The River

Todd: So, Jeff, we're talking about your trip down the Amazon, and so you took a truck to the Amazon and then you got a canoe. You got on a canoe. Can you talk about your journey down the Amazon?

Jeff: The Amazon... What people think of the Amazon is a beautiful river with a nice green jungle and lots of animals, and it's not like that. It's not a beautiful place. It was... the river was muddy and dirty. It looked like coffee. The side of the river, the side of the Amazon was very overgrown and full of mosquitos and black flies. We didn't see any wild animals because the canoe was just a long, thin wooden canoe piled high with things like rice and food other materials that the villagers needed and it had an outboard motor that was very noisy, so it wasn't romantic at all, the ideas of the Amazon river, and the beauty and the adventure. It was difficult and dirty and hot and dangerous, so it wasn't romantic at all.

Todd: It doesn't sound like it. Where did you stay as you would go down? Would you sleep on the canoe?

Jeff: No. Every night they would stop at a little village, and it was just made out of little village, a little cluster of bamboo thatched houses just on the side of the river. They'd clear a little spot out of the jungle and then they'd have a, say a dozen bamboo houses there and we'd sleep say on the floor of one of their houses in our sleeping bags.

Todd: Were these houses made especially for travellers?

Jeff: No, no. There was no travelers. There's no houses for travelers. These are just with the villagers. There's no restaurants or no hotels. There are no internet cafes. Half the villages didn't have power, so it was real basic village life.

Todd: Wow!