Inspiring? Or Insane?

Stafford has been wrongly accused of murder on two separate occasions, been imprisoned, had concrete stuffed in his mouth by hostile tribespeople, been chased by Ashaninka Indians with bows and arrows, been stung by hundreds of wasps and watched as his guide 'Cho' removed a botfly from Ed's head with superglue and a tree spine.

Ed Stafford, a 34-year-old former soldier from Leicestershire, England, has finished his walk of the Amazon - taking over twice the time originally envisaged due to flooding (Stafford's route was forced to take a 3,200km detour - which is half the already immense 6,400km length of the Amazon). He started out on 2 April 2008, and finished yesterday.

Ed began the journey with fellow British adventurer Luke Collyer, but the pair had a falling out early in the trek and Stafford continued alone. He was joined in July 2008 by a Peruvian forestry worker, Gadiel Cho Sanchez Rivera, who pledged to walk with him for five days - he stayed for the entire walk.


Ed and Cho on their final day - with 85km to go, Ed collapsed after falling asleep while walking...!

Stafford has aimed to use the walk to raise awareness about the threats to the Amazon rain forest and its people, using a portable satellite video to blog about his trek. In making it to his final destination - some 9,600km later - Stafford endured "50,000" mosquito bites, lived on a diet of piranha fish, rice and beans, and dodged a variety of snakes, electric eels, scorpions, and ants, as well as contracting a skin-disfiguring disease.

Famed British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes was quoted as saying in the statement that Stafford's feat was "truly extraordinary."

"No one has ever done this before and the pundits considered the route impossible," he said.