Running marathons back-to-back, sleeping by the side of the road, giving presentations to remote schools that had never been visited by their own kinsfolk, this is the remarkable story of personal endurance that gives an engrossing insight into the people & wildlife of South America. It is the story of two everyday runners, Katharine & David, who decided to take on a continent & learn how to run again
- barefoot, pushing their bodies & minds to levels they had never considered possible in a bid to become the first in the world to run the length of South America, to give a voice to the wildlife & wildernesses they adore. Running laid them bare, stripped them of the shell people journey within, so all they had to rely on was their own bare feet. Yet this very vulnerability provided the key to unlocking communities who would fling open their doors, tuck them under their wings & whisper their secrets. Amazing animals accompanied them: gigantic vaulting stick-insects; cackling macaws who wheeled & pirouetted in the sky, desperately trying to gain a better view of them; & a giant anteater whom they stalked through a snake-infested swamp, so they could stand within an arm`s length as he devoured termites upon the end of his long sticky tongue. It was also an animal, if one of the most diminutive, that nearly succeeded in ending their dreams of conquering the continent
- an ant! But when their joints & muscles were screaming, when they couldn`t stand the sight of one another & when prickly heat, blisters & tropical ulcers infested their skin, it was the wildlife & wildernesses that pulled them through. Day after day, for months on end, running from freezer through desert & into the biggest rainforest on earth, they survived hurricane-force winds, near 100% humidity, swarms of biting insects & some of the most crime-ridden places on the planet. The expedition nearly cost them their marriage, health, sanity & lives. But somehow, they made it to the other end of the continent, 6, 504 miles & 15 months later, when they splashed into the warm & much-dreamed of Caribbean Sea.