"But Marina had already left him, and she understood that in life a person was only allowed one trip down to hell. There was no going back to that place, not for anyone." -Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
Her colleague is dead in the Amazon. Marina Singh has the letter in her hand. Fever and delirium, the macabre gift of mosquito-borne malaria. Dr. Eckman's death is a tragedy, the letter says. A tragedy but only a minor setback for Vogel, a pharmaceutical company conducting fertility research on the Lakashi tribe along the Rio Negro in Brazil. Begged by Dr. Eckman's wife to prove her husband's death and ordered by her boss to monitor the progress of the company's research, Marina boards a flight bound for Manaus, Brazil and finds herself, weeks later, on a pontoon gliding deep into the heart of the Amazon.
Manaus, or "Mother of the Gods," is the capital of the Amazonas and the largest city in northern Brazil. It's hard to imagine a city located squarely within the boundaries of the Amazon Basin having multiple-lane roads and bars with outdoor stages, but such is the way of life in Manaus. Equally incongruous with its rainforest setting is Teatro Amazonas, the city's 115-year-old opera house that was built with roofing tiles from Alsace, furniture from Paris, steel walls shipped in from England, marble tiles and columns from Italy, and water for its drinking fountains airlifted north from Antarctica. (Just kidding about that last one. I hope.) If the opera house is too much of a cultural experience for those wondering how the heck there's an opera house in the Amazon, the Parque do Mindu might be just the perfect pre-jungle tour nature experience. The park covers 33 hectares near the city's center and is home to Manaus's own endemic species of tamarin - the sanguinus bicolor. Just downriver, the black water of the Rio Negro meets the white water of the Rio Solimoes and the two flow, magnetically parallel, for several kilometers before mixing.
Manaus rests at the mouth of the Rio Negro, one of many rivers that curls its way deep into the jungle fog and foliage. For many, the city exists as a glorified way station - its supply stores and cheap hotels essential stops for tourists awaiting their pontoon ride into the heaving soul of the Amazon.
And oh, the Amazon. Rivers so deep and murky there's no telling what lurks in their waters. Bullet ants the size of a child's thumb have a sting as powerful and debilitating as a gunshot. Though nonvenomous, 20-foot anacondas can make quick work of wringing the life out of a healthy, unsuspecting tourist on the worst day of his life. Contracting malaria is as easy as letting a mosquito land on your bicep. The native tribes are often hostile, swiftly answering the tourist problem with a deluge of razor-sharp arrows. At its worst, the jungle is something south of hospitable and somewhere south of hell.
So what would possess a person to trek beneath its deadly green veil? Its size, for starters. The Amazon covers 1.7 billion acres (roughly the size of the contiguous United States) and dips into nine countries, containing more than half of the world's remaining rainforests. The Amazon River is discharges more water than any other river in the world and is bested in length, at 4,080 miles, by only the Nile. Tributaries traverse the basin like bloodlines, each feeding its own delicate and complex ecosystem. Here, in the flooded forests and savannas of the largest rainforest on the planet, indigenous tribes have created entire civilizations that are invisible to the rest of the world, protected by the green canopy of Kapok and Brazil nut trees.
And just as a quick editorial note, allow me to suggest that you not set out on your own in a paddle boat down a river filled with piranhas and freshwater bull sharks. Marina Singh's mission may have been motivated by science and the death of her colleague, but unless you're equipped to handle a month-long stay with a remote Amazonian tribe whose women can give birth into their seventies, I'd urge you to book flights to, say, Jamaica instead.
Manaus, or "Mother of the Gods," is the capital of the Amazonas and the largest city in northern Brazil. It's hard to imagine a city located squarely within the boundaries of the Amazon Basin having multiple-lane roads and bars with outdoor stages, but such is the way of life in Manaus. Equally incongruous with its rainforest setting is Teatro Amazonas, the city's 115-year-old opera house that was built with roofing tiles from Alsace, furniture from Paris, steel walls shipped in from England, marble tiles and columns from Italy, and water for its drinking fountains airlifted north from Antarctica. (Just kidding about that last one. I hope.) If the opera house is too much of a cultural experience for those wondering how the heck there's an opera house in the Amazon, the Parque do Mindu might be just the perfect pre-jungle tour nature experience. The park covers 33 hectares near the city's center and is home to Manaus's own endemic species of tamarin - the sanguinus bicolor. Just downriver, the black water of the Rio Negro meets the white water of the Rio Solimoes and the two flow, magnetically parallel, for several kilometers before mixing.
Manaus rests at the mouth of the Rio Negro, one of many rivers that curls its way deep into the jungle fog and foliage. For many, the city exists as a glorified way station - its supply stores and cheap hotels essential stops for tourists awaiting their pontoon ride into the heaving soul of the Amazon.
And oh, the Amazon. Rivers so deep and murky there's no telling what lurks in their waters. Bullet ants the size of a child's thumb have a sting as powerful and debilitating as a gunshot. Though nonvenomous, 20-foot anacondas can make quick work of wringing the life out of a healthy, unsuspecting tourist on the worst day of his life. Contracting malaria is as easy as letting a mosquito land on your bicep. The native tribes are often hostile, swiftly answering the tourist problem with a deluge of razor-sharp arrows. At its worst, the jungle is something south of hospitable and somewhere south of hell.
So what would possess a person to trek beneath its deadly green veil? Its size, for starters. The Amazon covers 1.7 billion acres (roughly the size of the contiguous United States) and dips into nine countries, containing more than half of the world's remaining rainforests. The Amazon River is discharges more water than any other river in the world and is bested in length, at 4,080 miles, by only the Nile. Tributaries traverse the basin like bloodlines, each feeding its own delicate and complex ecosystem. Here, in the flooded forests and savannas of the largest rainforest on the planet, indigenous tribes have created entire civilizations that are invisible to the rest of the world, protected by the green canopy of Kapok and Brazil nut trees.
And just as a quick editorial note, allow me to suggest that you not set out on your own in a paddle boat down a river filled with piranhas and freshwater bull sharks. Marina Singh's mission may have been motivated by science and the death of her colleague, but unless you're equipped to handle a month-long stay with a remote Amazonian tribe whose women can give birth into their seventies, I'd urge you to book flights to, say, Jamaica instead.
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