Amazonia- Part 1- Processing...

Before leaving for Tiputini, our professor the great King Cecil Kelly Swing, gave us absolutely no information about how hot, sticky, itchy and uncomfortable we were going to be for the next month of our lives. He chose instead to tell us about the latin root of the word Amazonia: meaning without (A) breast (maz) after the indigenous women who would have one breast removed in order to better use their bow and arrow. Even though we knew nothing of the logistics of the trip or of our impending discomfort this lingual tidbit gave me the courage I needed to charge the rainforest head first. I mean if native women have been slicing off their breasts, pretty bad ass if I do say so myself, for long enough to have a huge swath of South America named after them I could certainly handle the rainforest for a meager month. Right?

The view from the canopy tower, 150 feet above the forest floor.

Well, for the first few days I was completely convinced that I would drown in my own sweat before making it out of the Amazon alive. I was overwhelmed. Everything was green. The wildlife was so well hidden I was convinced it didn't exist and that only with the magical powers (or maybe even remote controlled animatronics) of our amazing elderly guide, Meyer, did any creature show itself. After the ease of capturing stunning photographs and coming face to face with some of the rarest animals in the world in Galapagos I was discouraged. Maybe the article I read in National Geographic was a hoax too (http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/01/125-yasuni-national-park/wallace-text).

But, as time sped on, I learned that to see anything in the rainforest all you needed to invest was time. Realizing that the one thing I needed was the one thing I had spent far too much of already, I started spending every hour possible roaming the trails of the Tiputini Biodiversity Station.

Tiputini is located within the Orellana province of Ecuador 280 km ESE of Quito within the Yasuni Biosphere Reserve. Yasuni was recently named the most biodiverse place on the planet.

Within minutes of adopting this new mindset and taking my time to process small fragments of the craziness that is the Amazon, I was rewarded with the sightings of LOTS of beautiful metallic beetles. Since over 80% of the fauna in Yasuni doesn't have a scientific name as of yet, maybe I even saw a species new to science!

Yeah, so what? I saw a bunch of beetles. But they were pretty shiny and just a small hint at the wonders of the rainforest soon to come my way.