Through bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.

The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after two minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless.

Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

Buy a house in a foreign country and, it seems, that anything which can go wrong usually does.

Respect was one thing. Survival was another. It was important that I kept my priorities in the right order.

Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.