The Amazon from Source to Sea: The Farthest Journey Down the World's Longest River

Fifty-year-old canoe racer-turned-explorer West Hansen is planning to kayak the Amazon River when he learns that everyone - cartographers, adventurers, even his own sponsor, National Geographic Society - has misplaced the source of the world's greatest river. One of exploration's great prizes is suddenly back up for grabs, and to claim it all Hansen has to shepherd a team of irascible Texans and international whitewater stars some 4,200 miles, from the crest of the Peruvian Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. The journey brings him face-to-face with a controversy as old as Livingstone's quest for the source of the Nile, in addition to the usual obstacles. With great humor and insight, Hansen details a wild ride full of personality conflicts, extortion, Machiavellian subterfuge, pirates, drug lords, uncharted whitewater, massive thunderstorms, injuries, illness, fatigue, tropical heat, blizzards, altitude sickness, jungle drunks, bales of marijuana, substandard scotch, bureaucratic labyrinths, loneliness, colossal tides and the unstoppable force of the largest and longest river on the planet.

-- Jeff Moag, Freelance Writer and Editor, former editor of Canoe and Kayak Magazine

West Hansen is a native life-long Texan, proud father and husband who lives in central Texas. He was born in Pasadena and raised in League City, which used to be a quaint little town, where Friday night high school football was attended by the entire town. He spent his younger years on the gridiron, working construction and cooking jobs, rabbit hunting from the bed of a pickup truck and hanging out in Thrifty's grocery store parking lot with his buddies committing acts of philosophy. Escaping the comfort of his hometown, he attended college in the thriving metropolis of San Marcos, where after long last he was granted a degree in Psychology from Southwest Texas State University. During college he worked in a psychiatric facility and ran cattle on a ranch where he also lived. Following graduation, he worked in the public mental health field and is now a private social worker specializing in health care for people with a few winters under their belt. After taking classes in whitewater kayaking in college, he cut his teeth on the flooded Guadalupe River, then moved on to ultra-marathon canoe racing in 1992 with his first Texas Water Safari canoe race. He set several course records in the Missouri River 340 and still holds the USCA C-2 record in the Texas Water Safari, where he has completed 20 of the 265-mile races, as of 2019. Citing an inability to do nothing, Hansen ran for U.S. Congress in 2018, but didn't make it out of the Primary, though he learned way too much about how the sausage is made. He's been a member of the Explorer's Club since 2012 and plans on spending the rest of his life exploring those faraway places, enjoying the company of family and good friends, seeing what athletic endeavors his body can tolerate and perhaps put out a few more books.