The Fish Man of the Amazon
by Dan Silkstone
April 28, 2007
THE CRAZIEST man in the world right now just might be a fat-bellied, 52-year-old Slovenian named Martin Strel. In Peru they called him "El Hombre Pez". In Brazil, where they cheer him from the riverbanks, it's "O Homen Peixe". Both mean the same thing: the fish man.
Strel is the Tiger Woods of daredevil long-distance river swimming, the Michael Jordan of piranha dodging. He holds the world record for continuous swimming (503 kilometres over 84 hours) and has freestyled down the Mississippi, Danube and Yangtze rivers.
This month he conquered his Everest — setting a world record by swimming 5268 kilometres down the Amazon. It took 66 days and almost killed him. He might not have made it without a generous allowance of red wine and buckets of pigs' blood.
A hero in Slovenia (he is, his son and expedition leader Borut told The Age this week, "much more famous than our President"), Strel has also captured the world's attention. His website scored 100 million hits during the Amazon swim and daily updates of his progress were run on the BBC. Along for the ride, US writer and adventurer Matthew Mohlke kept a diary that will soon be published. It records what must surely be one of the most bizarre and compelling expeditions ever undertaken.
Now, as The New York Times and David Letterman queue for an audience, Strel has his eye on Australia, telling The Age that he is keen to visit a land that celebrates great swimmers. He is considering an assault on the once-mighty Murray River. "I have met Dawn Fraser," he says. "And also you have Thorpie, who is very big. I also know about your Anthony (sic) Perkins."
Famous he may be, but this is no ordinary sports star. In Mohlke's book, The Amazon King, the author describes his first meeting with Strel in 2002, as the swimmer prepared to take on the Mississippi. "The 'world-class athlete' lazed in a lawn chair and pounded eight beers and at least six bratwurst. He was nearly 50 years old and weighed 250 pounds (113 kilograms)." Borut later explained: "Martin is like a bear; he must fatten up before the swim."
Mohlke himself is rather unconventional. Born and raised in Wisconsin, he was working as a sales executive in Detroit when he felt the call of the Mississippi and longed to "have adventures". He quit his job and went kayaking down the river's length "looking for girls and a good buzz". Later he wrote a book about it.
Now he worships Henry David Thoreau and lives in his own Walden — a secluded cottage on the Mississippi bank. "We're simple people here," he says. "Just fishin' and huntin' people." When The Age called this week, the 32-year-old was ensconced in a bar "eatin' chicken wings and sinkin' a beer".
"We like rivers and like having adventures," he says of his bond with Strel, who sought him out as a guide for his swim down the Mississippi. "It was an honour to watch what Martin did … I feel like I just went to another world or travelled through time to another dimension. The people of the Amazon were just so special. They're not corrupted like Western people are; they are just simple people living in touch with the land."
To occupy himself on the trip, Mohlke carried two classic river novels: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In those pages, as in the trip itself, lay the promise of triumph and tragedy.
For almost three months, Strel and his 22-person support crew battled piranhas, bandits, pirates and Colombian drug runners, not to mention crocodiles, jaguars and sharks. Filmmaker John Maringouin — one of the key creative forces behind the Jackass movies — also tagged along. His documentary about the trip will screen at next year's Sundance Film Festival.
The hardest part was staying healthy. All team members battled sickness as some contracted amoebic dysentery. Stricken with illness, the book recounts, Strel at times left a brown trail in the water. But he kept swimming. More than 90 kilometres a day.
"If you look at him, he's obviously not the most physically gifted athlete but his mind is incredible," Mohlke says. "When he swims, it's like he's in another place; he's hypnotised, you can't get his attention."
For hours each day, Strel would metronomically freestyle. Sometimes he would roll over and float on his back, kicking along. To pass the time he would grab a passing stick and hold it before his eyes, breaking small parts off and tossing them away.
The real endurance test was taking place inside his skull. In a trance-like state he would relive his youth, strolling around his village, lost in conversation with old friends and family. Mohlke's job was to plot their journey through the rivers' tricky currents and look for obstacles such as floating logs. If he spotted danger, he would blow hard on a whistle, attempting to rouse Strel. Often he did not respond. Strel says his secret is to never think about swimming. "I am just a simple man," he says. "But I can do this thing in my mind."
Borut says he has been amazed by his father's strength and courage. "I wasn't sure he could do it. This is the most dangerous river in the world and every second is very dangerous."
Strel trained four to five hours a day — a mixture of swimming, cross-country skiing and calisthenic exercises. The varying depth of the river meant he could not swim inside a protective cage, as ocean swimmers customarily do. Instead, he aimed to stay in the swiftest currents, usually avoided by piranhas and crocodiles.
Matthew Mohlke says he initially thought the burly swim champ had a 50 per cent chance of surviving. Borut was more confident, telling him: "Martin will make friends with the animals of the river … by the end of the trip they will accept him completely as just another big fish. Martin believes he is invincible to the predators of the Amazon."
