Martin Strel experienced tough, life threatening conditions in his swim down the Amazon.

SYDNEY, June 14 AAP - We all have our badges of honour, but few bear a scar from being attacked by a piranha.

In the upper middle of Martin Strel's back is a deep, ovular scar about ten centimetres long and five wide, corrugated from a wound that didn't really emerge until weeks after the injury was inflicted, and took much longer to heal.

The mark was left by a piranha that attacked Strel in 2007, biting through his wetsuit and deep into his back, not long after he began a 5,268km swim down the Amazon River, from Atalaya in Peru to Bel aacém on the Brazilian coast.

Strel, a marathon swimmer from Slovenia, says he didn't know at the time what had bitten him.
"It was a burning sensation," he says.

"My crew dressed it and cleaned the wound, and it was only a few weeks later that it started to fester."

Piranha have long, dirty teeth, and their bite leaves bacteria embedded deep in the target's flesh, Strel says.

It helped that Strel, 54, had spent two years preparing for his swim, including a year in the South American jungles learning what he needed to prepare for, as well as long periods with medicos in Europe learning and doing what he could to combat the hazards of the Amazon.

Strel's swim is the subject of Big River Man, a moving documentary about human endurance and triumph that screened last week during the Sydney Film Festival. Strel received a standing ovation when he rose after the screening with his manager-son, Borut, to answer audience questions.

On Sunday, Strel joined a small group from Sydney's ocean swimming community for a tamer, cleaner swim through the relatively benign, shark-infested waters of Cabbage Tree Bay, from Manly to Shelly Beach and back.

Cabbage Tree Bay is a marine reserve and literally teems with sharks of the not-too-dangerous variety: lots of wobbegongs and Port Jackson sharks around the boulders and crevasses on the bay's perimeter, and juvenile dusky whalers, seen during the warmer months until they get bigger and their diet changes, although none were seen on Sunday.

In mid-June, the ocean still is a relatively warm 20 degrees Celsius around Sydney, much warmer than the air, which was around 14 degrees on Sunday.

Over hot chocolate in a caf aacé by Manly beach, Strel says there are rules about swimming in the Amazon, although he glosses over the first rule: don't swim in the first place.

Don't urinate; don't bleed into the water. All these things attract nasty things to their source, he says.

Not just piranha, but the electric fish, which can shock anyone it touches with powerful jolts, and the candiru fish, which detects expelling urea and penetrates its source, with horrifying results. Not to mention alligators and snakes.

If you don't follow these rules, Strel says, you could die.

He also tells of second degree burns to his face from swimming day after day through the equatorial sun.

Strel swam the 5,268km over 66 days, at around 80km a day.

At the end of the journey, Strel was almost catatonic with fatigue, a phase recorded evocatively in the movie, and he took months to return to a normal state of mind and body.

But he'd expected that, he says, given that his previous swims include 4,003km over 51 days down the Yangtze River in China, 3,797km over 68 days down the Mississippi in the United States, and 3,004km over 58 days down the Danube through central Europe.

Two years on, Strel is planning new adventures, maybe something in Australia, but he won't say what it might be.

Whatever we have to offer - great whites, bull sharks, box jellyfish - it should be a doddle.

Big River Man will be released commercially in Australia in August.

*****

What a piranha leaves on your body if it bites you through the wettie and you survive. Look at the texture of that scar: it's as if it's remembered the teeth pattern in it's healing. Maybe it has.

Above is what we wrote for the people who pay our rent, AAP, the Australian wire service. There is more to the Martin Strel story that we would like to tell you, however.

It's quite a remarkable story with many lessons, perhaps the most striking of them being: Don't try this at home. In several respects.

The average swimmer shouldn't attempt to swim down the Amazon, for example. Perhaps they should think more carefully about training methods, swim strategies, and feeding habits ...

News stories necessarily are brief, little more than skating across the surface. You have to pick one or two elements and focus on them. They don't give one the opportunity to get into a subject more than fleetingly.

We saw Big River Man at the Sydney Film Festival at its Thursday night screening. Our ocean swimming cobber and work colleague, John "Sighhh" McLeay saw Big River Man at its first Festival screening, on Monday, the public holiday, so we had some idea what to expect.

One thing John told us was that Martin and his son, Borut, who appears to be Martin's manager, as well, were there at the screening to answer questions from the audience.

