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Could you hike the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River? Ed Stafford did.

In 2008, good friends Ed Stafford and Luke Collier decided to hike the 4,000-mile length of the Amazon River together, a never-before attempted feat. They planned to establish a new Guinness World Record with this ambitious, dangerous trek.

It looked impossible. The two could not possibly carry sufficient food for their trek, and the terrain was perilous – far too challenging for a lengthy journey by foot. A million dangers lurked in the jungle: killer bees, snakes, jaguars and other lethal predators. Either territorial, indigenous tribes or covert, armed drug carriers could attack them.

Stafford and Collier would have to deal with constant fatigue and lack of sleep. Their acquaintances’ consensus was that if the two men entered the rain forest, they would never leave alive.Undeterred, Stafford and Collier began their Amazonian journey in 2008 in Camaná, on Peru’s coast. In months, the teamwork between the two men deteriorated, and their expedition was in chaos. Collier abandoned the pair’s great adventure and returned...