Ascending the Amazon River (On Foot): Endurance, Risk & Reality from Sea to Source

Adventure, Conference Vault, Tropical Medicine
To access this video, please log in or sign up as a Member.
Log in
Sign up

Recorded live at the World Extreme Medicine Conference 2024, this session is now available inside the WEM Membership portal.

In this extraordinary account, Pete Casey shares the story of his record-breaking expedition to walk the full length of the Amazon River — from the Atlantic Ocean to its source high in the Andes, entirely on foot and by swimming every major watercourse along the way.

With no formal military or outdoor background, Pete spent six and a half years navigating some of the most remote, hostile, and biodiverse terrain on the planet. His journey became a long-term study in endurance, risk management, tropical health threats, logistics, environmental change, and the human relationships that make survival possible.

This session explores:

  • Route planning and navigation across jungle, floodplain, and mountain environments

  • Tropical health risks, injury management, and sustained physical decline

  • Decision-making under prolonged isolation and uncertainty

  • Working with local and Indigenous communities across South America

  • Environmental change, deforestation, and lived observations from the field

  • Psychological resilience across multi-year expeditions

Want more conference sessions?
If you’d like to watch sessions from WEM25, check out the WEM25 Digital Pack, which includes 37 recorded sessions from the World Extreme Medicine Conference 2025.

Learn more about Jungle & Tropical Medicine

More Information

Length: 57m
Guests: Pete Casey

Intended Learning Outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Describe the realities of long-duration expedition planning

  • Understand how route planning, seasonality, river levels, and terrain shape expedition feasibility.

  • Recognise how plans must continuously adapt in response to environmental and political constraints.

2. Identify key health and medical challenges in tropical expedition environments

  • Discuss risks including malnutrition, dehydration, infection, injury, envenomation, and cumulative fatigue.

  • Understand the limitations of self-care and field medicine during prolonged remote travel.

3. Evaluate risk management and decision-making under sustained isolation

  • Explore how risk tolerance changes over time during extended solo or small-team expeditions.

  • Reflect on when to continue, pause, reroute, or abandon objectives for safety reasons.

4. Understand the role of local and Indigenous knowledge in expedition success

  • Recognise how trust, communication, and cultural awareness enable safe passage through remote regions.

  • Appreciate the ethical responsibility of working alongside local communities during exploration.

5. Reflect on environmental change through lived expedition experience

  • Identify signs of deforestation, climate impact, and ecological disruption observed over multi-year travel.

  • Consider the role of explorers and medics as witnesses to environmental change.

Sign up to WEM

Sign up to our newsletter