Redmond O'Hanlon found few experienced adventurers willing to accompany him on his four-month trip up the Orinoco river and across the Amazon Basin. He wondered why... Was it perhaps the fear of contracting dysentery, rabies or river blindness? Or maybe it was a disinclination to meet peckish jaguars, vipers, anacondas and 640-volt electric eels? Surely it couldn t possibly be reluctance to swim among giant catfish, with their relatively harmless penchant for nipping off a person s feet? Fortunately, an old friend volunteered, having absolutely no idea what he was letting himself in for. But then O Hanlon didn t have much idea either. How the intrepid ornithologist and his sidekick managed to survive some serious travelling trouble makes for gripping, and hilarious, reading.