This post was origionally dictated by sat phone (thanks Chloe) but updated when we just arrived in Coari. All going well – the Internet will be operational again from now on and images and videos will be back on the agenda… This week’s progress has been somewhat comically depressing. I misinterpreted Google Earth, and the [...]

The diverse plants and animals found in the rainforest have a multitude of uses for people, including for food, clothing, building materials, and medicines. Most people who have heard of curare know it as an arrow poison of indigenous people in South America. It is derived from woody vines found in the rainforest. What is [...]

As Cho, Pete and I descended a muddy forested slope, the horizon, normally obscured by the trees, appeared – a sure sign that a river was ahead. We were confronted by the most depressing wall of tight bamboo cane interwoven with razor grass. We had to cross this valley and normally at times like this [...]

Brazil celebrates 45% reduction in Amazon deforestation. The Brazilian government yesterday announced a “historic” drop in the deforestation of the Amazon, weeks before world leaders meet in Copenhagen for climate change talks. Brazilian authorities said that between August 2008 and July this year, deforestation in the world’s largest tropical rainforest fell by the largest amount [...]

Melodramatic title? Not really. Today while cutting at the front, machete in hand, I unknowingly stepped straight over a muscular, coiled, pit viper. Pete, my sponsor who’s walking with us for three weeks, saw a flicker of movement on the floor, as the viper prepared to strike. The colouring of the brown and black snake is so [...]

This website focuses on the countdown to Copenhagen, with loads of information on climate change and related issues.     One article on the site (view it here) describes how climate change will impact the livelihoods of Andean peoples; how alterations in local environmental conditions will affect the health and productivity of crops and livestock.  [...]

Imagine a field thick with tall goose grass, so dense you have to cut your way through… Then imagine that the plant not only sticks to you, but gives you paper cuts…  Then imagine that the paper has been dipped in glue and then broken glass, and tears open, rather than cuts your skin.  Welcome to [...]

Here is an extract from an article that appeared in The Times newspaper, by Mark Henderson, Science Editor: The fate of an ancient and enigmatic South American civilisation which carved a strange network of ritual lines and drawings into the landscape before its sudden collapse has been pieced together by British scientists. The Nazca civilisation, which [...]