Sun, Sep 14, 2008
Former Royal Marine Bruce Parry starts his journey along the Amazon at its Peruvian source in the Andes, the other domineering feature in South America. There live the Quechua, the ethnic Inca descendants, who still mix pagan and other traditions with the conquistadors' Spanish Catholic culture. Bruce's host family chew coca-leaves and herd alpacas, llamas producing the best wool. In the valley down-stream, past world-class daunting rapids, lives the Ashaninka tribe, who cultivate coca, which legal and has legitimate uses to chew against the altitude. Coca is also processed chemically, involving grave river pollution, into a paste which is the basis for cocaine, illegal but without realistic alternative in market terms, although their share of the drug trade profit is minute. Bruce joins a US-supported army raid on the cocaine production, which has no net effect. Their jungle is invaded by loggers and guerrillas. Bruce's brain-infected producer Matt's life depends on an urgent far helicopter flight to Lima.