At the start on the Thursday night, however, we were introduced, as an audience, to Borut, but not to Martin. Oh, dear! we thought. Perhaps Martin didn't turn up this time.

After the movie, the Festival lady hosting the screening again introduced Borut, but it left us feeling flat. We had been drained by the movie, by the ordeal Martin had gone through down the Amazon, particularly the recovery phase when he took to his hotel room and basically stayed in bed for what seemed, watching the movie, to be weeks, or months. It was psychological help he needed, we thought, as well as time to rest his worn out body.

This phase of the movie took us back to Slovenia, too, where Martin lives a few kilometres outside Ljubljana, the capital. Borut told us on the voiceover that Martin still was recovering; he had gambled away all his sponsorship earnings -- he'd been a "professional gambler" earlier in life -- and the future looked bleak. Would he ever return to normal? Borut himself suggested Martin might be mad.

And we were flat, feeling cheated a little that, while Martin had attended the earlier screening, he hadn't turned up on Thursday night. The audience was with him, but he wasn't with us. Was he ok?
Then quite suddenly, they introduced Martin, sitting inconsequentially in one of the front rows to the side.

The almost abrupt introduction drew a standing ovation, almost of relief. Martin Strel had survived; he wasn't bonkers; he wasn't a pauper living destitute in a Slovenian cave.

And, indeed, Martin was much more on top of his English and his personal condition than we had expected, after watching what he'd been through down the Amazon.

The next day, Friday, we called the publicist for the Sydney Film Festival who was handling Big River Man, and we asked whether Martin and Borut might like to swim with us. We suggested Sunday at Manly, because the course to Shelly Beach and return is one of the prettiest in Sydney. Not being sure how Martin might handle a wave, it was relatively benign, too.

On the way to Manly, we'd taken a call from the publicist asking whether we were expecting a big crowd, which was what was on hand at the front of Manly surf club. We had picked, as it turned out, the same day as the surf club's annual general meeting. No, Annaliese, they weren't all there for Martin Strel.

Lovely water in the Amazon.

Both these gits were born on October 1, one of them in 1953, the other in 1954.

One-on-one, we hadn't been sure what to expect with Martin. Just an ordinary bloke doing extraordinary things, but perhaps one that is a bit unhinged. The Amazon was over 5,000km through equatorial heat. Much of the way, he swam in a white cloth mask, wrapped around his head once they realised that the sun was inflicting second degree burns on his face.

When he wore the mask, Martin swam on his back. He wore a wettie and fins, and on his back he just kicked. We wondered how much he'd kicked down the Amazon, and how much he'd freestyled.
Purists will blanche at the wettie and the fins. We noted it, but we don't hold it against him. When we complete a 5,000km swim through piranha-, snake-, alligator-, deadly electric and penis-boring fish-infested waters, then we might be in a position to comment. Let us just say that Martin Strel was not about setting a time record for his swim down the Amazon. He was about completing a journey that no-one else had ever done, or perhaps is likely to. And he had a timetable to keep.

Over the cuppa after our swim, Martin tells us that the wettie is about protection, and now we know why. He carries the piranha scar on his back, suffered through his wettie. How would it have been without the protection of the wettie? He wrapped the white cloth mask around his face for protection from the worst of the equatorial sun over 66 days, and while he wore the mask, he kicked on his back rather freestyled. How would his body have been without the protection of the wettie? We saw in the movie how bad his face was.

Martin told us of the candiru fish. Have a geek at this, from www.damninteresting.com ...

"The candirú is a tiny catfish which dwells in the depths of the Amazon River. These fish do not hunt in packs like the piranha, nor are they exceptionally large like the anaconda. In fact, the candirú is among the tiniest vertebrates on the planet, and it is sometimes referred to as the `toothpick fish' due to its small size and slender shape. Only a handful of people have had the misfortune of crossing paths with the candirú, but their experiences serve as cautionary tales to any who venture into the mighty river.

"Though the candir aacú is a parasite, humans are not among its viable hosts. It lingers in the murky darkness at the river's bottom, quietly stalking its neighboring fish. Light is scarce in the soupy deep, but the candir aacú does not need to see it can taste the traces of urea and ammonia that are expelled from breathing gills.

"The tiny hunter shadows its prey, almost invisible due to its translucent body and small size. When the target fish exhales, the candir aacú detects the resulting flow of water and makes a dash for the exposed gill cavity with remarkable speed. Within less than a second it penetrates the gill and wriggles its way into place, erecting an umbrella-like array of spines to secure its position.

