Ed Stafford is an explorer. Like Captain Scott of the Antarctic and Sir Ranulph Fiennes before him, he has a passion for discovering and learning about the vast planet that we all live on. Today, so many of the great expeditions have already been done by explorers of the past. There are no longer many things that people can do and say, "I was the first person in the world to do that!"

Amazingly no one has ever walked the length of the Amazon River. Ever. The Amazon is the largest river in the world and flows through the largest rainforest in the world.

Ed Stafford started his walk in April 2008 from the west coast of Peru on the Pacific coast. He walked up the deepest canyon in the world to get to the mountain from which the Amazon starts. The mountain is called Nevado Mismi and is in the Andes mountains. From the top he knew he had to follow the river for the next two years of his life. Over 4,000 miles lay ahead of him as he started walking - further than the distance to the centre of the Earth.

Ed has had to deal with some dangerous things along the way: snakes, jaguars and biting ants all live in the Amazon. He has also had to make friends with local people who had never seen an English person before and explain to them he was friendly and would do them no harm. The Amazon jungle is flooded for many months of the year and Ed is often walking half underwater!

Ed is now in Brazil. His journey is half complete and he has just over a year to go before he hopes to arrive at the mouth of the Amazon. Will he make it? Nobody knows - but you can follow his incredible adventure here with new updates from Ed every 2 weeks.

You can also send in your questions for Ed about his trip and living in the jungle to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it – Ed will answer a “question of the week” by video.

You can also find out more about Ed’s trip by visiting www.walkingtheamazon.com

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