Despite pain, swimmer finishes trip down Amazon

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – After 3,272 miles of exhaustion, sunburn, delirium and piranhas, a 52-year-old Slovenian successfully completed a swim down the Amazon River on Saturday that could set a world record for distance – something he’s already done three times before.

After nine weeks, Martin Strel arrived near the city of Belem, the capital of the jungle state of Para, ending a swim almost as long as the drive from Miami to Seattle. Strel averaged about 50 miles a day since beginning his odyssey at the source of the world’s second-longest river in Peru on Feb. 1.

By Thursday evening, he was struggling with dizziness, vertigo, high blood pressure, diarrhea, nausea and delirium, his Web site said. But despite having difficulty standing and being ordered by the doctor not to swim, Strel was obsessed with finishing the course and insisted on night swimming.

“He’s hit point zero,” Borut Strel, Martin’s son and the project coordinator, said by telephone from the Amazon. “There will be a ceremony Sunday in Belem, but he finished today.”

Speaking by satellite phone during a break aboard his support vessel, the elder Strel said that the going got tougher the closer he got to Belem.

“The finish has been the toughest moment so far,” he said Thursday. “I’ve been swimming fewer kilometers as I get closer to the end. The ocean tides have a lot of influence on the river’s currents, and sometimes they are so strong that I am pushed backward.”

He said he was lucky to have escaped encounters with piranhas, the dreaded toothpick fish, which swims into body orifices to suck blood, and even bull sharks that swim in shallow waters and can live for a while in fresh water.

“I think the animals have just accepted me,” he said. “I’ve been swimming with them for such a long time that they must think I’m one of them now. I still have dolphins swimming with me.”

Cramps, high blood pressure, diarrhea, chronic insomnia, larvae infections, dehydration and abrasions caused by the constant rubbing of his wet suit against his skin frequently tormented him.

Strel, who lost about 26 pounds, said there were times he felt such pain in his arms, chest and legs, “that I could not get out of the water on my own.”

Sunburn was Strel’s biggest problem in the first half of his adventure.

Just days after he began his swim, Strel developed second-degree burns on his face and forehead, and his team feared the burns would become infected.

His lips became blistered, and scabs formed on his nose and upper cheeks.

In addition, his eyes became sore and swollen, probably from sunblock getting inside his goggles.

The sunburn became so bad that while still swimming in Peru he thought of quitting, he said.

“I couldn’t sleep at night, and I thought we would have to stop for a week or so. But with time things improved,” he said.