Queridos todos (Dear Everybody),

Warmest greetings from the Amazon,

Sunrise on the Amazon, surrounded by sounds of the jungle is a privilege few have experienced and I count myself one of the lucky ones.

The sounds of the rainforest are many and unidentifiable to my untrained ears...we have an amazing encyclopaedic guide, George, who can tell us what every sound is and who is making the sound and why. He can even imitate the sounds to call them or to make them move. For example if we saw a sloth he could tell if it is a two toed or three toed sloth by the coloration of the animal... they stay so still they look like part of the tree so to get them to turn their head George would make the sound of the predatory harpy eagle which would make the sloth move its head so we could see it....after a few days we could see the sloth's without making them turn their heads.

Every day we get further from civilization and the more wildlife we see. It took until the third day before we started to see primates.....we are seeing first hand the effect of population on the forest and the native species.

In the remote 5 million acre forest preserve tourists are allowed in only as far as the second ranger station. There are 20 rangers to patrol 5 million acres of reserve. Poachers abound. With our own eyes we saw a Kapok tree that had been cut down and was being towed out of the forest. One might think big deal only one tree...BUT the wood is very rare, is sought after and the poachers can get up to $40 USD for the entire tree which is a huge amount of money here...the kapok trees are one of the tallest trees, are an endangered species, and with my own eyes I can see how few and far between they are. Our guide always points out excitedly when we see one.

When encountering poachers you must smile and be friendly because you don't know if they have a rifle hidden in the bottom of their dugout, especially if you are only a few people...we were a group of 14 so the danger was little for us.

Later the same day we saw a dead lungfish....they breath air and the proper name is Paiche...they are on the world endangered specie list. This one looked like it had been harpooned then escaped and died. We told the rangers about it and they went to find it and tow it in to the ranger station. It was massive, about 9 feet long and the scales are a few inches across... nothing goes to waste and the rangers were filleting the fish to eat.

Any of you who know me well know that I usually don't get too excited about environmental issues but after personally seeing poaching running rampant in the Amazon my attitude is changing and I feel that something needs to get done to help. The Peruvian government is corrupt (big surprise). Poachers get away with murder. They replant only 30,000 trees per year so the mahogany forest is stripped and not being replaced....I realize the people need to eat but capturing a baby jaguar to sell is beyond what could be considered reasonable...God only knows what they did to the mother in order to steal her baby.

If we gringos saw these things going on in the few short days, just imagine what goes on in a month, a year, 10 years....I have heard about the destruction of the rain forest my entire life but never realized that what is happening is so horrifying.

We all need to help do something, but what??