1) The Amazon Basin is so large that the entire continental US would easily fit in it. It starts at 18,363 feet up eastern side of Andes mountains in Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, and runs all the way across Brazil to the Atlantic Ocean. THE AMAZON RIVER IS THE LARGEST RIVER SYSTEM WITHIN THE LARGEST RAIN FOREST IN THE WORLD.
2) Ships can navigate up the river as far a Iquitos, Peru. We will only go as far as Manaus which is 900 miles up from mouth at Atlantic. The Amazon river is 4000 miles long.
3) There are only 730,000 indigenous people left living in small villages scattered throughout the basin. (Remember the basin is bigger than US) They are now mostly in protected "reservations". We are talking Indian like people who still use blow darts in hunting. We will not see any as they are normally far away from the river.
4) The people on the river we will see are called "Caboclos". They are a mixed race of Portuguese,African, and indigenous.
5) Geologists have determined that millions and millions of years ago South America and Africa were one continent. Over millions of years they separated into the continents of Africa and South America. The Amazon basin was an ocean bed but as the Andes rose the water drained and the basin was formed. Again, we are talking over a long, long period of time.
6) Since the basin is a very old ocean bed, the basin today does not consist of rich soil. In fact it is a very hard clay bed, and hence, not good for cultivation. The soil can only be a depth of a few inches.
7) The Amazon basin is not a jungle as portrayed in the old Tarzan movies. It is a rain forest. The basin is basically flat for miles and miles and miles. During wet season some of the forests are flooded and that is why you will be seeing houses on stilts in my photos along the river later on.
8) In the rain forests there are different layers. Trees can be 120 feet high with narrow trunks reaching for the sunlight. Then there is another layer not as high. Then at lower levels are shorter and shorter plants and vegetation. They all grow on a few inches of soil and the root systems are extremely close to surface. The vegetation is so dense that they all help support each other. Nutrients come from the rain.
9) As I said the mouth of the Amazon is 200 miles across. The average width of the entire river during rainy season is 30 miles and 15 miles during dry season. Dry season is only 2 months of the year and just ended.
10) There are a few islands near the mouth of the river. One is as large as the country of Switzerland and we passed by it earlier.
11) The Amazon river is fed by over 3000 tributaries, 1000 of them being over 200 miles long.
12) As I said the Amazon is the largest river in the world by volume (would be longest too but Nile is 75 miles longer). By volume I mean, the amount of water it discharges into the Atlantic Ocean. It discharges 7.1 million cubic feet of water per second. That equals 4.5 trillion gallons per day. To put this in perspective, the Mississippi River is second in volume with only 645,000 cubic feet per second.
13) Species found in Amazon basin:
40,000 plant species categorized so far
3,000 fresh water fish species
1,300 species of birds
427 species of mammals
400 species of amphibians
387 species of reptiles
14) Some species of fruits and vegetables are only found here.
15) 25% of the world's pharmaceuticals are derived from plants only found here. Since only 10% of the plants in the Amazon Basin have been categorized, there is huge potential for more drugs to be discovered in the future.
