craziness.

I was sent the following article today and I thought I would share it with you all - This article amazes and terrifies me all at the same time:

I Swam The Amazon

He's middle-aged, his ample belly bulges over his Speedos... and he thinks drinking two bottles of wine a day keeps him in shape.

Swimmer Martin Strel would be the first to admit he makes the unlikeliest of athletes.

But the 55-year-old harddrinking Slovenian just happens to be the greatest endurance swimmer in the world... ever.

He claimed the title by conquering the world's most dangerous river - the Amazon - swimming 3,274 miles in 66 days, non-stop.

"It helps to be a little crazy, to do what I do," Martin admits. "I told myself that I would swim the Amazon or I would die trying.

"I'm a big man, sure, but the Amazon is so much bigger."

Martin trained more than five hours a day in his local swimming pool and finally began history's longest swim in April 2007. His daily target was to swim for 10 hours every day, covering around 90km. But the adventure soon became a struggle for survival.

As well as dehydration and exhaustion, water-borne parasites left his body racked with infection and disease, including dengue fever, which triggers painful cramps.

Tarantulas, giant millipedes and scorpions would drop off the trees into the river, often getting entangled in his hair. Birds would fly down and attempt to peck at his face. Larvae burrowed into his skin and his face was stung by wasps. Some days he even had to wear a pillowcase over his head, with slits for the eyes and mouth to protect his face from the heat.

However the hazards above the water were nothing compared to the horrors below. The biggest danger was the bull shark, responsible for the deaths of more humans than any other type of shark in the area.

Then there are stingrays and anacondas lurking in the shallows, crocodiles and alligators that can seize human-size prey and gobble it whole. Long, poisonous snakes slither out of nowhere and giant catfish up to 15ft long, known to swallow dogs and children, hide in the mud.

Once he had to be hauled from the water screaming in pain, as shoals of piranha fish gnawed at his leg.

He swam in the faster-flowing middle of the channel, in places 100ft deep, in the worst Amazon floods for a century, but sometime he couldn't avoid the stiller water.

In an attempt to stop the razorjawed piranha fish from smelling him, Martin would lather his body with gasoline and cream and buckets of pigs' blood would be thrown into the water to divert their attention.

But of all the dangers, the one Martin feared most was the tiny candiru, otherwise known as the vampire fish, a parasite with a vicious tactic. It is attracted by the scent of urine and enters the body by swimming up the penis. Once inside it locks itself on with a series of spikes and feeds off blood and tissue. Surgery is the only way to remove it. And if Martin was attacked the nearest emergency ward was hundreds of miles away.

To reduce the risk, Martin never exposed himself to urinate and always did it inside his wetsuit. "I never looked down," he said.

The toll on his body was immense - he weighed 114kg (250lb) when he started and lost nearly 20kg (44lb) during the swim, despite being on an 11,000 caloriesa-day diet to keep up his strength.

Thoughts anyone?