Martin Strel’s epic swim of the Amazon River was uniquely documented in Big River Man. Before the Amazon, Strel swam the Danube, the Mississippi and the Yangtze Rivers.
Martin's awesome resilience was fueled by numerous things: the determination to raise environmental awareness worldwide of how the planet is facing ecological decline, alcohol, a subterranean connection with nature and horse-meat sandwiches.
Strel was accompanied by his son Borut, who lived out his father's journey with equal measures of fear, determination and love, and a hallucinating navigational assistant whose experience of getting around was limited to the supermarket aisles where he worked.
In this blog, created exclusively for DTFF, Strel and his son Borut share amazing photos and personal insights on their overwhelming adventure.
The film ends with the Heart Sutra, a Buddhist mantra that affirms overcoming boundaries and achieving fulfillment. Martin Strel has said that he would never swim another river- he feels he has completed his goal. The rest is history.
-Alexia Amvrazi
"The Danube swim was a mile-marker in my marathon swimming career because the new millennium came and I decided to swim long rivers, taking dramatic action to raise awareness about clean waters.”
The most memorable moment from Yangtze swimming is definitely very polluted water, especially in the lower part around large cities. River is not a river, its more like a flush channel.
My greatest memory from the Amazon swim was swimming through such diverse and green environment and meeting many indigenous people along the river.