Situated near the banks of the Ucayali river, Pucallpa has regular boat traffic to the Peruvian city of Iquitos further downstream. Pucallpa is an unattractive frontier town, but an important trading hub, since it is only one of two cities in the Peruvian Amazon with road access to the rest of Peru. While the Urubamba is a narrow all along its course,with the jungle and wildlife never far away, the Ucayali quickly becomes nearly a mile wide, even though still thousands of miles away from the Atlantic ocean. Where the Urubamba river joins the Apurimac river, it becomes the Ucayali River, which itself becomes the Amazon river after its confluence with the Rio Marañon.
The upper reaches of the Amazon are difficult to reach by road or river, but as soon as I reached the lower elevations of the Amazon basin, boat traffic became more common, and small homesteads and settlements lined the river banks of the Urubamba river. However, recent natural gas exploration is not only threatening the local environment, but also the traditional culture of the native people. The Machiguenga Indians live in small settlements in a remote region along the lower Urubamba river.
The force of the water has carved huge gorges and canyons into the rock, often making navigation very difficult and dangerous. When I embarked on this boat I had only arrived the previous night, but further down river I spent several days at native villages waiting for a boat.Īll water from the Adeans glaciers, snow runoff, and rain flows toward the Amazon river, cascading into the Amazon basin in massive waterfalls and gushing rivers. At this small hamlet, Kiteni, the water level of the Urubamba river was too low for boat traffic, so I had to travel another day through the jungle in the bed of a large pick-up loaded with drums of diesel fuel.įinding a passenger boat on the Urubamba takes a lot of patience. Settlements throughout the sparsely populated Amazon are often located at road junctions or where waterways meet roads. Due to the high moisture, epiphytes and other plants with air roots are commonly found on trees. The cloud forest gets much of its moisture from low-hanging clouds, hence its name. Machu Picchu is surrounded by spectacular cloud forest, which gradually gives way to the majestic Amazon rain forest at lower elevations. The Amazon rain forest stretches from the eastern slopes of the Andes all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Above is a view of the Sacred Valley and the narrow Urubamba river. From there it drains the Sacred Valley, home to many Inca ruins, and flows below Machu Picchu before descending into the Amazon basin. The Urubamba river, which is one of the major tributaries of the Amazon river, has its source near Cuzco, Peru. I passed towering cliffs with clay licks where dozens of colorful macaws gathered to lick vital nutrients, watched monkeys climb through the dense foliage along the banks, and observed river dolphins playing alongside the boats upon which I was traveling. On my way to the Amazon I passed through dangerous rapids and narrow gorges, stayed at hospitable indigenous communities and was welcomed by settlers to spend the night in their palm-thatched huts. My journey was at once magical and tedious, dangerous and mesmerizing. When I set out from the Peruvian city of Cuzco to travel by train along the Urubamba River, and then continue down river by boat towards the Amazon, I had no idea about how vast and incomprehensible this region would turn out to be. But these superlatives cannot aptly describe the immense ecological and cultural diversity of the region. It is the world's largest river system with the world's largest rain forest and greatest bio diversity. The Amazon is a vast ecosystem, stretching from the eastern slopes of the Andean mountains in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. Traveling Down the Amazon River A Pictorial Essay from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean As seen in the Transitions Abroad Webzine
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