In Trouble Again: A Journey Between Orinoco and the Amazon

It's amazing that Mr. O'Hanlon is still alive, but I'm glad he is. I'm most definitely looking forward to reading some more of his adventures.


I would only armchair travel with O'Hanlon   October 31, 2002
 19 out of 19 found this review helpful

I wouldn't travel with Redmond O'Hanlon personally, although I'm quite happy to be a vicarious companion. And judging from O'Hanlon's opener here--where he tries to find someone to accompany him in his latest foray--it seem that my opinion is shared by O'Hanlon's friends. Except for one--who is shown to be under a mistaken impression about what a jaunt down the Amazon is like, not to mention having Redmond O'Hanlon planning the trip.

The title aptly describes the action. If you read O'Hanlon's Into the Heart of Borneo, this book follows without nary a break. While it doesn't have quite the originality of the first book, it doesn't fail to fulfill the promise of that book either. O'Hanlon's a little bit wiser, but still as trusting and stubborn. He presses on in circum- stances where most would have turned around--things like the fiercest tribe of natives in the world, torrential rainfall (not to be trifled with, especially on a river), and rapids in which he is dumped and unable to escape until a mile or so down river.

The best thing about O'Hanlon--although the amazing trips he takes are worthwhile in and of themselves--is the companions that he does manage to take. I'm not talking about the physical companions, who do provide humorous interludes, but the ones that are to be found in the books--the explorers who have traveled this route before. Rather than just supplying a bibliography, O'Hanlon uses them to annotate his own trip. An adventurer and a scholar, O'Hanlon's one of the best.


Travel writing at its finest   February 5, 2002
 13 out of 13 found this review helpful

O'Hanlon is an academic, really; the natural history editor of the Times Literary Supplement and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Furthermore, he claims to look like Benny Hill, a claim borne out by his book-jacket photographs.
He is, therefore, an entirely unlikely candidate for the outrageous adventures he gets himself into while traveling.

I have read a handful of his accounts, and they are all completely mad. But I have to conclude that this is the best of the lot.

Briefly, this is the account of his travels through Amazonia, in a small wooden boat, ultimately to the homelands of the Yanomami (the "Fierce People" in Napoleon Chagnon's memorable phrase). Everyone O'Hanlon meets is terrified of the violent, unpredictable Yanomami, and he is hard pressed to find anyone to accompany him on his journey. When he finally meets them, he loses no time before joining them in a blast or two of hallucinogenic ebene, afterwards falling into a stupor while gazing lustfully at the local chief's young daughter.

Anyone could make these adventures interesting to read. After treatment by a writer of O'Hanlon's skill and humor, the book is impossible to put down.


Half of a good book   August 5, 1999
 17 out of 18 found this review helpful

In the first half of this book, with the constantly hillarious Simon as a foil, Hanlon is hilarious. Through Simon's eyes and comments the reader can see the hilarity and, oftentimes, insanity of Hanlon's quests. But once Simon bugs out, Hanlon loses his reality check. The reader sees only Halnon's relentlessly cheery description of a journey that can only be becoming more unpleasant. Without Simon along to tell how it really is -- bizarre, unpleasant, and often painful -- the book loses its edge and becomes a mostly tedious recitation of the birds and plants seen along the way. The first half of the book would, by itself merit four or five stars, but the dull ending drags it down to three.


dry humor in a wet setting   July 21, 1999
 10 out of 12 found this review helpful

Redmond is, at heart, a gentle English Public School geek. This account of his river adventures in Venezuela "between the Orinoco and the Amazon" is made witty by his dry English humor. I particularly liked the thin thread of his dreams of being back as a child rowing on the River Avon with his father and discovering natural history there - an unexpected, but fitting, contrast to the overtly perilous and ungentle places he's visiting. He has a habit of checking out of the interpersonal conflict by describing the wildlife (esp. birds). Unlike Tim Flannery (in Throwim Way Leg), this is boringly written, confined mostly to physical descriptions and comparisons with the data in his 19th century guide books. He likes to dramatize, humorously, the danger in the adventure, though I wonder if this isn't really a cover for his lack of understanding of the people around him. I found the conflicts with Simon (his nightclub manager, cockney friend from "civilization") and the other guides most interesting. Also promising were the interactions with the Yanomami, though Redmond is nowhere near as perceptive or penetrating as Flannery is with the Papua New Guinea tribes. I came away from the book feeling that he might have missed the point of the people he was with and the Yanomami, but that he found a gentle, unassuming meaning for himself in the modest framework of his childhood.