Amazon Views

Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon

It’s an early start; a very early start! Planes are used in the Amazon much like the British use buses. To reach your intended destination typically entails a 4 a.m. take-off and three or four stops en route, while various people get on and off. The flights always appear to be full and the planes always appear to be new.


On this occasion, however, on my flight into Juruti from Santarem – the Amazon River’s third city after Belem and Manaus – I am on a (very) small propeller plane chartered by ALCOA (the multi-national mining company). Larger planes are unable to use Juruti’s short, red dirt airstrip. Flying low at only a few thousand feet, the early morning views are spectacular. The river near Santarem is approaching 60 kilometres wide and divides into a maze of channels and islands. The islands are painted every shade of green, shedding swirling, early river mist like smoke. Some are forested with white sandy beaches, such that you could be forgiven for believing you might be in the Caribbean. It’s also the place where the muddy, brown Amazon meets the dark, clear Rio Tapajos – the two waters flowing side by side for several miles before the mighty Amazon gradually, but inevitably, dominates.

Santarem Sunrise

Amazon Islands

Caribbean or Amazon?

Map reading?

Cruising at around 5,000 feet (I know this because I am sitting directly behind the pilot and am watching his every move over his shoulder), I become alarmed and think we may be lost when the pilot unfolds a road map; but instead of navigating by it, he places it over the windscreen to eclipse the blinding sun – good move – but I now wonder how he can see where we’re going!

Unfolding beneath us is the forest home of 20 million people – not necessarily the pristine wilderness we are often led to believe. Flying above it all, though, it’s hard to see where they all live. For hundreds of miles a patchwork quilt of green shades intimates the different stages of forest regrowth after fields have been left to naturally regenerate. Often, in the distance, a column of white smoke rises from another patch of clearance, although I reckon that much of this is simply the cleaning of overgrown fields rather than the burning of primary forest. Recently cleared areas are easily identified by their bare redness, often sporting tiny shacks, or the rows of young crops. Occasionally a thin red line snakes through the green, devoid of vehicles, and liquid snakes literally meander through the forest flashing diamond light, trading water for sediment and draining half a continent. From this altitude it’s like a secondary school geography lesson displaying every conceivable concoction of riverine features: meanders, ox-bow lakes, river cliffs, floodplains, deltas, and the rest. You know when you are flying over remoter areas when the green extends in every direction and becomes less a patchwork quilt, more an endless green blanket with the texture of a broccoli head.

Forest patchwork quilt

Forest broccoli blanket

'nuff said!

Snap back to reality! We are descending to a short, red dirt airstrip, surrounded by towering jungle trees rapidly rising to meet us; I need to check that the pilot is doing his job properly!