Down the Orinoco in a Canoe

A Colombian gentleman, son of a former president, becomes a refugee in his own country and must escape down some of the least-charted rivers in South America. In 1893, Santiago Pérez Triana flees political revolution by striking across the Colombian plateau on muleback, then paddling the Meta River until it joins the great Orinoco, eventually reaching the Atlantic through Trinidad. This is no package tour. The region he traverses has rarely seen civilized travelers since the conquistadors, and Triana writes with the trembling awareness of a man who knows the jungle might swallow him. He encounters jaguars on the riverbanks, navigates whitewater in hand-hewn canoes, and trades stories with souls who inhabit this watery wilderness. His prose wields humor and poetry in equal measure, making the terror feel almost beautiful. The book opens like an old Spanish adventure novel, with a moonlit ride through the eerie Colombian night, and it never quite lets go of that sense of mounting dread and wonder. For readers who want to see the world before it was fully mapped, Triana offers a window into a wilderness that existed in the imagination as much as on the map.