Introduction
Are you intrigued by legends of mysterious flowers, animals, and spiritual peoples? Does a forest-sized pharmacy full of medicinal plants spark your imagination?

Fulfill your fantasies of faraway lands and scientific exploration on an Amazon cruise. Travel to the Amazon and float down the world’s largest river. Examine thick stands of spiny bamboo, fruit-eating bats, and hand-sized, metallic-blue morpho butterflies, favorites of photographers. Along the main artery of the Amazon Basin thrives a forest shrouded with lianas, bromeliads, orchids, and a canopy alive with birds, insects, and amphibians.

Dense tropical forests reveal hundreds of tree species and untold numbers of kinds of insects, spiders, and arthropods living in the crowns of these trees. Over two thousand different bird species live in the Amazon, including the scarlet macaw, the Amazon kingfisher, and the strange-looking hoatzin. Twelve hundred kinds of butterflies live in the Upper Amazon Basin. Spider monkeys, howler monkeys, tapirs, giant river otters, ocelots, caimans, anacondas, river dolphins, and a full spectrum of interrelated animals saturate this legendary rainforest.

Travel to the Amazon and experience the mystery and enchantment of life along the Amazon river.
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Natural History
"The unsolved mysteries of the Amazon are formless and seductive."

—Dr. Edward O. Wilson, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology

The Amazon region includes portions of Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil, and encompasses not only the Amazon River itself, but also the numerous streams and tributaries that feed into it. The Amazon Basin and the largely intact forests of the southwestern Amazon mark some of the Earth’s most biologically rich forests.

Though seriously threatened, the jaguar, the harpy eagle, and the giant river otter still thrive in the most remote spots of these tropical labyrinths of high rainfall, meandering streams, and intertwined vegetation. The Amazon, taken as a whole, contains the greatest diversity of freshwater fish, birds, and butterflies on Earth. The Amazon teems with wildlife: tapirs, agoutis, howler monkeys, spider monkeys, pumas, ocelots, bush dogs, black caimans, blue-throated piping guans, and black curassows, to name but a few. Clay licks along the rivers of the southwestern Amazon attract red-and-green, scarlet, blue-and-yellow, and chestnut-fronted macaws, Amazon parrots, and white-eyed parakeets.

On the river itself, watch for Amazon River dolphins, or botos. They emerge from the depths of the river with a popping sound, exhaling and then quickly inhaling. When these sleek, freshwater animals break the surface of the water they reveal their long bottlenoses, domed foreheads, and pink-tinted backs before diving below. Their color ranges, depending on age, from a light rosy blush to a vivid pink. They feed on bottom-dwelling shellfish, catfish, and other heavily scaled fish, like piranhas.

In the waters of the Amazon live an inconceivable number of animal species; big ones, like the dolphin, brave the current, while little ones flex their gills in tiny rivulets, under rocks, or while clinging to base plants.

Water reigns. Rainfall ranges from 60 to 120 inches per year. The river swells and spills into the forest. Floodwaters cover much of the Amazon’s lowland forests, in some places up to twenty feet. The water remains for two to ten months, depending on the location. Floods confine animals to adapt to habitats above the forest floor. Not surprisingly, then, most of the animals visitors see in the Amazon can fly, climb, or swim to safety during the rainy season. In the dry season, the water levels drop and sunken tree trunks surface like the backs of huge reptiles from a prehistoric time.

The most abundant fauna of the Amazon forests are airborne, and include birds, bats, butterflies, and countless other insects. In rainforests, birds and bats play an active role in the rainforest’s vitality by dispersing seeds and pollinating hundreds of tropical trees and plants. In areas dense with fruit trees, the biomass of bats may add up to more than half the biomass of all other mammals combined. Birds also play vital roles in keeping plants alive, and vice versa. Often, fruits only become tasty when the seed ripens. When the mature fruits turn from an indistinguishable green to bright colors, birds fly to them, sometimes from great distances, to devour the showy prize. Birds carry fruit seeds in their stomachs. Excretion fertilizes the embryos that then sprout in a new and, with luck, nurturing environment. This dependency of plants and animals on each other and their habitats leads to interdependent relationships in which many species share the same space but use different resources.

For more information on the natural history of the Amazon, see book selections below. For more information on Amazon Travel, contact our Amazon Cruise Specialists at ExpeditionTrips!
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History
“Look at the mess we’ve got ourselves into,” Colonel Aureliano Buendia said at the time, “just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas.”

—Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

For centuries before the first Europeans arrived in the “New World,” Indians lived throughout the forests and rivers of the Amazon. The first Old World explorer to experience the Amazon was probably Vincente Pinzón from Spain in 1500. He reached the Atlantic coast of what is now Brazil and entered the Amazon River where it spills into the sea. Little is known about his journey.

Another Spanish expedition, led by Francisco de Orellana in 1541, became the first European exploration of the Amazon River. Orellana followed the great river from the mouth of what is now Peru’s Napo River all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Along the way small bands of what appeared to be near-naked female warriors attacked Orellana and his crew. The Spaniards called their attackers “Amazons” after the women warriors of Greek mythology. In time, European explorers came to refer to the river and then the surrounding forests by that name.

Economic botany fueled many Amazon settlements during colonial times. However, entrepreneurs didn’t tap the biggest plant-based wealth until the mid-1800s, when rubber, produced by trees in the Amazon Basin, became part of local and international economies. A rubber boom soon followed. The city of Manaus grew largely from the profits of the rubber boom.

By the early 1900s, plantations in Southeast Asia, especially British Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, started to produce rubber faster and cheaper than the wild rubber trees tapped in the Amazon. The demand for Amazon rubber plummeted, and the boom went bust. The war movement of the Second World War brought renewed interest in Amazon rubber. Everything in World War II depended on rubber—Harley Davidson motorcycles, tanks, planes, trucks, jeeps, mobile artillery, battleships, inflatable rafts, and foul-weather gear.

The U.S. relied on rubber from plantations halfway around the world and much too close to Singapore, a Japanese target. The U.S. government, under Franklin D. Roosevelt, established the Rubber Reserve Company to search for latex-bearing plants in the Amazon. Although rubber production from Latin America made only a small, but critical, contribution to the Allied Forces war efforts, it did open research to finding blight-resistant rubber trees. Such trees, planted in rows on plantations, could produce rubber for the hemisphere without importing it from the Far East.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, Brazil attracted farmers, ranchers, and industry to the Amazon by cutting roads through the jungle and offering homesteading incentives. Deforestation swept across the Amazon well into the ‘80s, when public outcry and scientific concern came to the forefront of the destruction.

In the 1980s and 1990s a new group sought the forest canopies. Cadres of scientists risked their lives dangling from rock-climbing ropes to inch their way into the unexplored realm of the Amazon’s treetops. They searched for plant and animal species new to science. Some applied their investigations to drug research into novel compounds to combat cancers and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Their adventures inspired whole new form of tropical tourism.

Today, ecotourism brings people from all over the world to experience the great richness of the Amazon rainforests.

For more information on the history of the Amazon, see book selections below.
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Culture
Some of the Amazon “wildlife” is human, found in outback locations reminiscent of the American West circa 1890. In this jungle frontier, miners, loggers, Indians, oil companies, conservationists, and missionaries collide.

Some of the world’s last live-off-the-land peoples live in the Amazon rainforests. A few of them, like the Yanomami and the Huaorani, are better known than other groups. The population of indigenous Amazonians has plummeted from an estimated 9 million people around the year 1500 to fewer than 200,000 today. These myth-enshrouded cultures continue to use medicinal and edible plants and centuries-old methods of hunting, healing, and harvesting.

Along the Amazon River, life moves slowly and requires patience and determination. Indians paddle dugout canoes upstream. Fishermen cast nets, drop lines, or stand poised with hand-held harpoons. Merchants carry fruits and vegetables upriver to sell. The midday heat makes people lethargic. If a trip to market takes too long, food spoils. On the riverboats, people eat black beans and rice, fish, chicken and rice, and whatever fruits are in season—bananas, papayas, guava, mango, pineapple. Along the Brazilian stretch of the Amazon River, the caboclos, or “people of the river,” mestizos of European and Indian mixes, plant manioc, bananas, beans, corn, and other crops in small, slash-and-burn plots of land close to the riverbank. They survive by fishing and farming. Some raise chickens. They purchase materials from suppliers who travel up and down the river on wooden ships, trading goods as they go.

Shamans guide the spirituality of many Amazonian peoples. Several indigenous groups of people, including the Shuar in Ecuador, the Yanomami in Venezuela, and the Machiguenga in Peru, use highly toxic mixtures of plants as hallucinogens to carry them into the spirit world. The plants and rituals used in these journeys vary from culture to culture. Many shamans take ayahuasca, also called yaje and caapi, which is made from a vine in the Malpighiaceae family. Shamans often boil pieces of the vine with other plants, including members of the coffee family. Some shamans and medicine men refer to the ayahuasca as the “vision vine” or the “vine of spirit wisdom.” They believe that psychotropic plants open small “holes” in tops of our heads into which the knowledge of spirits and dreams flows. It provides a pathway to sacred realms and enables them to communicate with natural and supernatural worlds.

