As An Amazonian

So you want to know about the Amazon? Well my experiences are different since I work here, but when I’m not working, I love being here. The working here is the hard part. People expect you to work miracles where there is hardly even god. But that is not the part worth telling.
If you can imagine a slow pace of life, think of that caught by a slow motion camera. You don’t wear a watch or worry about the time. You know there is light enough in the day and you know when it is night. What other great distinctions in the day are there?
Everywhere there is green with a little color here and there, but not like people expect. People expect there to be flowers everywhere, but the flowers are hidden. You have to find them. The animals are elusive too many only coming out at night. Only the monkeys break this pattern. You will hear a troop noisily passing by, and when you look up at them, several are also looking down at you as curious about you as you are about them.
In the middle of it all is the river, but not as most people think of a river. This river looks to many more like a lake than a river, but that is its size(and I am only speaking of the Rio Negro the largest tributary of the Amazon not the Amazon itself), and true to its size its impact on the region is great. When the river floods during the rainy season, the way of life changes. Fishermen become hunters, trees spend 4months underwater, and everything swims because there is no way around it. When the waters recede the men fish again and the animals have a wider territory to roam. The Portuguese underestimated the river and suffered when they made their capital so far up the river during the years of the rubber trade. 6 months out of the year they could get their ships up it, but when the river dropped, they were stranded. Life here is centered around the river and knowing it. Even travel is dependent on the river, unless you can afford travel by plane, which few here can. True to the pace of life is travel by river. A trip that takes 1 hour flying takes 36 hours by river, but I can think of no better way of seeing the river than by 36 hours on the top deck of a river boat with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other just watching the trees go by, to see the differences and pass among the islands of the floating grasses. Stress doesn’t exist because there is nothing to cause it. There is enough food for the day and nowhere to be at any particular time. Only if you try and bring work here does stress exist trying to plan things out and be on time. If you try and schedule things, they will most likely be late because being late isn’t even a consideration. Simplicity is the best description of life here, until you get to the city that is.