?, airplane, ....the young Amazon

We are beginning our descent into Miami. I have been trying to sleep as I had only around five hours of sleep last night and a few hours the night before that. I am on an older plane - public screens for the movie, a place on the armrests where ashtrays used to go.

On early Friday morning in the Amazon, I woke MS up so I could crawl into his hammock. I had only slept a little because, again, I was cold. I rolled myself into MS's hammock, accompanied by another fit of giggling, and cuddled with him, trying to locate a suitable position for the arm crushed underneath my body. I failed in this task and only stayed with him long enough to get warm. I was up early again, with Sylvano, hanging out for the coffee to be ready.

That morning I finally walked in the Amazon forest. A white-shirted, bare-footed Indian guide (from the Piaroa tribe) with a big knife led us through the narrow-trunked trees, wet brown leaves, tall palms and wiry saplings. He kept twirling a stick into holes, only once rewarded with a procession of large 24-hour ants, which the boys laboriously photographed while I watched huge, white-tipped mosquitoes circle around us hungrily, and withdrew my arms into my clothes.

Though the knife-weilding was impressive, slicing neatly through beautiful palm stalks and other green flourishing things, the forest was not particularly dense. Why couldn't MS and I find a way in yesterday?

So my four-hour tepui walk became a one hour in and out forest tromp. I suppose I can at least say I went where probably few tourists have gone before. I was surprised by the apparent youth of much of the forest, of narrow smooth trunks and new palms. Only a few trees looked old, with lush, thick, marked trunks.

It is funny how one reacts to the accomplishment of one's dreams. I was thrilled to be in the Amazon. But it wasn't unadulterated pleasure. My second analysing self was still there, monitoring my reactions, worried that I wasn't paying appropriate attention or savouring each and every moment.

I thought about how the forest wasn't as grand as the tree fern forest of the Dandenongs or silly like the Australian scribbly gums or playful like the symbiotics that wrap their roots wildly around obliging trees. There were no crazy exposed wall-like roots to clamber around or loads of mossy, fungally ground cover. The Amazon was simply wet and green and quiet in its spindly dignity.

the not-so-mighty Amazon