And what predators! To combat the threat of piranhas, Martin and Borut placed buckets of pigs' blood on the support boat, to be tossed overboard as a distraction if Martin were attacked. But the blood turned rancid after days in the hot sun, causing an epidemic of sickness among the crew.
It all went wrong when Strel started hollering that piranhas were nipping at his leg. As Mohlke's book recounts: "In the pandemonium, Jamie throws the blood over the same side of the boat as Martin. Martin frantically circles around to the other side to avoid the blood in the water … Martin is furious at Jamie … he shows us the tears in his wetsuit. Jamie takes it hard."
Then there is the dreaded candiru — a tiny fish attracted by the scent of urine and blood. "It darts into a human orifice such as an anus, vagina or even penis, erects a razor-sharp spike to hold it in place, then latches onto an artery and feeds off blood." In a land of beasts, locals fear this one most.
As usual, Strel thinks somewhat differently. "Martin had warned us all before the expedition that although the predatory fish and reptiles of the Amazon were dangerous, the most dangerous creature of all is the woman, as disease is rampant in many of these parts," the book observes. "When 22 men land at the port of a small town, word travels fast that there is new money to be had and we are almost always swarmed by prostitutes."
Towards the finish, as he neared the river's end, Strel hit a brick wall of ocean currents. With the sea-tide receding during daylight hours, the exhausted Slovenian swam his guts out but was going backwards. There was no option but to begin swimming at night, when the current would carry him towards the river mouth. In pitch blackness he stroked through waters infested with bull sharks. "It is very dangerous," he says. "Any light attracts them and one big fish can kill you."
With Strel facing exhaustion on April 2, Mohlke and Borut dragged him to a hospital. He got as far as the waiting room before storming out and getting back in the water. Six days later, he emerged triumphant in the Brazilian city of Belem — collapsing into the arms of paramedics as supporters draped him in the Slovenian flag.
"It was not the best for me; my heart was irregular and my blood pressure was very high," he says. "But I am feeling better now."
Strel is the kind of character that not even the most creative imagination could conjure. A talented gymnast as a boy, he "could do hundreds of push-ups without tiring and walk on his hands for a hundred metres," according to the book. He took up swimming after his father cut short his promising gym career. Young Martin had ridden his bike 56 kilometres to compete in a competition. Mohlke records: "His father needed him at home to tend the chickens and was so upset … he beat him soundly."
The swimming started when a teenage Strel began racing army officers in the local river for beer. He seldom lost. Strel likes beer — a lot. Now he is enjoying its pleasures as he recovers in a Los Angeles hotel, along with generous tipples of Californian wine. It is, he says, more potent than the "special wine for swimming" that he drank most nights during his epic journey. Not for this athlete the strict diet of modern-day sports science.
He is a compelling hero who spends his days hurling Slovenian curses at his support staff, drags himself from the water after swimming 100 kilometres and demands red wine, then mixes it with Fanta, proclaiming: "A little spritz!" During the expedition, he slept just four hours a night as he pushed mind and body to ever-greater exertions.
All of this is captured by Mohlke, who writes with the economy of a young Hemingway, dishing up deadpan some of the most hilarious sentences you'll ever read.
Did that wannabe tough-guy Norman Mailer ever write anything as cool as this? "Every day we devise new ways to help Martin combat the sun. Today, we strap a white pillowcase around his head with holes for eyes, nose, and mouth." It turns out it was hard for Martin to breathe while swimming in this garb.
Or how about this pearler? "An exhausted swimmer lands at the small town of Ocho de Mayo at sunset, covering 62 miles (100 kilometres) on the day. Some ladies offer us some sort of mashed potato-like dish they stir with a big wooden spoon in a huge bowl, using their own spit to help it reach the proper consistency."
Then there's the awesome matter-of-factness that sees Mohlke casually remark: "We've heard a few reports of banditos who do smuggling downstream from here, and as a result, Martin is looking to acquire some guns."
The unresolved question is the one that squares always ask of adventurers: Why? Though Strel is a committed environmentalist who uses his feats to raise awareness about the deteriorating health of rivers such as the Amazon and Mississippi, this is not the reason he does it. He does it because he can and because — it now seems fairly plain — nobody else seems able to.
Mohlke begins his book with another question: "Is Martin Strel crazy?" It certainly seems worth asking. "Anybody who does something like this, climbs Everest or something, is a bit crazy to the average everyday person," the author told The Age this week. "To me he's not crazy. But to an ordinary person?"
And the man himself? "Some people say, 'Martin you are a little crazy,' " he laughs. "Yes, I am."
Though 52, Strel says he feels like a 25-year-old and has many more big swims in him — perhaps even in Australia.
It will, though, take him six months to recover. "I am very tired," he admits. "It is my time to rest." For now, Martin Strel lies around his hotel all day eating and watching American football on TV. Does he have any hobbies to help him relax? "Not really," says Borut. "But he does like to swim in the hotel pool."
Dan Silkstone is a senior Age writer.
