OFF TO THE AMAZON

Some people experience a special kind of bliss when they’re near the ocean. Others find this fulfillment from being in the mountains, or the forest or the desert…
I find my special joy of place on rivers.

THERE'S A RIVER...AND THEN THERE'S THE AMAZON
I recall, as a boy, having a special fascination—along with tornadoes and the sinking of the Titanic—with the Amazon River. Stories, maps, photos, news reports—I couldn’t get enough of them. I dreamed of one day seeing the great river for myself.

PHOTO: Enrique Castro-Mendivil / Reuters

Well, I’ve been in a tornado; I’ve seen the Titanic—okay, I guess James Cameron's documentary footage will have to suffice; and now, at last, I’ll be fulfilling that final dream, being on the Amazon.

Tomorrow, I fly to Lima, where I’ll meet my brother, Dan, for the adventure of a lifetime. After a couple of days exploring the Peruvian capital, we fly for two hours northeast over the Andes to Iquitos, where we board La Perla, a 24-passenger river boat, for a week cruising the upper reaches of what is arguably the world’s largest and most important river. *

I’m not at all sure if I’ll have access to the Internet—I guess I’ll be disappointed if we end up no further from “civilization” than that—but I promise to journal and take lots of photos. I’ll look forward to producing a series of posts here about the experience. Stay tuned...

PHOTO: RainforestCruises.com

* Size of watershed: 7,000,000 square kilometers (more than double that of the Mississippi)
Length of river: 6,296 km, (second only to the Nile and 326 km longer than the Mississippi)
Discharge: 209,000 cubic meters per second (12 times that of the Mississippi)
 
There is another alphabet, whispering from every leaf, singing from every river, shimmering from every sky. ~ DEJAN STOJANOVIC