I spent a week on the Amazon and never saw the same river twice.
Around 4,000 miles long and 120 miles wide at some points, it’s the world’s largest river — but it’s probably the world’s most bewildering as well, at once inspiring and terrifying, stunning and scary.
Here’s a photo of the river early one afternoon …
And then 15 minutes later.
The storm was quick and violent, then the Amazon pulled this rainbow out of its hat.
She’s a feisty woman who can’t seem to make up her mind. From minute to minute, I never knew what to expect.
Here’s another afternoon on the Amazon …
A half hour later, we were running for cover.
It was like vacationing in 100 different places, all at the same time.
One of the things that excites me most about this round-the-world trip is the opportunity to share stores about good work that might otherwise go unnoticed. Like the Yanamono Medical Clinic on the Amazon River, for instance.
The clinic was started in 1990 by Linnea Smith, an American doctor, who fell in love with the Amazon jungle and its people.
Originally she operated the clinic with no staff, electricity or running water from a tiny thatched roof room. Now it’s a clean, relatively spacious structure that was built by Rotary clubs from Duluth, MN., Thunder Bay, Ontario and Iquitos, Peru. The place is powered by solar energy and provides all the necessities for people in need.
This is what one of the exam rooms looks like.
Until Dr. Smith’s arrival, people in the local villages had no access to health care. Now they can receive medicine, vaccines, emergency care and more. The clinic sees about 2,500 people each year.
There’s an on-site laboratory.
There’s also a one-room dental clinic. They put on programs for the local kids to teach them about preventative dental care.
I was impressed by the clinic’s simplicity — how it cuts right to the heart of caring for people. It’s nothing fancy, but it does the job and it does it well.
It’s located in a fairly remote place on the river, providing valuable services to communities that have very little access to anything else.
Patients pay what they can for services, which is usually about $1.
To learn more about the clinic, Dr. Smith or the non-profit Amazon Medical Project, visit the website here.
Meet Charlie. He’s a capybara, the world’s largest rodent. Capybaras weigh about 100 pounds, have short, coarse hair and are semi-aquatic, earning them the nickname of “water pig.” (Coincidentally, that’s what the kids called me in elementary school.)
That said, Charlie is pretty damn cute — even if he could use a pedicure.
He lives at a lodge I visited in the Amazon jungle. His best friend is this dog, Pedro.
Guests at the lodge feed Charlie table scraps, like bread, bananas and potatos, all day long.
When he’s not sleeping, that is.
He quickly became my best friend — although I’m pretty sure that’s only because I had a pocket full of crackers.
Weird fact about capybaras: The Catholic Church decided that the capybara is a fish. So you can eat them during Lent, if that’s your thing.
There were seven of us squeezed into the tiny Cessna. A pilot and co-pilot up front, The Husband and me in the middle, and a French family in the back.
It didn’t take long to get up in the air and into the barren desert between Nazca and Palpa, site of the famed Nazca geoglyphs.
The lines were actually very difficult to see at first, but the pilot agrressively dipped the wings and rotated the aircraft around each site to give all of us a good view.
Here’s the astronaut man, which is one reason why some believe the Nazca lines were etched into the ground by space aliens.
You can see him better here.
These were constructed around the year 400, so it’s remarkable they have lasted so incredibly well. The purpose of the lines is unknown, but most seem to think these figures have some kind of religious significance.
Or maybe some guy in ye olde Nazca really, really liked monkeys — which you can see here.
This is some kind of crazy ancient bird.
This is my favorite. I think it looks like a baby chick with an awkward case of enlarged feet.
About five minutes into the flight, as the plane dipped and twirled around the site, the French dad grabbed for his airsick bag. Then the mom puked. And finally, their son joined in with some projectile vomit. They heaved and retched for the remainder of the 35-minute ride.
The mom apologized and said, “We are sorry. We are French.”
If I had driven through Pisco without sampling the liquor that bears the region’s name, I’d never be able to show my face again. Obviously, a stop at a pisco winery was in order.
Dating back to the 1500s, Pisco actually gets its name from the condom-shaped pot in which it was traditionally aged. The Quechua people called this pottery “piscu,” which means “little bird.”
Nowadays pisco is made in gigantic plastic barrels, but the wineries keep these pots around just for fun. Sometimes they rent them out to people who still want to make liquor the old-timey way.
There’s a big, stone room where grapes are smashed beneath a gigantic wood squasher thingy. (Yes, that’s the official name.) I asked a man at the winery what would happen if I jumped underneath the squasher. He said as long as I was really drunk first, I’d make some high-quality wine.
After the grapes are smooshed, the liquid goes through a little canal, where the pisco pots are filled.
It has to sit open for a week to let all the nasty gases escape. Then the pots are sealed with a layer of leaves, followed by a layer of clay.
They carry the pots using this “wooden donkey.” It’s pretty damn heavy, if you’re curious.
There’s more: The pisco is fermented, heated by copper coils, put through more channels, condensed, filtered and tested for quality by a “drunk-o-meter” — a very happy, but sloppy drunk man, according to my tour guide at the winery — and aged.
Then some more stuff happens, a pisco fairy waves her magic wand and … er, I don’t know. Remember, I was testing pisco while they taught me about the process!
The liquor tastes vaguely like grappa, and it’s incredibly smooth. The Husband seems to like it best in a pisco sour, the national cocktail of Peru, made with pisco, lemon or lime juice, egg whites, simple syrup and bitters.
As for myself, I’ve been enjoying chilcano de pisco. It goes a little something like this:
4 oz. ginger ale
2 oz. pisco
1/2 lime
Fill an 8 oz. tumbler with ice cubes. Pour the pisco over ice. Squeeze the lime into the glass. Fill with ginger ale and stir.
