We arrived to the San Jorge community early this morning for a short visit.
As we always do, the captain of the Delfin II purposely ran ashore to get the ship stuck at the edge, just across the river from San Jorge. Such is the way we anchor here in the Amazon. Tying the ship to a large tree, after the ships bow has got slightly stuck at the river’s edge.
We disembarked by skiffs early in the morning to walk in the town, to avoid the heat of the midday sun.
It is very interesting that usually when most people think about the Amazon, they tend to picture very remote, vast densely forested areas, with very high diversity of species. They think about big trees, colorful tropical birds, such as toucans and macaws, also monkeys, anacondas, piranhas, jaguars, etc.
Indeed the Amazon is one of the pinnacles of biodiversity. But we tend to forget about all the people that also live here, right by the river’s edge (the only way to get around here is by water). The human component of this trip to the Amazon is outstanding, how humans have adapted to live in these very harsh conditions.
So to round up and complete perfectly our trip to the Amazon, this morning we visited the small but very well organized community of San Jorge.
The people here seem to have a very basic but happy life. People with easy smiles and few material possessions. We got to go inside of their homes, talk and see directly how they live here, with the aid of our naturalist translating for us.
We visited the little school where happy, healthy, clean, and friendly kids received us with dances and songs in their native language.
It was a great morning in San Jorge. A cultural shock, to get to see that even though there is an immeasurable difference in between their lifestyle and ours, people are always people and they seem to be healthy and happy.
For the afternoon the Delfin II repositioned to visit Clavero Lake where we had the opportunity to swim and cool down from the high temperatures, followed by more explorations to look for more wildlife by skiff or by kayak. There were some nice sightings this afternoon, including a good view of a rare rodent which name is bigger that the rodent itself, called the yellow-crowned brush-tailed tree rat, looking down at us from its balcony in a hole high up in a tree, but the special show this afternoon was the incredibly beautiful sunset we enjoyed on the way back to ship. What a perfect ending to a perfect day!
