heartstrings ep 5 eng subThe Brits are specialists of the grand, futile gesture and few gestures come grander and more futile than walking the entire length of the Amazon. And yet there was something wholly admirably about Ed Stafford's 7,000km epic trek. He wasn't pretending to be mapping uncharted territory or investigating the effects of climate change. Nor was he tugging the heart strings by doing the walk for charity. He was doing it because he had nothing much better to do with two and a half years. And because no one had ever done it before.
It wasn't hard to see why.The second episode of Walking the Amazon (Channel 5) started with Ed and Peruvian companion Cho Sanchez, whom he had met along the way and who also apparently had nothing better to do with a couple of years, reaching the Brazilian border on day 401 of the walk. They were briefly joined by Sam, who got a tremendous build-up as a Shaolin warrior monk, but soon dropped out with infected feet. Ed appeared relieved to see the back of him. Not the best of conversationalists, Ed much preferred walking with Cho, a man who spoke as little English as Ed spoke Spanish. "He's mad," Cho observed.
"He doesn't know what he's doing." Pots and kettles.Day 554 found Ed and Cho, knee-deep in mud, hacking their way through the jungle while getting bitten by insects and looking for something to eat. Day 632 found Ed and Cho doing much the same. As indeed did almost every other day. Some days it rained, some days it didn't, but otherwise everything looked much the same. The only sense you had of them making any progress was the little arrow that occasionally plotted their journey on a map; the only sense of time passing – other than Ed's increasingly deranged eyes – was the day number.
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