“For us, the forest is everything. It provides food, medicine and shelter. Everything we need we get from nature.” -Nilthon, eco lodge guide
Photos by Clara Mokri
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The Interoceania is an international and transcontinental highway that connects Peru to Brazil and spans over 2,500 kilometers. The Ineroceania is the first of three legs of the trip from Puerto Maldonado to the Collpas Tembopata Eco Lodge. The entire trip takes about three hours, and about half is spent on this highway.
The second leg of the trip to Collpas Tembopata Lodge is on Philadelphia Road–an unpaved and extremely muddy road that drops off directly in front of the Tambopata River. In the first photograph, three Globalist reporters sit on a wood plank in the back of the Toyota pickup truck, bracing themselves for a ride far bumpier than the one on the well-maintained Interoceanic highway.
The third and final leg of the trip consisted of a fifteen minute boat ride upstream the Tambopata River. The water’s strong brown tint comes from the clay that lines the shoreline.
The Silk Floss (Ceiba Speciosa) tree plays a prominent role in Eastern Peruvian Amazonian mythology. It is believed that the Ceiba trees throughout the jungle are home to deities and spirits.
When finely crushed, the green Sanipanga leaf turns into a colorful paint that is used by shamans to connect with the spirits in the jungle. These dyes, which can be made into a variety of colors, represents different things–the color blue is analogous to hunting, whereas the color red represents love. They are used in many traditional Amazonian rituals and ceremonies.
Caimans, a smaller relative to crocodiles and alligators, are most easily spotted at night because their eyes reflect light emitted from searchlights, and glow an eerie orange color. The caiman pictured above was approximately 1 meter long.
Macaws are a type of long-tailed parrot native to Central and South America. Macaws are unique because they mate for life and reside in the same tree with their partner. In the mornings, they begin to gather in the trees, and once all together, feast on the clay cliffs. This routine known as a clay lick, and it is a daily occurrence. The first image is of a blue and yellow macaw couple taken through a telescope, and the second is of a scarlet macaw mid-flight.