Today, ecotourism offers hope that one day, interplay between our industrial society and rainforest peoples will be less destructive. Throughout Ecuador, and to a smaller degree in Peru and other countries, community-based ecotourism projects empower indigenous peoples. Many communities recognize that they no longer live in isolation. Now, many Amazonians proudly invite foreigners to their communities. They teach visitors about local history, ecology, customs, and culture. As the original inhabitants of these rich rainforests, they offer authentic views of the fragile and inexplicably interwoven web of life they call home. These community-based programs protect both cultural dignity and biodiversity.

For more information on the culture of the Amazon, see book selections below.
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Dos and Don'ts
Amazon Travel Tips:

Don’t expect to blaze your own trails. Let expert guides show you the fragile intricacies of the Amazon.

Don’t underestimate the forces of nature. Bring rain gear to cover you from head to toe and plenty of light, long-sleeved shirts and lightweight pants to protect you from mosquitoes, ants, and other biting insects. Cover yourself from the sun.

Rise early. Siesta in the mid-afternoon.

Tote powerful binoculars and remember to ask your guides if they carry spotting scopes.

Don’t feed any wild animals.

Before your Amazon adventure, take an excursion to your local library and dig up stories and history from the regions you plan to visit.

Be conscious that indigenous villages are local communities.

Talk with and listen to the fishermen, subsistence farmers, artisans, bush pilots, boat captains, indigenous peoples, guides, and business owners. Respect what they have to say, and learn to appreciate their insights into life in the rugged splendor of tropical rainforests.

Learn to listen, to observe, and to reflect.

Take pictures.

Allow your impressions of the Amazon to develop slowly, like the light of dawn creeping over the night’s horizon, gradually illuminating and revealing the beauty that surrounds you.

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Weather
The average temperatures are 70° – 90°F with high humidity, and it can rain anytime. There are two seasons in the Amazon: wet (high water) and dry (low water). These seasons happen at different times in different parts of the Amazon.

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Best Time to Go
April – September

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Temperature Range
70° – 90ºF with high humidity

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Books
The Amazon: Past, Present and Future, by Alain Gheerbrant
Exploration
This pocket-size encyclopedia, packed with photos, maps, and pictures, reveals a European fascination with the Amazon and our changing understanding of this mysterious world.

A Neotropical Companion, by J.C. Kricher
Natural History
If you are interested in natural history and planning a visit to the neo-tropics, this is the first book you should buy. A wonderful overview of the ecology, habitats, animals, plants, and ecosystems of Central and South American tropics.

Amazon: Floods of Fortune, by Michael Goulding, Nigel Smith and Dennis Mahar
Natural History
A fascinating overview of the people, culture, ecology, and economy of the Amazon flood plain.

A Guide to the Birds of Colombia, by Steven Hilty and William Brown
Field Guide
The classic South American bird guide with good coverage of the upper Amazon basin. It illustrates 1,700 species.

Running the Amazon, by Joe Kane
Exploration
An account of an expedition from the high Andes to the Atlantic by foot, raft, and kayak

Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: A Field Guide, by L.H. Emmons
Field Guide
An illustrated guide to 300 species of the New World tropics.

Explorers of the Amazon, by Anthony Smith
Exploration
A well-told history of Amazonian exploration.

Tropical Nature, by Adrian Forsyth and Ken Miyata
Natural History
A lively portrait of the rain forest. Marvelous essays that introduce the habitats, ecology, fauna, and flora of the Central and South American rain forest. Plenty of practical advice for the tropical traveler.

Tales of a Shaman’s Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines, by Mark Plotkin
Culture
A classic tale of a young ethnobotanist’s adventures and studies.

Tristes Tropiques, by Claude Levi-Strauss
Culture
Levi-Strauss’ classic account of the peoples of the Amazon.

Breaking Out of Beginner’s Spanish, by by Joseph Keenan
Language and Phrasebook
Idioms, common mistakes in word usage, and other helpful advice on tackling spoken Spanish.

Savages, by Joe Kane
Culture
A tale of a naïve journalist among the Huarani of the Ecuadorian Amazon and their struggle for the control of their homeland.

One River: Explorations and Discoveries in the Amazon, by Wade Davis
Exploration
At once a biography of Richard Schultes, the director of the Harvard Botanical Museum and a tale of a young anthropologist’s own botanical adventures through South America.

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