"Unconcerned with the host's panicked thrashing, the firmly anchored parasite immediately nibbles a hole in a nearby artery with its needle-like teeth, feasting upon the bounty that gushes forth. Within two minutes the candirú's belly is swollen with the blood of its victim, and it retracts its gripping barbs. Though it may seem that the exploited host fish has escaped, its injuries are so extensive that chances of survival are grim. Meanwhile the victorious attacker slinks back into the river's dark places to digest its meal.

"There are many troubling stories regarding human run-ins with the candirú, though until recent years these were not given much credence by the medical community. It is not uncommon for people swimming or bathing in the river to urinate in the water, an action which creates tiny water currents that are rich in urea and ammonia. It seems that the tiny, slender catfish cannot always distinguish a urinating human from an exhaling fish gill, and on occasion it will attempt its trademark high-speed attack on some unfortunate soul.

"Silvio Barbossa was one such soul. He was swimming in the Amazon River when he went head to head with the tiny parasite:

"I felt like urinating. I stood up, and it was then it attacked me. The candir aacú attacked me ... When I saw it, I was terrified. I grabbed it quickly so it couldn't go deeper inside. I could only see the end of its tail flapping. I tried to grab it, but it slipped away from me and went in ... I was very afraid, because the candirú bites."

"When the candirú successfully invades a human, it proceeds exactly as it would with a fish host. After entering the misidentified orifice, it quickly wriggles its way in as far as possible, often accompanied by the victim's frantic attempts to grip the slippery, mucus-coated tail. In the unlikely event that the panicked victim manages to grasp the fish, its backwards-pointing barbs would cause excruciating pain at each pull, and bring a quick end to the dramatic tug-of-war. Once inside, the parasite inches its way up the urethra to the nearest blood-gorged membrane, extends its spines into the surrounding tissue, and starts feasting.

"For the candirú, this misguided journey is a one-way trip; its bloody banquet leaves it too swollen to escape. The only known retaliation against the invader is delicate and expensive surgery, or failing that, a folk remedy which combines two herbs to very slowly kill and dissolve the fish. Silvio was fortunate enough to have access to modern medical facilities, though he had to endure three days of profound agony before the fish was extracted by an awestruck urogenital surgeon.

"Silvio's incident was the first officially confirmed report of a candir aacú attacking a human, but such leg-crossingly horrific tales have haunted the region for generations. According to legend, many men chose castration as an alternative to a slow, excruciating death back before surgery was an option.

"Though such brushes with the candirú are exceedingly rare in statistical terms, it is wise to heed the advice of the locals, and avoid urinating in the Amazon River at all costs. When the natives of the Amazon speak, one would be foolish not to listen. They are privy to some of the world's most horrible truths."

So, Martin wore a wettie. Hence his gold rules of "don't pee, don't bleed". We let the quote above run on a bit because it's such a good read, and explains better than we can the danger posed in this swim.

There were plenty of stories like this about other dangers, as well, such as the piranha, the scar from one of which Strel carries in the middle of his back.

Big River Man presents Martin Strel almost as an innocent, a naive bumpkin who gets a silly idea in his head and carries it through, much to everyone's amazement. In truth, there was meticulous planning behind the swim, including, Martin says, a stay of about a year in the Amazon region learning about the place and hits idiosyncracies, and about the same amount of time hanging out with medicos in Europe, when Martin had about every vaccination and preventative procedure known to mankind.

So thorough was this preparation that Strel not only was vaccinated, but they tested the vaccinations, too, to make sure they'd worked.

The result appears to have been a remarkably resilient swimmer while those around him fell. During the journey, he says proudly, his entire support crew of 20+ spent time in hospital recovering from Amazon-related ailments, while he kept ploughing on. He had some relatively minor health problems, such as the sunburn, some relatively mild belly upsets, the piranha bite, which festered only some weeks later, and the psychological issues associated with such a testing ordeal, but nothing to put him off the job.

This probably also explains another idiosyncracy of Martin Strel: as the publicists put it, he is a swimmer who trains, they said, on two bottles of red per day. In the movie, there is a sequence where Martin needsd a drink. Offered water, he knocks it back, demanding harder stuff instead. So they throw him a bottle of whisky, and he gulps down a couple of mouthfuls.

