This is an account of a trip up the Orinoco river and across the Amazon basin in which the author discovered that poisonous snakes and life-threatening diseases were not the greatest hazards on such a journey - his photographer and the Spanish and Indian crew were the most volatile elements. Redmond O'Hanlon is the author of "Into the Heart of Borneo", a journey on which he was accompanied by the poet James Fenton, who swore afterwards that he would never travel with O'Hanlon again.