Please visit www.simonreeve.co.uk for more information. For most people the equator is just an imaginary line running 25,000-miles around the globe. But the countries along the equator are among the most troubled on the planet. In this series Simon Reeve takes a journey around the region with the greatest natural biodiversity and perhaps the greatest concentration of human suffering: the equator.
Simon meets illegal loggers, father and son circumcisers, drunk villagers, and a young woman stuck in the baking desert. He is protected by soldiers in a coca field, and UN 'peace-enforcers' in a gold mine. Blackmailed and abandoned by drivers in one country, Simon travels through another that has just 300 miles of paved roads -- despite being the size of Western Europe.
Simon is drenched while white-water rafting, surrounded by a million flamingoes and swallowed by a tidal wave. After being warned about the deadly virus Ebola, he vomits blood and develops a temperature of nearly 40C. Diagnosed with malaria, he's saved by medicine derived from the Vietnamese sweet wormwood.
One remote tribe takes Simon to their sacred monument, while a man from another tribe of former head-hunters decides to make Simon part of the family: Simon is blessed with blood, presented with a short sword, and adopted.
Elsewhere, Simon discovers a matrilineal society where daughters are called 'iron butterflies', mass graves in the jungle, and islands where protesting fisherman have killed giant tortoises. He helps an orphaned orangutan into a tree, swims with sea-lions, fishes for piranha, climbs the equivalent of half-way up Everest, and discovers the city thought to be most at risk from volcanic eruptions.
Simon's trip takes him through the nation suffering the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere, and the African country that's endured the most violent conflict on the planet since the Second World War.
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Reviews of the series:
Radio Times: "an extraordinary journey...revelatory...thrilling and thought-provoking...hits us with jaw-dropping facts...eye-opening...delivers a string of revealing snapshots."
The Sunday Times: "Equator is presented exactly as it should be, with ingenuousness and, at times, incredulity. It showed me stuff I hadn't previously known or imagined, and did so without condescending, excusing or lecturing. You cannot expect much more from a documentary, frankly."
TV Times: "fascinating...a real eye-opener"
Daily Mail: "Unmissable...spectacular and thought-provoking. The outlook in many of the countries Reeve passes through may be grim, but Equator somehow manages to be great entertainment.
Mail on Sunday: "Travel reportage at it's most enthralling. Reeve effortlessly blends political reportage with humour...this travelogue is wholly accessible." ***** (five stars)
The Observer: "excellent...Reeve is charming, light-hearted and funny, with a good sense of the ridiculous"
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SIMON REEVE is an adventurer, TV presenter and New York Times bestselling author with a passion for travel, current affairs, history, conservation and the environment. He has been around the world three times for the BBC series Equator, Tropic of Capricorn, and Tropic of Cancer, and has travelled extensively in more than 100 countries. Simon's last journey around the Tropic of Cancer enthralled millions and was described by The Times of London as: "a real gem...Reeve is in a class of his own". Readers of a leading travel magazine voted it their favourite TV series. Simon, who is an ambassador for the nature conservation organisation WWF, has been awarded a One World Broadcasting Trust award for an "outstanding contribution to greater world understanding". His books include Tropic of Capricorn (published by BBC Books), and The New Jackals: Ramzi Yousef, Osama bin Laden and the future of terrorism, which warned of a new age of apocalyptic terrorism, and was the first in the world on bin Laden and al Qaeda. Originally published in 1998 it has been a New York Times bestseller. Simon has contributed to other studies into organised crime, terrorism, biological warfare and corruption. His book One Day in September: the story of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre was published in 2000. The film of the same name, narrated by the actor Michael Douglas, won an Oscar for best feature documentary.
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You can find out more information on Simon's journeys, and see more of Simon's films, at his website: www.simonreeve.co.uk or at www.youtube.com/shootandscribble
Thanks for watching!