The Adventuress, part four: The Survivalist. ‘People say that exploration is dead, and nowhere is uncharted any more, but this couldn’t be further from the truth’

For more than a decade I have been an explorer and primitive survivalist, completing a diverse collection of expeditions in extreme environments all around the globe. In short, I specialise in carrying everything I need to survive and thrive in some of the most hostile and extraordinary environments on earth, learning survival skills from tribes and walking alongside some of the most iconic wildlife. The curiosity for exploration and adventure transcends culture, religion, and age, and that is what draws so many of us to it.

I am still in awe of the fact that no matter how many remote locations I tick off across the globe, it barely scratches the surface of what is still out there. People say that exploration is dead, and nowhere is uncharted any more, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Just the other week I was racing Ed Stafford across Taiwan for his Discovery Channel show First Man Out, and I ended up descending rivers that no human would have set foot in for decades, centuries, if ever. I found myself river racing down boxed-in canyons with no way out. I stepped back in time to the Jurassic era, fully expecting a pterodactyl to fly out from every bend and cliff face.

Not only is there ample untouched wilderness, but so too are there innumerable locations where whole regions have historically been locked into a no-man’s-land due to long-term geopolitical tensions, and these are regularly opening up. Our advancements in technology mean we are able to reach previously impossible places, be that uncharted ocean floors, deep cave systems beneath the earth’s surface, or the ecologically unique tops of tepuis, where weird and wonderful species have evolved in absolute isolation. Climate extremes are carving new paths through age-old ecosystems and changing what was known into something very uncertain and unpredictable. Exploration is certainly not dead.

Nor is the crucial role of wisdom from indigenous peoples across the planet. I have spent a lot of time with tribes, most recently the San Bushmen of Southern Africa, the oldest peoples on our planet, who can trace their ancestry back 200,000 years. I strongly feel that there is an urgency to bring their voices to the fore. My time with remote tribes has brought with it the realisation that they are absolutely in tune with nature, acting out a symbiotic relationship with the wilderness and wildlife around them that prioritises the continuous regeneration of the ecosystems within which they live. They understand that we are a part of nature, not separate from it. There lies within them an ability to listen to ancient instincts, tapping into an “orbital perspective,” a bird’s-eye view of the planet which acknowledges that if we set fire to one side of the sailboat, we all suffer and sink.

I call myself and “accidental” adventurer, as my journey to this career began unintentionally. I had taken a break from my job teaching entrepreneurship in London to stand-up paddleboard over 1,000 miles (something that hadn’t been done before at that time) down an iconic river, and never returned home. Being the opportunist that I am, I jumped on the realization that people wanted to live vicariously through my storytelling, which was thriving thanks to the advent of social media. I was lucky enough to ride the crest of this wave, and able to quickly spot the possibility to turn a passion for exploration into a full-time career.

I say that I was lucky, but the truth is that we create luck by actively looking for the open doors to wedge a foot into. Never stop visualizing where you want to go in life, because the fact is that we only see the things we are looking for; the rest fades into our peripheral vision. Make sure you are not spending your days consumed by your fears, but rather note them, give them their space, and then graft daily to pull the dreams and goals you want to see happen to the forefront of your focus. Suddenly a kaleidoscope of possibilities will spring forth from the shadows, and new paths will reveal themselves.

In April 2018 I successfully completed a world-first “source to sea” descent of the Essequibo River in Guyana, the third largest river in South America. Our expedition was everything we hoped it would be, with a fair few more close calls than we would have liked. There is nothing like waking up in the middle of the night to a jaguar tail brushing the bottom of your hammock to make you feel alive. Our 4 a.m. alarm clock was the guttural roars of howler monkeys thundering across the jungle canopy, raising the hairs on the back of my neck. The fact that emergency evacuation is impossible (with no one providing winch access on a helicopter, we were told we would have to cut down an area of primary rainforest approximately the size of a football pitch for a landing pad, which was not in the realms of doable) made close calls—like the day my colleague Pip ended up with her buttocks one inch away from a defensive pit viper ready to strike—all the more heart-stopping. That would have been curtains for her. I was suspected of having dengue fever, many got malaria, infections threatened to put an end to our expedition, and foot rot meant one member of our team was walking around with hundreds of tiny craters in her foot, looking like a ninety-something-year-old, and barely able to move from crippling pain.

