A Walk by the River

One man's epic, six-year trek along the entire length of the Amazon nears its final steps.

- By Ryan Stuart

When Pete Casey set out to walk the 6,000-mile course of the Amazon River from sea to source across South America, he knew there would be dangers. He just never thought he would almost die quite so many times.

There was the pit viper that bit his pant leg. River pirates and guerrilla rebels. Jaguars in the rain forest, piranha in the water and armed drug smugglers on the trail. And a horror show of potential injuries and illnesses-machete wounds, trench foot, dengue fever, malaria, Zika and, of course, Covid, which he contracted in Peru.

Indeed, the dream almost ended at its beginning. Making things harder than they necessarily had to be (a recurring and defining characteristic of the journey), Casey and a local guide started walking on Dec. 4, 2015, from a remote white-sand beach on Marajó, a Brazilian island in the Amazon that juts out into the Atlantic. They followed the coast, timing their progress with the tides. But crossing a swiftly flowing estuary, they misjudged how quickly the water was rising and found themselves submerged up to their necks. As the current insistently tugged, threatening to sweep them out to open sea, they found where the bottom began to rise to the other side.