Into the Green Heart of the World (Iwokrama, part 2)

The trouble with trying to tell people about any treks through a rainforest--unless you really are on the trail of kidnappers, terrorists, or creatures unknown to science--is that there is little to tell about the scenery. Trees, trees, big trees, trees, really big trees, more trees. Mysterious rustling sounds that tell you that your heavy footsteps have startled something into hiding. And then more trees, trees, trees.

Try to focus on your movement and on the events on the trek, and you end up with: walking through trees, walking through more trees, walking, walking, walking. Talk about the stops you made on the trail, and you end up talking about a clearing here, a conversation there.

So I think that any account of a rainforest trek is likely to do a disservice to the trip itself, because nothing quite captures the experience. Yes, you see only trees all around. Yes, there isn't much to do except trudge along and swat at insects until the next stop, where you can take a moment to sweat some more and drink. But it is also an incomparable experience, an experience to remind you of the primal workings of the world, awe-inspiring and humbling. Sometimes it seems like one continuous moment of marvel, just to be there. How do you write about something like that?

That long disclaimer aside and never to be brought up again, let me try and tell you what walking through Iwokrama is like.

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We arrived in the rainy season, which meant that the edges of the forest on the banks of the swollen Essequibo were under as much as thirty feet of water. Even parts of the short trails at the back of the Field Centre were impassable, unless one wanted to slog through thigh-high mud.

More attractively, this also meant that we could take a canoe and paddle through parts of the swamped forest--ducking through overhanging branches and dodging half-submerged tree trunks to get into clearings that were disquietingly beautiful. Cayman thrive here, and it's not hard to imagine other things: anacondas, piranhas, jaguars. "This may be the very best place in the world to see a wild jaguar or a free-flying harpy eagle," says Audobon magazine. The creatures here are often rare, and almost mythical in quality: giant anteaters, giant otters, capybara, arapaima, jaguarundi.

It helps greatly that all tours in Iwokrama are managed by the same science center that is tasked with conservation and natural resource management. All activities are conceived to promote knowledge, and executed with the utmost respect for the environment. And, while there are foreign scientists posted at the field center (notably a white-bearded British man in khakis who we could almost always see on the porch of his cottage, looking every bit an explorer from a hundred years ago), most of the staff are Amerindian people from the region, mostly Makushi from Fairview, the only settlement allowed inside Iwokrama. It's a model for conservation efforts elsewhere, the way the center has partnered itself with the local communities, drawing on traditional ways as well as modern scientific techniques.

We had one guide assigned to us for the entirety of our trip--Laurence, a Makushi local who has lived in Fairview most of his life. He had gone to school in Moka, near Georgetown, but left school at age 13 to go work as an errand boy in the mining towns. But returning home to Fairview, he trained as a guide, a post he has held proudly for 11 years now.

How do you guide people through trees? Laurence would stop once in a while, and tell us: this is a water vine, which can provide life-saving liquid to a dehydrated hiker; don't confuse it with this vine, whose anesthetizing sap the Makushi take and throw into pools of water to stun fish. That sound you hear in the distance is the cry of a red spider monkey, and it's coming this way. That flash of red fur in the undergrowth is an agouti. And come, let's hurry, you've disturbed a trail of army ants. (This last thing was directed towards me, as I was trying to take a picture of the inside of a log, blissfully unaware that I was standing right in the painful path of marauding army ants. I miraculously survived with only one bite--which nonetheless left a bruise on my leg--but the ants took out their bitey anger on Kristan, who was at the rear of our fleeing line. Interestingly, Kristan also narrowly escaped the dreaded bite of a bullet ant, nearly an inch long and whose sting is said to be as painful as a gunshot wound.)

Laurence laughed gently whenever we plied him with our anxious questions--Will we see a jaguar on this trail? Will it eat us? How about a bushmaster? Where do they hide? Will it bite us? The thing to remember is that most animals are afraid of you more than you're afraid of them, he says.

There are many trails around the field center, but the most rewarding one is the trek up Turtle Mountain, a 20-minute boat ride and then an hour-and-a-half hike up to the top, the most accessible vantage point from which you can get an idea of how vast the rainforest is.

And it is vast. One million acres of trees and rivers and creatures. From Turtle Mountain, the view looks like an illustration out of The Lost World, or perhaps from Genesis. Thick forest with mysterious sounds echoing from inside, a pair of scarlet macaws flying over the treetops. I imagined

About 20 percent of the world's oxygen, it is estimated, is produced in the South American rainforests. Some estimates say that we are losing 137 plant, animal and insect species every single day due to rainforest deforestation. That equates to 50,000 species a year. Five hundred years ago, there were about ten million Indians living in the Amazonian Rainforest (of which Iwokrama is a part) five centuries ago. Today there are less than 200,000.


Why come here? I've often said that I think mindful travel can make one a better person. If nothing else, coming to the rainforest pushes your consciousness up close to the majesty and the fragility of the natural world. This is a forest that has stood for millions of years, and we came this close to destroying it within a few generations of industrialization. Yes, yes, we've all heard the data and the speeches (thanks, Al Gore!), but coming here is a reminder of both urgency and of hope: this is what protects us, and this is what we need to protect. And look, there's a way we can do this.

More treehugger resources:
The Iwokrama Centre for Conservation and Development
The Darwin Initiative: North Rupununi Community website
The Biological Diversity of the Guiana Shield from the Museum of Natural History
Rainforest Facts from Rain-Tree.com