Jacek Pałkiewicz
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Pałkiewicz, Jacek Edward (born June 02, 1942 in Immensen, Germany) is a Polish journalist, reporter and traveller. Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (1994), The Explorers Club (1994), Societa Geografica Italiana (1996), Societad Geografica de Lima (1996), Rossijskoje Geograficzieskoje Obszcziestwo (1996).
Jacek Palkiewicz, reporter and explorer, resides in Cassola in the Vicenza province of northern Italy. A graduate in Geographical Sciences, before becoming a journalist he was a mate officer, diamond prospector in Sierra Leone, and skipper of big yachts. He has been a glider pilot and karate black belt.
He has visited all the geographical zones for documenting small and inaccessible corners of our planet in search of the last primitive ethnic minorities. He often traveled in the style of discoverers in the nineteenth century: on camel crossed the Sahara and Kara Kum desert, Vietnamese jungle on elephant. He traveled coast to coast through inaccessible Borneo, in West Irian on foot, Bhutan on yak, the sands of Skeleton Coast in Namibia on foot, Amazon river by pirogue. In 1975 he singly crossed the Atlantic in a lifeboat: 44 days without a radio and sextant. Has frequently reported on the disastrous effects caused to nature and in 1994 he has lead the Cosmonauts International Ecological Mission in Siberia, under the patronage of president Boris Eltsin.
Palkiewicz is an internationally recognitzed authority of Siberia. In 1989 he has lead an extraordinary expedition "The Cool Pole" (Yakutsk-Oymiakon, 1.200 km) to the coldest place in Siberia (-72°C) with reindeer div. In 1983, Palkiewicz used his unique experience and established a Survival School, he teaches how to cope with crisis situations. He was consultant to the Russian astronauts in the survival program, and he trains top counter-terrorist troops in extreme conditions in various climatic zones.
In 1996 he lead, in collaboration with the Pontificial Catholic University of Lima and the Peruvian Navy, the scientific expedition “Amazon Source '96", who indisputably established the source of the river Amazon (Quehuisha snowfield 5.170 m) in the Peruvian Andes. This discovery has been accepted by Lima's Geographic Society, therefore now it is certified that this river is the longest in the world (about 7.000 km).
In 2002 Palkiewicz began, under the patronage of the Peruvian Government, a mighty expedition, properly equipped of advanced technologies, the most ambitious exploratory enterprise of our times, in the unexplored basin of the Madre de Dios. After of seculars imaginations finally exist tangible signs to solve the enigma of the "lost city" Paititi, mythical El Dorado. By decree from the president of the Italian Republic, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Palkiewicz was bestowed with the Official Honour of the Knighthood in recognition of his contribution to the Italian Republic, on June 2nd 2003.
Ph.D. Jacek Palkiewicz, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and active member of the authoritative International Academy for Information in Moscow. He is author of 18 books on adventure, photography and the art of survival, has made wide ranging documentary films, and publishes his reportages in many prestigious European Magazines.