Bizarre. Eccentric. Don't do this at home, indeed. But as someone pointed out to us, as we discussed some of the more eyebrow-raising methods of dealing with deli-belly, perhaps the whisky was part of Martin's strategy for dealing with the bugs in the river.

In any case, the line about training on two bottles of red a day is misleading. Asked about this at the Film Festival screening, he said he makes his own wine at home in Slovenia, but it's just half the strength of the wine drunk in Stray'a. "I couldn't drink your wine and do this," he told the audience. He wouldn't be the first ocean swimmer to finish off a hard day's swimming with a bottle of red, white, or rosé.

In some senses, it's easy to feel a little misled by the movie in terms of Martin's state of mind and body. Twice in the movie, for example, Martin swims off into the night, without telling anyone, with barely any support. He just swims off into the night, into the Amazon, into the dark, into the wild. Gone. On one such occasion, they find him eventually many kilometres downstream, hauling him into the boat, exhausted in the inky darkness. On another occasion, they find him way downstream, on a sandbar, stripped off and standing about in the sun.

The suggestion is that Martin is going mad. But Martin says they were rational decisions to go, to capture the currents he needed to maintain his schedule. Up the Amazon, the currents change. The tides reach a long way up, and the currents vary according to the water flow, the depth, and so on. Sometimes, the currents flow upstream. You have to catch the right currents when you can. So he swam off into the night.

One thing about which we were left under no illusion was Martin's skill as a swimmer. Like many old boofheads, he swims with wide arms. But we see in the movie, he has good body position -- his backside floats like a girl's, his head low, his bum high -- he reaches way out ahead of him, and he has an excellent grab, his wrists and his hands bending in opposite directions, it seems, as he seizes a palm full of water to pull himself through the water.

We see the pull-through, too, in the movie: long and strong, the full distance of his arm's capacity, his hands straight down the middle of his body, his elbows bent around 90 degrees.

We comment on this to Borut as we enter the ocean at Manly. "Yes, he has a very good stroke," says Borut. "He has very soft shoulders ..." "Soft shoulders?" we repeat, working on the nuances of translation with a non-native English speaker. "Oh, supple shoulders," we reply, as the light switches on. "Yes, very supple," says Borut, as if to say, "Yes, that's how you say it in English".

This is unusual in a bloke, particularly one of Martin's age. We know that, because, we discover, we are pretty well Martin's age, to the day. Strel was born on October 1, 1954. oceanswims.com dates from 1953, October 1. We feel a bond.

Strel says he taught himself to swim -- far from the introspective brooder we'd expected from the movie, Martin says he loves company; indeed, the longer we talk, the more he talks, gregarious, extroverted; we couldn't shut him up -- in streams in Slovenia. He received no lessons until age 19. Within six months, however, he'd improved out of sight, pulling way ahead of training partners. But he was a sprinter, he says, something confirmed by body muscle analysis, and something else that is surprising to us, and to many others, according to Strel.

Strel swam on the FINA Open Water World Cup circuit for a while before turning to big river swims. He has many under his belt. Check out his website (click here) for more details.

We've only met one other Slovenian: during Mdme Sparkle's Yrpean sojourn in 2008, we stayed at the Gasthaus Sonne just outside Zurich, in Switzerland. It's run by Drago and his wife, Jana. Drago was a builder back in Slovenia, he told us proudly, as the new doorhandle on our room came off in our hands. "I put it on myself," he said.

Close your eyes when you're talking to Martin Strel, however, and you could swear you're talking to Drago, in voice, in mannerisms, in exuberance, in pitch and timbre. Maybe they all talk the same.

We told Martin about Drago and he seemed very impressed. Gasthaus Sonne would be a good base for a swim the length of Zurichsee.

On the Sunday we swam with Martin and Borut, we met the film distributor's agent in Stray'a, who says he would like to run a preview of Big River Man for ocean swimmers around the time of the movie's commercial release. He has cinemas lined up in most cities, but not yet in Sydney.

This is the type of movie Big River Man is: you won't find it screening everywhere. More the arthouse, special interest, cognoscenti and afficionado outlets.

We'll keep you posted.

Martin Strel's shadow here is "Cross Border" Collie Kinsela, who was delighted to find that he and Strel shared precisely the same time for swimming the English Channel: 16 hours 28 minutes.