Amazon Extreme: Three Ordinary Guys, One Rubber Raft, and the Most Dangerous River on Earth

The hair-raising true story of the first team to raft the entire length of the Amazon.

To a trio of twenty-something adrenaline junkies, it sounded like an irresistible challenge: Tackle the Amazon with nothing more than a rubber raft between them and fate.

In Amazon Extreme Colin Angus provides a you-are-there account of his expedition’s terrors and triumphs. In spite of Shining Path gunmen, mosquito-laden drinking water, and, of course, the terrifying rapids themselves, his crew also found a reverence for the equally compelling beauty that makes this region so renowned. Graceful dolphins, lush forests, and the intriguing people who live along the river complete the backdrop as Angus’s five-month excursion unfolds. Culminating in an astonishing victory that garnered major media coverage, this is the story of three guys who truly went off the deep end, and one who came back to write a riveting recollection of it.

Colin Angus’s Lost in Mongolia, about rafting the Yenisey River through the forbidding landscapes of Mongolia and Siberia, was published as an Anchor Original in 2003. Angus is now based in British Columbia. Ian Mulgrew is a senior feature writer and columnist at The Vancouver Sun.