One Night in the Amazon
Amazonia
Our trip begins on a damp and humid Saturday afternoon. Four 4-wheel drive vehicles arrive at our hotel in Manaus in northern Brazil to transport our party - the 15 of us who are there on the Pew Gatekeepers Fellowship - to the heart of the jungle.
Our destination: Camp 41.
I clamber into one of the two waiting mud-splattered white Toyota Range Rovers and prepare for the worst, er, the best. The drivers are all Brazilian, young men in their late-20s or 30s who know these muddy roads into the camp better than puffy Americanos like me know the path to the fridge. Our driver is Josimar, and, judging from his features, I'm guessing he's descended from Amazonian natives.
Josimar has quite a sense of humor. He is a small, wiry man with a wide smile. He speaks a rapid-fire brand of Portuguese that even the most accomplished speaker in our group has difficulity understanding. Josimar knows essentailly four words of English - "Tom Cruise" and "Al Gore," each of whom he says has visited Camp 41 within the last couple of years. He also manages to get across to us why Camp 41 is called Camp 41 - it is 41 kilometers (roughly 25 miles) from town.
Once out of the city, we travel on a paved highway that shows a good bit of development, but still has plenty of forest area as well. The further away from town we get, though, the denser the woods become and for a few moments, I'm back home, traveling some rural road in Clay County and looking for Mount Cheaha. I find this comforting.
One wild ride
It has been raining on and off for the two days we have been in Manaus, and it begins raining again as we make our way to the camp. When we reach the camp road (about 20 kilometers from the city), the drivers make the changeover to the 4-wheel drive. I look up from the passenger seat to see a long, winding, narrow mud road. The trip is about to get interesting.
Now I'm convinced that Josimar is as gifted a driver as you're liable to find in the Amazon region, but even he has difficulty on this day maneuvering the steep hills and roads left slick by the jungle rains. Our Range Rover slides, spins and bounces along these roads as if it were a loose football on a rain-soaked Friday night in Alabama.
Only a couple of times do I really pause for fear. On these occasions I close my eyes and peek at the same time - sort of like I did when as a young boy I rode the big roller coaster at Six Flags - and prayed this "fun" would end soon.
Finally, we're over the final big hill, come to a stop, and pile out of the vehicles. I am grateful to feel terra firma. No one in our group seems worse for the wear, though, and the drivers are laughing and joking together as if there had never been anything to worry about. They are probably right.
Hiking to Camp 41
Soon enough we take our backpacks, our caps and our flashlights and set off by foot to Camp 41. It is dark, by now, and the trail is also muddy and hilly. The going is at times painfully slow, but eventually we all roll into camp, where we are meet Charles, a Duke graduate student there doing some leaf work for his dissertation. He tell us we should find a hammock and stow our gear. As he talks, I'm taken in by the grandest smell there is on any camping experience: Fresh fish grilling over an open flame.
Our hosts at the camp are Rita and Tony, who work for the U.S.-Brazilian cooperative group INPA, which conducts research and field studies in the Amazon Region. They are dedicated to the forest, know it well, and make us feel right at home.
Some folks shower, but most are determined to sleep in the clothes they are wearing. The fish I smelled is tambaqui, a fruit-eating fish that is prolific throughout the Amazonia. I had it three times during my stay in the region, and it was good each time, but this night in the rain forest it is particularly mouth-watering.
Sleeping on a hammock is an art, I am led to believe; I cannot quite grasp it. Still, the night is rather peaceful and amazingly mosquito free. It is winter in this part of the world now and the temperature reaches the low 40s. The forest night is eerily quiet, the blackest I've ever seen.
The next morning we enjoy an early breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage; then Tony takes us out on about a three-mile hike in the forest. On our third stop Tony explains what I've been wondering since I got here - where are all the animals?
"Now you've come all the way from the United States and you're in the middle of the Amazon and you're probably thinking that it looks much better, more exotic, on the David Attenborough documentaries than what you're seeing," he said. "You come one day, and it's raining and most of the birds and animals are hiding."
Trailing army ants
Later we examine a few species of ant wrens - and there seem to be at least 20 different kinds in the region - which had been caught in nets Tony and the engineers/drivers had placed previously. Tony tells us about the wrens, and how they like to follow hordes of army ants in search of nourishment and then we release them back to their forest homes. It is all very educational, though not terribly exciting.
"Now there are about 200 species of birds around here, and about 250 species of trees," says Tony. "But it's probably not that much different from the woods some of you see around your houses. Essentially, you're just in the great, big woods. And woods is woods."
Once returned to camp, we all go in for a dip in a nearby swimming hole - I don't know how cold the water is, but it is cold enough to make this the most exhilarating half-hour of the entire trip. After lunch, we pack up, bid our farewells and hike back up to the drop-off area. I walk with Leonora, our Brazilian guide, and she sets an incredible pace.
The sun is out by the time we start back to Manaus, and the return trip is not nearly as momentous as the previous day's. We all change up vehicles and this time I end up with Marcelo, who speaks a little English and smiles a lot. The drive back is long and lazy, and I nap a bit. Finally, we're back to the hotel, civilization with all its cozy charms. As I exchange good-byes with Marcelo, I begin to miss the jungle and begin a silent tally of all the exotic species I have witnessed along my Amazon adventure:
· 1 foot-long tree frog
· 1 toucan
· 1 monkey
· Hundreds of ants
I think not of the wonderful day and night just experienced but of the last time my son and I hiked through the Talladega National Forest. Oh well, what can I say? It's a small world. Woods is woods.
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