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Thanks to Don and his family for sharing their great adventure.Hogan For those looking for an adventure, this book provides it. Its written in a day by day diary format.
Starkell is no poet, but he is brutally honest. Ditto for "Paddle to the Arctic", except he's a few years older, a bit more stubborn and angry and even more determined. The adventure itself is the king. He reveals himself to be difficult, stubborn, a bit of an angry jerk at times, but exactly the kind of person who could go beyond imagining an adventure of this size. Together, the books make a fascinating, albeit unintended, character study. Many writers could have made a bigger book out of half the adventure Starkell had. But this is a real trip, not an ego trip, and it's an epic one.
His only drive to get up in the morning is mileage. nothing. 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. 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. It was a bit repetitious, though. Don Starkell aptly named his canoe 'Orellana' after "the first white man to navigate the Amazon River in 1541". Even funnier was that he started wondering why that made people slightly suspicious and they subsequently intended to kill him.
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 most interested in Mr. 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. He doesn't actually seem to enjoy any of this trip, other than the four-month long stay in Veracruz, Mexico. 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. 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.
It probably did for him what a big truck or butt-implants did for many midlife-crisis shaken fellows, i.e. Starkell's motivation for performing this trip. I was left with the impression that most of the people the Starkells "visited" were rather happy when they were gone again. As a consequence, his interest in this journey is mostly centered on gaining bragging rights. 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.
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. 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. Because of this, Starkell's saga is often not much more than the description of a "canoe treadmill" experience. 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. 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.
He could as well have brought glass pearls. 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. 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.
Though an easy read, the book did no hand-holding through any of the journey's rough spots; the story is regularly gruesome, occasionally hair-raising, now and again embarrassing, but through it all jaw-dropping. Particularly delicious are his observations on the ever-changing nature of local human behavior along the 12,000 miles. Boy, was I wrong. This is as real as it gets.Like adventure. The tale is heart-wrenchingly frank about everything from the constant physical and emotional challenges to Don's personal doubts to occasional and agonizing strife with his sons. What a great read.
From the cover blurb, I assumed I'd be reading another insipid, feel-good father-son story, and I was prepared to dislike it. Also, Don's references to tales of the long-ago explorers who visited parts of the journey's route have given me a wealth of new books to put on my reading list.By no means would I call this a feel-good book, though I finished it feeling inspired and delighted--and yes, good. The author, fresh from a devastating divorce, started planning this epic father-and-sons canoe journey from Canada to Brazil. Rather than distracting, it richens his descriptions of the journey itself--filled with colorful notes about the terrain, animals, plants, and (especially) bugs along the way--and helps point the harsh light of reality on the adventure. Read this. After some years of cooling off and preparation, amid the usual hail of well-deserved dire warnings such adventures generate, he actually pulled it off.
Most of the text is pulled directly from Don's actual journals written during the trip, words he appears to have kept for himself and only later decided to share with the world.
It's been about a month since I read the book and I'm still thinking about all they went through. I felt like I went to the Amazon with these guys without the bugs, dirt, starvation, and near death experiences. I'm glad you went Don, and took your sons with you, but more than that, I'm glad you wrote a book a about it. He doesn't sugarcoat details, he just tells it like it was. I enjoyed every page, the good and the bad. I think most people have the dream to do something like Don Starkell but few of us actually do it.
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