8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must read for anyone with interest in adventure, February 8, 1999
By A Customer
This is an amazing account of courage and commitment to a long term goal. What I find remarkable about Starkell's style of writing is that he is very forthright about stating any errors of judgement he made during this expedition (as he also was in 'Paddle to the Arctic'). The man is obviously able to laugh at himself. Another interesting aspect of this book is how the father and son relationship is affected during the journey. My only complaints are related to the graphics, the text itself warrants 5 stars. These concerns are; a) there should be more photographs, b) there should be only 1 photograph to a page (especially with a paperback), c) the maps should be much more detailed. Any books by Starkell have alot of practical value to people who do backcountry travel.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A remarkable true life journey that defines "adventure"., January 26, 1999
By A Customer
The majority of people who knew of this adventure from the beginning had a hard time believing it was possible. And those they met along the way challenged the validity of it altogether. This true story is about more than just the longest canoe trip in history, it is about courage and stretching the boundaries of normal perseverance. It is one of the most amazing adventures I've ever read, ...twice!
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18 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Embarassing..., May 16, 2008
I started reading this book with high expectations based on the other reviews posted here and Don Starkell's reputation as an outstanding adventurer. I was disappointed in both the book and the author. In fact, many stretches of this book left me completely dumbfounded, unable to believe that this is not a comedy.
For example, I thought it was a funny idea of Don Starkell to paddle into the center of the Colombian drug trade while displaying big US Coast Guard decals on his canoe. Even funnier was that he started wondering why that made people slightly suspicious and they subsequently intended to kill him. It was a bit repetitious, though. I guess after he unsuccessfully tried to get himself killed by paddling into Honduras and Nicaragua at a time of political unrest, he probably thought that this could be accomplished in Columbia.
Completely immune to reason, this "world class paddler" obviously thinks that safety gear such as personal floatation is only for whimps and just keeps relying entirely on his luck to be rescued, e.g. after capsizing and being swept out to sea in a turbulent river mouth. Much to his surprise, the next river mouth is just as turbulent and he faces similar problems on the next, and the next, and the next...
One particularly hilarious moment ensues when Don Starkell harasses a 20ft, 300 pound Anaconda for kicks, which he mistakenly believes to be a Boa Constrictor, falsely relying on the water-avoiding behaviour of the "Boa" for protection. Or, imagine Don Starkell's surprise after entering Brazil, where sometimes he was able to understand the Brazilians with the Spanish he learned along his trip, but more often than not, it appeared to him "as if they were speaking an entirely different language". I think he might still be trying to figure this one out...
This list goes on and on - and in what appeared to me as a bad mixture of the "Three Stooges" and "National Lampoon" the Starkells clown their way down the coast and finally, against all odds make it to the mouth of the Amazon.
On the downside, I thought that the way Don Starkell, a well-off Canadian, relied on mooching supplies and shelter from some of the poorest people in the countries they visit was just sickening. He proudly writes about his method of identifying a leader in a group of strangers and wooing him or her with golden Canada Maple Leaf pins to gain access to the supplies they need. He could as well have brought glass pearls. Don Starkell aptly named his canoe 'Orellana' after "the first white man to navigate the Amazon River in 1541". And quite often his behavior seems to be that of a modern-time Francisco Orellana, who gained a sorry reputation for raiding settlements along the river for supplies and burning down entire villages, including their inhabitants. I was left with the impression that most of the people the Starkells "visited" were rather happy when they were gone again.
I was most interested in Mr. Starkell's motivation for performing this trip. He writes at the beginning of the book that he mainly did it to compensate feelings of insufficiency after a rough childhood and a painful divorce. As a consequence, his interest in this journey is mostly centered on gaining bragging rights. He doesn't actually seem to enjoy any of this trip, other than the four-month long stay in Veracruz, Mexico. His only drive to get up in the morning is mileage. Because of this, Starkell's saga is often not much more than the description of a "canoe treadmill" experience. It remains obscure to me why somebody would think that spending two years on such a lost quest for psychological completeness would be a sane idea. It probably did for him what a big truck or butt-implants did for many midlife-crisis shaken fellows, i.e. nothing. Therefore, the almost complete lack of reflections or attempts to find meaning in this journey came as no surprise.
To add insult to injury, Starkell seems to regard his son's as mere paddling power - motors desperately needed by him to complete his insane task. As for the father/son dynamics in a small boat over two years: we can only guess about this complex and intricate topic, because the author doesn't really write anything about that, which is probably the greatest disappointment of the book.
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