Gadiel Sánchez Rivera

Biography

Gadiel was born in 1978 in Pucallpa, Peru. He grew up in a rural settlement near the town of Satipo. He finished high school but his family could not afford to send him to university. Instead, he went to work on his father’s farm. He wanted to expand his family’s agriculture business, but times were tough economically.

For that reason, he went to work for the Tala de Madera company of Satipo. Part of his job there included traveling to places where only indigenous people had been before. It was during his four years there that he realized how much he liked adventure.

Gadiel was grateful for the opportunity to come to know the jungle, but unfortunately, that just didn’t pay the bills. In 2004, he was offered a job with an industrial logging outfit that used skidders to chop down the forests. He took that job, but he quit after experiencing many things that were unpleasant not only for him, but for the natural environment which he had come to admire so much.

Later, in 2008, Gadiel met the English explorer Ed Stafford, who initially hired him as a guide. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Stafford took him as his assistant for the end of the journey. Gadiel was known in the media by his nickname Cho. He walked with Stafford for exactly two years.

Records

World First tour of Lake Titicaca with Louis-Philippe Loncke.