When I went to the Amazon in mid-November I expected – and found -- a landscape thick with life. It was life run riot: tangles of vines enveloping trees festooned with bromeliads, 4-foot tall wasp nests suspended from their branches, birds of every color calling, and always the ants.
But the people living along the rivers of this most biologically rich place on the planet became one of the most interesting surprises of my travels. Known as Riverenos, they are of mixed blood, but mostly indigenous people, living in very simple thatch-roofed stilt houses in small villages along the rivers. They fish and hunt and grow a few crops, consult shamans for cures and blessings, play soccer in the evenings under ominous thunderheads. And in places like the nearly one million acre Tamshiyacu-Tahuayo Community Reserve in northern Peru, they have embarked on a voluntary conservation project that promises to protect the wildlife while enhancing their livelihoods.
A gallery of images from the Amazon is now posted on my website portfolio.
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