Man who swam the Amazon details moment dolphins helped protect him during terrifying shark encounter
Martin Strel does not do things by halves.
The Slovenian marathon swimmer has spent decades treating some of the world's longest and dirtiest rivers as his training ground, and in his seventies he says he still swims twice a day.
Nicknamed 'Big River Man', Strel has swum the full length of the Danube, the Mississippi and the Yangtze, picking up several Guinness World Records along the way.
His biggest feat came in 2007, when he covered roughly 3,274 miles (5,268 kilometers) of the Amazon in 66 days, becoming the first person to swim the river from source to sea.
Advert
Speaking to UNILAD, Strel looked back on that expedition and recalled a string of near misses that sound almost too wild to be true.
Among them were two run-ins with bull sharks, which he made clear were no joke. "Swimming with bull shark is very, very, very risky," he said.
What happened next is the part he still seems to marvel at. A musician by background, Strel said he began calling out to dolphins beneath the surface, and they answered.
"Because I'm a musician, I felt like I understand the dolphins, and I was calling, and they helped me, they came helping me," he said. "Can you imagine?"
According to Strel, the dolphins and sharks ended up in a fight right there in the water, with the sharks 'so aggressive' and the dolphins 'very friendly'.
The only problem was that the cameras weren't rolling, even though his expedition was being filmed. "It wasn't time for filming, you know? This is a very special moment, a couple of minutes," he said.
He told his director he had missed a "very, very special moment for people, especially for kids", but for Strel himself it was simply 'another day, another day, working day for me'.
Strel said the encounter happened twice.
How dangerous is it to swim the Amazon River?
Life on the river followed a strict routine. Strel and his team of around 50 people set off at 6 a.m., and he swam for roughly 12 hours, covering between 43 and 62 miles (70 to 100 kilometers) a day.
The hazards were constant. On the second day, four dangerous snakes turned up on his 49-foot (15-meter) support boat, which Strel said is because the animals are drawn to the warmth of the engine overnight.
A bite would have meant a trip to the hospital. On the third day, he accidentally touched an 8-foot (2.5-meter) caiman lying behind the boat.
"Can you imagine what a feeling it is," he said. In his words, 'one mistake' could have ended everything.
Despite all of the dangers, staying healthy was the thing that worried him most. Strel said 23 members of his team ended up in hospital, and he put that down partly to American crew members arriving without the right vaccinations. His own Slovenian medical team, he said, had prepared him thoroughly.
Then there were the piranhas. Strel said they attacked him 'very hard', opening up his back and leaving 'blood everywhere', and he says he still has the scars.
During the call he held up a piranha of around 14 inches (35 centimeters) and described its teeth as 'like a very short knife'.
His team used buckets of blood to redirect the fish away from him.
The water itself was unpredictable, too. Strel said storms whipped up waves of between 13 and 20 feet (four and six meters) for 20 to 30 minutes at a time, three or four times a day.
He also pointed to places where rivers meet, where one can flow beneath the other and churn up chaotic white water in which boats have sunk.
Pirates were another worry. Strel said they would not attack in daylight, so each night at 11 p.m. he moved up or down the river, returning to his original spot at 3 a.m. so they would find nobody there.
He claimed he even invited them aboard. "I have whiskey, I have beer, I have cigarettes," he said. They followed the expedition for the final 250 to 310 miles (400 to 500 kilometers) and finally attacked at around 1 a.m. on the last night, though it was over quickly, with military escorts and his security team on hand.
Even then, he said, the swim was not finished until it was finished. "On the Amazon, if it's not over, until it's over. You never know what's around the corner," he added.
Why did Martin Strel take on the Amazon?
The river had been a long time coming. Strel grew up in Mokronog, a swampy small town in Slovenia, where he said he spent his childhood beside his mother as she washed laundry, building small dams and playing with snakes, crabs and fish.
As he got older, the rivers got bigger. The Krka, a Slovenian river he swam as a boy, felt enormous at the time. "That was, for me, like Amazon," he said
By the 1990s he was swimming seriously. In 1992 he completed 105 kilometers of the Krka in 28 hours, and in 2000 he swam the full 3,000 kilometers of the Danube.
In 2002 he took on the Mississippi, roughly 3,800 kilometers over 68 days, and was reportedly struck by lightning along the way before surviving the swim.
The Yangtze followed in 2004, a river so polluted that doctors were reported to have cleaned his blood daily. He has also swum the Paraná between Brazil and Argentina.
The Amazon, Strel said, was the one that made sense. It has no dams, so he could swim it nonstop, and it carried a message he wanted to deliver. He said his swims are about 'peace and clean water', and he pointed to the pressure on the Amazon rainforest, which he said keeps shrinking as land is cleared for soybeans and cattle.
Pollution is a major concern for him too. He warned about microplastics in drinking water and said he tells young people to remember one thing. "River is not a garbage bin, we need to take care of it and the natural world," he shared.
He never felt the outcome was guaranteed, comparing the swim to a game of poker. "Every day was completely new day," Strel said, adding that he considered himself 'lucky' to have finished.
His journey was the subject of the 2009 documentary Big River Man, which Strel said premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. His book about the expedition, The Man Who Swam the Amazon, has been translated into 27 languages.
He has no plans to stop. Strel revealed: "Even now, I train twice a day."
Topics: World News, Sport, Guinness World Records
Thomas Bamford
