Empire's Last Casualty: Amazon Rain Forest

Amazon Rain Forest:

Sachi G. Dastidar

In September of 2019 Shefali and I took a trip through Brazil. Our first stop was at Brazil’s Amazon Rain Forest, then to the newly-built capital city of Brasilia, followed by a trip to Iguassu Falls of Argentina and Brazil, and on the beautiful city of Rio de Janeiro. Iguassu is a junction of three nations: Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. Thus we journeyed to the Argentinian side of the Falls, then made a brief trip to the Paraguayan border city of Ciudad del Este.

If one lands at Manaus, the center of Amazon and the capital of Amazonas State, as we did, one may not realize that one is landing in the middle of a forest, as Manaus is a huge metropolis of 2.3 million people with freeways, skyscrapers, theaters, hotels and restaurants.

These days we hear a lot about fires in Amazon. There was none in the Metropolis. But we witnessed small fires set by residents during our road trip to our jungle lodge, as well as when we flew over the forest going to Brasilia. Most of the fires are at the edges of the forest as people were land/forest grabbing at the edges going towards the center. Manaus is at the center of the forest area, hundreds of miles from the border forest fire/cleansing.

Amazon: The Amazon Rain Forest is the largest forest and larger than most countries of the world. To reach any part of the rain forest one has to travel by boat to the nearest corner of the forest. One cannot just go anywhere one wants to as the forest is either impassable or under water. There are many roads through the forest, and people have built homes, businesses and farms along those roads crisscrossing the Rio Negro (Black River) and Amazon Rivers. There are hundreds of tributaries of Amazon River. Luckily for us, it rained briefly during our tour. Rain often comes without any notice.

Our one-of-a-kind forest experience was first a day-long boat journey through the river. On the river we saw Pink River Dolphins; an Indigenous Village where they danced for us and we danced with them. They offered us roasted fish, crocodile meat, plus live and roasted edible spider-like insects. We visited a farm for research of 12-feet long, 120 kilogram Pierarku fish; a floating village where all the buildings are built on top of logs allowing them to float up or down as the rivers rise and fall by 10 or 20 feet or more. We also took a tour at the “Death of Rio Negro” where the river simply vanished into Amazon’s yellowish color. Thus people call “Death” of the river.

After our boat landed in the south shore of Amazon at Port Careiro we traveled 95 kilometers by road through the inhabited portion of the forest to another ferry to take us to our Forest Lodge run by a family of workers. One morning we took a several-kilometer long trek through the forest with a guide in front and a security in our back, both carrying machetes.

Here are a few of the pictures and videos from our travel – land and water – through Amazon Rain Forest.

The River and Forest