One Pit Viper Forward, Two Bee Stings Back 

Amazonas Province, Brazil, February 2017. They had been walking in the forest for twenty-one days when the water began to rise around them. It crept through the dense underbrush and between the trees, the gentle tug of the current growing more insistent as rain thundered down. Pete Casey, an English building contractor who had sold his home and walked nearly two years for the privilege of being here, swam ahead, machete in hand, cutting a path toward what he and Ricardo Cayetano Estonión could only hope would be higher ground.

When they’d met in a hostel downriver, Estonión hinted at a past life in his native Colombia, running petrol through the Darién jungle for unnamed parties before starting over in Brazil. Casey hired him on the spot to join him for what figured to be the most difficult section yet of his six-thousand-mile Ascent of the Amazon expedition.

Already during the sixty-mile traverse, a pit viper had sunk its fangs into Casey’s