Survival in the Amazon

April, 2014

I hope you all had a lovely Passover and Easter :)

This year I tried to spice up my Passover experience and think that I have done something that no other Jewish girl has done before, I call it "Passover in the Amazon" (in other words "starvation"). Ok, I am slightly exaggerating but I will get to all of that good stuff shortly.

Our study abroad program gave us two days off for Easter break so a couple of friends and I decided to bust a move and jet off to the Amazonia. Since Brazil is such a massive country, this was not a casual flight away, it was such a mission to get to this remote area. We are living all the way in the south of Brazil in a place called Florianópolis, and Manaus (the state where the Amazon is located) is all the way up north. Therefore we snagged some malaria pills, got our yellow fever shots, packed our little backpacks (mine filled with matzah) and headed out on this obscure journey to the ZON.

During this trip we had a nice little crew of 4: me, Lucy, Koami and Smiley. Lucy and I planned to meet the boys in Manaus for our 4 day tour around the jungle, this is where the story gets interesting. Lucy and I landed in Manaus at 12am but because we are mere college students just trying to get by in this world (aka broke to the max) we decided to hang out in the airport for 7 hours until our tour guide picked us up in the morning. This may or may not have been my brilliant idea but for the sake of the story let's just say it wasn't.

Now Manaus is a pretty remote area and you can only access the state by plane, therefore you would expect the airport to be pretty decent. False. Lucy and I tried to find a little nook to rest for the night but to no avail, this airport lacked chairs! We fortunately found some scraps of cardboard boxes and made them into a makeshift bed to protect us from the sand and dust that surrounded us, still a fail. We were huddled in a corner of the airport, laying on nasty cardboard boxes, wearing all of the clothes that we brought to protect us from the cold aka basically hobos. I don't know why I thought this would be a good idea but as I watched the sunrise through the cracks of my cardboard box, I was so relieved to have survived the night in one piece. Yup, and we hadn't even made it into the jungle yet.

I knew going into this trip to the Amazon that one of us would be deemed the weakest link; you know, the slacker of the group that can't take the heat, the complainer of the crew, in other words, the "wimp of the wild". Well I was determined that that would NOT be me. It was survival of the fittest out there and I was going to be the last one standing. The whole trip my friends and I were trying to be the toughest and win the status of the "strongest link", therefore I knew that I had to bring my A game to the ZON... the title was mine, all I needed to do was wow them with my fierce Amazonian woman abilities.

A speed boat, jeep ride and another speed boat later, we finally reached our destination, a lovely hostel on the banks of the Amazon river. Our tour guide Shawn was a 21 year old guy from a Guyanese tribe just above Brazil. He had been working in the gold mines and diamond diving industry since he was 16 years old and now works as a tour guide in the Amazon, all before the age or 22. Surprisingly we had a lot in common with Shawn and I felt as though he could have been any one of my friends back home ( although he casually lives in the Amazon, catches boas with his bare hands and builds traps in the wild- kids these days!).

Now a little more about the ZON itself. It wasn't really what I expected and I didn't realize how much water was in the Amazon. In my mind it was a huge jungle, but there are massive rivers that surround the dense forest. To get around most areas in the Amazon you have to travel by boat, so we spent a lot of our trip in little speed canoes that sailed us through the rivers and navigated us around the area. On these boats we saw tons of animals like sloths, tucans, vultures, fresh water gray and pink dolphins (pink dolphins are mad creepy not going to lie) and we even played with baby crocodiles (called caimen). I felt like a badass holding my baby croc in the boat, totally strongest link status right there.

We hiked in the jungle, which looks like a huge green tangle of trees, leaves and moss but is secretly WAY more then meets the eye. To really see what is in the Amazon you need to be alert and focused or you can miss something amazing with a blink of the eye. Shawn would be slashing his machete through the jungle and would all of a sudden freeze in his tracks to point out the tiniest little poisonous dart frog, something that would have gone unnoticed to anyone else. What I came to realize was that the Amazon jungle is an incredibly high functioning place. It produces so many natural products that we need in our every day lives; we saw rubber trees, trees that produce vapor rub, trees that produce fluids that can prevent malaria and TB and my personal favorite- abortion trees. Apparently when a tribal man knocked up a girl, he would make her drink a drink concocted from this specific tree to start the abortion process. The natural discoveries so fascinating. How did people think to eat a random part of a tree to see what may happen to them? "Let me just nibble on this wild plant real quick..one sec". It is amazing how many cures and products come out of nature due to human curiosities.

Another really amazing part of the Amazon are the tribes and indigenous communities that live in the jungle. These communities live on the banks of the rivers to be more accessible to water. They have huge plots of land and small speed boats to drive them around in order to fish or get other supplies. Shawn took us to meet an Amazonian indigenous family and we were able to see the unique way that they live. Starting from 2009, they have gotten electricity in their homes and rely on their plots of land for agriculture and fruit, therefore, they only go into the city of Manaus around two times a year to stock up on supplies. There are about 70 children living in this area they even have a "boat bus" to pick the children up from their docks and drive them to school each day. I thought that this was very clever and wonderful that the children are able to receive an education even on the banks of the Amazon.

One of my favorite nights in the Amazon was when we camped out in the jungle for a night. This was the night that we all feared the most, spending a whole night in the ZON. Still I knew my strongest link status was at stake if I showed any sign of weakness. 17 hours, 15 new mosquito bites and one spider bite to the arse later and I was still going strong. Super hero Shawn set up our camp, made a fire, skewered and roasted a chicken, hung up all of our hammocks and mosquito bed nets as we all watched completely dumbfounded and useless (yes, we were SO completely out of our element). We had 13 hammocks all lined up in a row under our little shelter, malaria bednets intact and ready to protect. Turns out the boys were the weakest links of the group and were too scared of the bugs so they secretly moved into a tent together ( we made fun of them for sharing a honeymoon suite as Lucy and I were the true survivors).

As night crept upon us, I was able to experience real darkness. We were in the middle of nowhere with no lights, no sort of civilization, just total darkness and you would think that this would be terrifying but it was incredible. The total darkness brought a kind of peace that you can't really experience in a city. After dinner we stumbled through the dark to our boat and rode out into the river to watch the full moon and stars. In an area full of darkness the stars and the full moon literally lit up the sky in the most beautiful way. Once you stop talking and truly listen to what is around you it is amazing what you can hear in the wild, in darkness surrounded by so much life and movement.

So to end this long story, I made it through the Amazon jungle in one piece. The Destiny's Child song "I'm a survivor" may have been my motivation to keep going but I'm not ashamed of that, everone needs a little Beyonce in their lives. In conclusion, I think I was the strongest link, so if you are ever in need of survival tips or come across a casual snake in the street, I gotchu.