They asked if I’d like to join in and share costs. For some reason, I hadn’t planned to visit the Amazon back then but I was wrapping up a mountaineering expedition in the Cordillera Real in remote Bolivia when I met some crazy Swiss travellers who told me they were heading from Sorata to Rurrenabaque overland by 4WD vehicles, 10-tonne trucks and whitewater canoes. All those years ago I ended up in the Amazon by chance on a hitchhiking trip through South America. My interest in the Amazon, however, extended way further back in my past. This historical tome documented the phenomenal and seminary journey of explorer William Orellana who became the first European to navigate and explore the entire length of the Amazon from his starting point in Quito to the Amazon river delta in Brazil. I first became interested in the Waorani people of Ecuador after reading “The River of Darkness” by Buddy Levy a decade ago. We can only prosper here if we foster a deep understanding of how to live alongside nature. Life for humans in the Amazon is intensely complex and competitive. They have also given birth to some of the most sophisticated tribal people in the world, yet where they live is no Eden.Ĭonstant incursions for logging, mining and agriculture are slowly stripping the Amazon of its natural treasures and the precious cultures that call these rainforests home. Our rainforests have absorbed so much heat and light from their equatorial surrounds and, in turn, have given us a greater abundance and diversity of life than all of our other territorial habitats combined. Plunging into the world of rainforests is like entering an arena where every available source of light is competed for by animals and plants. The world’s tropical rainforests feature nature at its most forceful and diverse. Spanning nine South American countries, this gigantic stretch of rainforest, the ‘lungs of our planet, is one of the most threatened regions of biodiversity left on our planet. It is the only place on earth where the humidity of the air has no dependence on the evaporation of seawater.
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