World Wildlife Fund

© Zig Koch

The thick morning mist hangs heavy over the small mining town of Serra do Navio - my point of departure to meet up with the expedition party which has been making an arduous journey upriver for the past 9 days to reach the park's limit at Mukuru. Having survived the previous night's high speed adventure with our driver, Lucio, adeptly dodging menacing potholes and the occasional fast moving oncoming truck, and awakened at dawn in a well-used bungalow at the Posada Cupuaçu, I am eager to board the chopper and join the expedition.
 
The expedition has already completed the first leg on the river, covering 160 kilometers through rugged terrain, including numerous waterfalls and gorges, making it the most difficult and dangerous stretch. The starting point ten days ago was Porto Sabão, a small river town near the infamous and failed Jari cellulose production scheme commenced in the late 1960s by the industrialist Daniel Ludwig. On this first leg of the expedition to reach Tumucumaque National Park, the team skirted the Rio Iratapuru Sustainable Development Reserve where Brazil nuts, rubber, and vegetable oils are harvested locally.
 

I am joined this morning by a young Brazilian researcher, Gil, and our seasoned pilot who will ferry us and several hundred pounds of gear over about 75 miles of dense jungle. But we are temporarily grounded, waiting for the low lying clouds to dissipate and ensure sufficient visibility to pick out our small landing spot at Mukuru. Gil is a geomorphologist who studies the form of the landscape and the geological and ecological processes that are shaping and transforming it. He will be taking field observations as part of a mapping exercise for this
region.
 
Once aloft in the helicopter, we navigate by following the dirt track road connecting Serra do Navio and the Wajãpi Indigenous Territory. The forest here is under pressure, with settlers occupying lands adjoining the road and knocking down and burning chunks of forest to be replaced with subsistence crops and pasture. While not occurring on a massive scale here, this pattern of deforestation is being repeated over and over, gobbling up the Amazon at a frightening pace. The loss of its forest cover, already some 20 percent of the total, threatens to reach a tipping point in which the entire Amazon basin will undergo a general drying trend and no longer be able to recharge and provide life sustaining waters, with far-reaching consequences.
 
As we pass beyond the settlement zone over Wajãpi territory, a striking change is evident as the road becomes barely visible beneath a heavy layer of rainforest canopy and the signs of deforestation disappear. Setting down in a small clearing at Mukuru, a Wajãpi outpost at the junction of the Jari and Inipuku rivers where both the park and the indigenous territory meet up, we are greeted by a weary group of travelers.
 
The expedition's crew of 11 pilots, boatmen, and cook are all from the agricultural cooperative and town of San Francisco Iratapuru. The peak of their harvesting season ended, and the Brazil nut and copaiba oils sold to a cosmetics company as part of an innovative arrangement that provides income and attends to wider social needs through a community development fund, this exceptional group of friends and family is the heart and soul of the expedition. A group of six Wajãpi Indians with ochre-colored skin and in bright red loincloths have been appointed by their communities to accompany the expedition. The skin dye comes from the Urucu plant and is mixed with oil and applied as both adornment and insect repellent.
 
Also present are the director of the national park, Cristoph Jaster, and his team, Marcelo Creao, from WWF's field office in Amapá, who has had the nearly impossible task of organizing the logistics for the entire expedition, Orlando Indio, our guide who lived upriver as a youth and last ascended the Jari twenty years ago, our police escort featuring Cadet Alcemira and Sergeant René doing double duty as master outboard motor mechanic, a paramedic, Claudio Maretti, WWF's protected areas management specialist, wildlife photographer Zig Koch, and videographer Gary Streiker, here to chronicle the expedition as part of a film project with National Geographic.
 
Marcelo inducts me into the expedition by handing me the jungle hammock rig that will be my bed for the next week, some super-powered insect repellent, and a waterproof and unsinkable jerry can. I string up the jungle hammock - a combination hammock, mosquito net, rain fly, and storage unit - at our riverside campsite, hear about the difficulties of navigating the small flotilla of aluminum and wooden boats through 160 kilometers of frequent rapids, and watch as one of the Wajãpi gets stitches applied to a nastily cut shin - the most common injury sustained on the trip.
 
Later in the afternoon, Cristoph and his team scout locations and hang the first signs marking the boundary of Tumucumaque Mountains National Park along the Jari. This turns out to be a backbreaking process of assembling the large aluminum plaques and frames, rigging a rope hoist, scaling just the right tree to carry the sign, and maneuvering everything into place while clinging to a slight branch.
 
While the hard work proceeds late into the afternoon, exuberant black and yellow weaver birds (known as japin) ply the rivers edge and attend to their hanging nests, a green tree frog stares placidly, a fat tarantula rests, and a large mantis strikes a pose. Later, a cool bath in the Jari's tea colored water and dinner featuring the day's catch, a large catfish, bring this memorable first day in the Amazon to a close.

Learn more about WWF's ARPA project - a giant step to protect the Amazon forest