Navigating rapids in uncharted territory where no human had set foot before was humbling. We had no way of knowing what to expect, even with old satellite imagery, as we were traversing these lands in dry season and the river was unrecognisable compared to what had been captured from space a decade before. We found ourselves going down far too many raging rapids backwards and realized that this would be a baptism of fire like no other, even for the enormously experienced Wai Wai warriors who had grown up alongside wild river waters. But these are all the ingredients of a real-life expedition filled with peril and success in equal measure.

The expedition aimed to redefine modern exploration, putting to one side the old days of chest beating and flag planting, as the team pulled together an incredible international collaboration with the indigenous Wai Wai tribe to locate the river’s source, something that had never before been found or documented. This expedition gave the Wai Wai, a marginalized people within their own country, the opportunity to use our media engine and exposure to showcase their extraordinary knowledge and affinity with the pristine primary rainforest that they call their backyard, and ultimately become guardians for the conservation of that region.

I was never particularly good at sports. I am totally uncoordinated, with little spatial awareness (walking into door frames is not an unusual occurrence). I was also an extremely shy, introverted kid at school. So, what gives me the right to become an explorer and endurance adventurer? It comes down to how I choose to define myself. For years I defined myself as that ungainly kid I just described. But the second I changed that vision and defined myself as a person who dared greatly—who relentlessly sought out courageous endeavours—something weird happened. I took on the mindset of that kind of a person and it all became real. Visualization and how you choose to define yourself is so powerful.

You don’t just wake up one day and suddenly become happy, confident, entrepreneurial, or courageous. It is a practice you have to keep up, make a habit, and form routines for. You have to keep working on your internal dialogue, and consciously take control of, and responsibility for, your thoughts and emotions on a daily basis. There aren’t innately confident people and weak people; there are people who actively make it happen day by day and those who do not. It is a choice, not a gift that only a few are lucky enough to be born with.

One thing expeditions teach you very quickly is the difference between fear and panic, and why this is so important. Fear is good. It keeps you responsive and attentive to what is happening around you. Potential threats are forefronted for assessment and we stay in a high alert state. This is all healthy and a crucial part of our evolution and survival as a species. Panic, however, is dangerous. It is an uncontrolled response to fear when you have lost the ability to hold your composure, and poor decisions are more often than not the outcome. Drifting from a fear state (alert yet still problem solving) into a panic state—from my personal experience—usually involves me letting my imagination go unchecked, allowing it to spew forth a tsunami of despairing outcomes that totally overwhelm me.

Studies have shown that our brain struggles to tell the difference between a real event and one imagined so vividly it feels real. Our bodies respond to both real and imagined events in much the same way, increasing heart rate and stress levels if those events are negative. That’s why endurance athletes and Olympic athletes spend so much time visualizing and mentally rehearsing their winning run, swim, cycle, throw, or jump. They know all too well that they can make or break the performance of their lives simply with their thought patterns. We are masters at creating highly emotional responses within ourselves from our thoughts alone.

I often get asked why I do what I do. I love exploration because it brings me a balance of the harsh realities our planet is facing, and a powerful hope that stems from the incredible people I meet and the truly wild places I traverse through. The fact is that we have all the tools and technology to be able to solve the problems we face today. What we need are the minds and hearts of people willing to be a part of that change. If we continue business as usual, we are in real trouble. We are currently running at a rate of extinction that is 1,000 times the natural rate—nature simply cannot adapt fast enough to the staggering speed of change from human impact. Filming, writing, and speaking about these journeys in far-flung corners of our planet gives me an opportunity to effect change, and bring meaningful stories from around the globe into people’s living rooms and hearts.

I have an innate need to live life a little on the edge, seeking out raw, unique experiences. Importantly, though, I now have more of a sense of self and of achievement from looking back at the courage I was able to summon to face some of the scariest moments of my life, than I do from whether or not I achieved my goals. I am proud of my failures because I had the courage to get back up. They mean more in the end than the momentary highs of successes, because they took real grit.

Adventuress: Women Exploring the Wild by Carolina Amell is published by Prestel, and is available from Easons, €55.99. prestel.com