim (217 when he finished). His chest is broad, his legs strong, his short graying hair combed neatly forward toward a nose that starts out thin and straight and then takes a dive toward the equator, the result of being broken three times (“The first time was fighting, then gymnastics, then fighting with policemen,” he says). An all-around athlete, Strel was attracted early on to swimming and went professional in 1978. He doesn’t like pools - “To swim 50 seconds for 100 meters, that’s not me” - so he tried his hand at the World Cup open-water circuit, but those were ocean swims and he doesn’t like salt, either. “It destroy my mouth,” he says. “You can’t drink, you can’t eat. No wine. Beer, a little, maybe. Water. Soup, no.”
So he thought things over: “In my head, What to do? I can swim more, longer.” The solution was obvious: fresh water. “In the lake, in the river, I can reach - ” His son finishes his thought: “ - what his power allows him to do.” After a little warming up (65 miles in the River Krka in Slovenia), he ultimately decided to do something special for the millennium: in 2000 he swam the length of the Danube, 1,866 miles through 10 countries, a new world record in distance swimming. The next year he swam in the Danube again, this time a mere 313 miles - but he did it without stopping (in 84 hours), a different world record. He swam the Mississippi in 2002, the Paraná in South America in 2003, the Yangtze in 2004. The Yangtze swim was 2,487 miles, which became the new world record. The Amazon swim topped it by almost 800 miles. [Continued...]
Funny interview with Martin after his swim:
Interviews after Martin swam the entire Mississippi River, 2002:
Related post: "Running the Sahara" and "Expedition 360."]
Story of the world's greatest endurance swimmer. I just ordered his new book: The Man Who Swam the Amazon!
Watch the funny and touching trailer of his upcoming documentary, "Big River Man." Click on "pilot" link:A 3274 mile swim on the Amazon river in 66 days, piranha, crocodiles, anaconda, river sharks, blistering and relentless sun, dangerous currents, river pirates and drug runners, and the insidious candirú.
However many world records he may hold, Martin is not your typical athlete. He is a pudgy ex-professional gambler and a heavy drinker. He is the most famous man in Slovenia, so famous that, when he's not swimming, he makes a living by judging beauty contests and selling mattresses on late night TV. He is also a Flamenco guitar teacher, as well as an amateur wine maker, who makes his own brand of hooch, Cvicek, of which he drinks 2 bottles a day, even while swimming. But Martin's real passion is the environment. He made it his mission to raise awareness of this global problem.
Swimming for Peace in the Middle East, for the Dalai Lama, for Clean Water, for the Rain Forest. We’ll Drink to That. (NYT Play Magazine):
After completing his 67-day, 3,278-mile swim down the Amazon River on April 8, Martin Strel, a 53-year-old Slovene, did not make the same mistake he made after finishing his 2,360-mile swim down the Mississippi in 2002 - this time, instead of going home to Trebnje, he came to Hollywood. “Jay Leno called us 37 times,” says Strel’s son, Borut, who manages his swimming expeditions, “but we had appointments in Slovenia.”
Strel breaking for lunch in Peru ("Wine, by me, one bottle a day must be").
But not today. Fifteen days after climbing out of the Amazon in Belém, Brazil, where he was promptly loaded into an ambulance for a ride to a local hospital (“with blood pressure at near heart attack levels,” his official Web site reported), Strel and Borut are in Los Angeles, sipping red wine with a documentary filmmaker at a yellow-walled Italian restaurant in Marina del Rey. The filmmaker and his crew were with Strel for every stroke of his journey from Atalaya, Peru, to the Amazon’s mouth, shooting a documentary, “Big River Man,” which is now being edited. Strel and Borut are in California to help with the editing, to brush up Strel’s English in preparation for the film’s publicity tour (and, they hope, a string of speaking engagements) and to field calls from the news media. “I tell him, ‘Why suffer again?’ ” Borut explains. “ ‘Why should we swim another river now? We should do show business. This is much more comfortable.’ ”
No kidding. Strel averaged 50 miles a day - about 10 hours of swimming - on his journey down the Amazon. He wore a wet suit to protect himself against snakes, spiders, mosquitoes, poisonous insects, microbes and the candiru, a small parasitic fish known to swim up the opening of the penis and then lodge itself in the urethra with a spike. The sun was so strong that Strel suffered second-degree burns on the exposed skin of his face. His crew finally shrouded him in a pillowcase with holes cut for his eyes and his mouth, a “Halloween”-esque get-up that evoked a local legend about a white demon called pishtaco and sent Peruvian villagers fleeing and screaming when Strel landed onshore. During much of the swim, Strel and his support team were afflicted with diarrhea, which Strel had to relieve inside his wet suit or risk exposing himself to the above-mentioned snakes, spiders, etc. There were also crocodiles, whirlpools, waves, tides, drug smugglers and pirates to overcome or evade. And predatory women.
“Women in Brazil are very dangerous,” Strel explains. “You have many places in the jungle where is 20 times more women than men.” When he emerged from the river in some of those places, women would literally grab him and try to drag him away. “They want to go with you,” Borut says. “They never stop. That’s why we say they’re like piranhas.”
Oh yes, piranhas. Strel smeared his body with lanolin and Vaseline to seal cuts and scratches, and his support vessel carried buckets of pig and chicken blood to dump in the river to lure away the carnivorous fish. (To be effective, the blood had to be old and smelly, so smelly that the crew eventually stopped keeping it in stock.) Strel nevertheless felt himself being nibbled one morning downriver from Manaus. “He started screaming,” Borut says. “Then we took him out.”
“Here,” Strel says, pulling down a sock to display abrasions above his right ankle. “Piranha.”...
Strel is a powerfully built man, 5-foot-9 and 253 pounds when he started his Amazon swim (217 when he finished). His chest is broad, his legs strong, his short graying hair combed neatly forward toward a nose that starts out thin and straight and then takes a dive toward the equator, the result of being broken three times (“The first time was fighting, then gymnastics, then fighting with policemen,” he says). An all-around athlete, Strel was attracted early on to swimming and went professional in 1978. He doesn’t like pools - “To swim 50 seconds for 100 meters, that’s not me” - so he tried his hand at the World Cup open-water circuit, but those were ocean swims and he doesn’t like salt, either. “It destroy my mouth,” he says. “You can’t drink, you can’t eat. No wine. Beer, a little, maybe. Water. Soup, no.”
So he thought things over: “In my head, What to do? I can swim more, longer.” The solution was obvious: fresh water. “In the lake, in the river, I can reach - ” His son finishes his thought: “ - what his power allows him to do.” After a little warming up (65 miles in the River Krka in Slovenia), he ultimately decided to do something special for the millennium: in 2000 he swam the length of the Danube, 1,866 miles through 10 countries, a new world record in distance swimming. The next year he swam in the Danube again, this time a mere 313 miles - but he did it without stopping (in 84 hours), a different world record. He swam the Mississippi in 2002, the Paraná in South America in 2003, the Yangtze in 2004. The Yangtze swim was 2,487 miles, which became the new world record. The Amazon swim topped it by almost 800 miles. [Continued...]
Funny interview with Martin after his swim:
Click to viewInterviews after Martin swam the entire Mississippi River, 2002: