Reaching out my hand, Dr. Onders took it and pulled me onto the boat, "Welcome aboard!" It was a dingy little thing, about twenty feet long. Most of the supplies had been loaded in the fore, while a deeply tanned local stood at the helm. The captain gave me a grim stare, but then broke out into a smile. The river rushed by below us; extremely wide, very muddy, and with a pace that made me double check the straps of my life jacket. Going along the bank on each side of the river were similarly rustic ferries and boats of all kinds.
I had already been traveling nonstop for over forty hours now. It started with a ride to the airport, then a connecting flight. Then a flight down to Mexico. Then a multi-hour layover. Then another flight down to Bogota, and then my last flight down to Manaus. Finally, after using what little portuguese I knew, I was able to make my way to the docks, where I was able to find the professor.
Manaus lies at the meeting point of the western Amazon River and the Rio Negro. With a population of nearly 1.8 million people it's the last 'real civilization' you would have on the river before you head upstream. However, it wasn't at my destination just yet.
At the age of 21, I was the youngest doctoral student at the university. I was in Brazil to help Dr. Onders with her research studying exotic botany, and hopefully get a start on my thesis. Her lab looked at all aspects of plant biology: evolutionary adaptation, physiology, genetics, and even more exotic things such as chemical communication, and motility. She had become famous by going where other academics wouldn't dare to go. Previously, she had spent months in the Cambodian rainforest, and nearly a year going all around the central African highlands. This time her research was focusing on the western portion of the Amazon Rainforest, and she had a grant supporting her for over a year down in South America. Earlier in the Spring, she and the lab's post-doc had traveled down with all the equipment they would need to do their research, setting up camp and getting everything ready.
It wasn't like I hadn't worked in challenging environments before. During my undergrad I had helped do some research one summer high up in the Canadian Rockies doing surveys of alpine flora. Bears, extreme weather, and malnutrition being the worst of it. However this was going to be my most challenging excursion I had ever completed. For most of the past year I had been preparing for this with language training, wilderness survival training, fifteen mile hikes almost every other day. I even had to get three full rounds of shots to boost my immune system and prepare for various potential diseases. I don't think my body had ever been in such good shape before.
The next two weeks involved the three of us heading steadily upstream on our little boat. The further we went, the bustling little port cities on the river became sleepy little towns. Soon enough, we were more or less on our own on the river. Occasionally we would pass by a local in a canoe, but they would keep their distance. I tried my best to keep track of our progress on my little map that I had, but after the eighth little tributary we turned up, I was lost. There wasn't any record of where we were on paper.
Looking at me puzzling over my map, Dr. Onders smiled at me, "Don't worry Sarah! Jo knows where we are going. Don't you Jonathan!" Our captain looked over and gave a sage nod. "Besides, we have our GPS to really guide us." I looked over at the little screen with its bright liquid crystal display. It was our lifeline to the outside world.
Dr. Onders had been searching for rare plants off and on in the western amazon for decades now, but this was the first chance she has had to truly take her time. It started as rumors told to her by colleagues at various conferences, some jungle liana, capable of unheard of motility. She had a couple leads in the area that seemed promising. After making contact with some local professors, they got her in touch with some locals in the area. Supposedly some of the rumors were true. In years after unusually high rainfall, in certain areas of the rainforest, there were almost explosive levels of growth that would happen. With that information, and grant in hand, the good doctor had waited for a year with especially heavy rainfall. Perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was climate change, but last year was the year, so she was planning on spending the next four months or so looking for this fabled plant.
The trip up the river was mostly boredom, slowly chugging against the current, checking, then rechecking the supplies and equipment we brought in. It was mostly unnecessary since all the key equipment had already been brought up the first trip upriver by Dr. Onders and one of the postgraduate students from the lab. The two of them had done all the truly hard work of finding the base camp site and setting it up.
Otherwise I just occupied my time by drawing in one of the sketch pads I brought, and working on my portuguese with Jo. He was mostly taciturn, and a little gruff when his boat acted up, but overall was friendly. He had been working on the river all his life and "planned to continue as long as the river would let him."
As much as I tried, I hadn't been ready for the jungle. Each day was incredibly muggy and most evenings were interrupted by a downpour of some sort, more than once the threat of lightning stopped our progress. Even if I had some shelter from the rain, I just sort of gave up truly being dry for the next couple months after I had sweated through my shirt for the fifth day in a row.
Everything was so green as far as the eye could see. There was an almost painfully intense verdancy to everything. Unlike what you saw back home, these plants were just always growing. Constant warm temperatures and consistent rainfall meant everything was thriving and competing for resources. Dr. Onders and I spent hours talking about the different species we saw, too many to name, many likely without a formal name.
Finally we got to our destination. The base camp was located above a beach line where our tributary and a smaller creek met. I could see from the boat, in a small clearing were two temporary buildings that had been sent up. Walking down the beach towards us was Andre, the other member of our lab team. He had remained at camp while Dr. Onders came to get me and the supplies I was bringing.
"Hello there!" he gave us a big wave. A large man with a scruffy beard, he looked tired. I could imagine he was absolutely exhausted after being out here for nearly two months. We had our emergency beacon in case something went wrong, but I could imagine how on edge it could make you. It was dangerous out here. In the states if you got lost, you could expect a search party to come looking, maybe a helivac. Out here, if you turn on your emergency beacon, you might get some help in a day if everything goes your way.
"Andre! Glad to see you survived out here. Did you run into any trouble?" Dr. Onder asked.
"Surprisingly, no. I was even able to complete the sample survey for sector delta."
"Excellent, excellent! Let's get everything unloaded and we can get you on your way home.
The four of us hauled the boxes of supplies off the boat. There were various freeze dried and vacuum sealed packages of food, sample vials, and other odds and ends that needed resupplied. In turn, we brought on board all the samples that Andre was going to bring back home with him. All in all it didn't take much more than a couple hours to get it all settled. We ate a quick lunch, and sent Andre and Jonah on their way back down river.
Dr. Onders got me up to speed on the set up of the camp. The two main 'buildings' were constructed using hollow aluminum poles and canvas stretched between them, each with a canopy over the top. Both had had their dirt underneath pounded flat, so the surface acted as a passable floor underfoot. The smaller building acted as a sleeping quarters, with just enough room for two cots, while the other one was more utilitarian. That one had all the research equipment and supplies inside, along with a couple tables set up for research and eating. Most importantly the 'restroom' was a clearing in a forest about twenty yards from camp with a shovel in it. That was probably my biggest, "things are different out here moment", up to that point.
For the next couple days we organized the samples and recordings that Andre had taken, and I familiarized myself with the routine of living and doing research in the jungle. The biggest difference for me was at night. There wasn't any artificial light for miles, so with the exception of some light from the waxing moon, it was completely dark in the tent. I was stretched out on the cot, underneath a thin sheet. Initially I had trouble getting to sleep. It seems silly to say, but the forest around us just seemed alive. My ears perked up at every little sound, every branch rustling, every bird call, the buzzing of all the insects. I had been given all the shots, and made sure to diligently take all my antimalarial medicine, but I was still glad for my netting around my cot. You never knew what could happen.
After the first couple days we set up a schedule: pack and prepare in the morning, hike through towards a designated location, take samples and make observations, then finally return to camp to process what we learned for the day and plan our next move. Dr. Onders had acquired a government map of the area that mostly just showed us where the river was located, but most importantly it was to scale. We planned on breaking the map up into different sectors and surveying each of those sectors each day. If we found something interesting we could go back, or even set up a secondary camp near the site of interest.
Each day we hiked out through the jungle, blazing a trail where we could, and just easing our way around the dense brush where we couldn't. Every once in a while we would spot a new plant, or just something interesting. We would take a picture, and write down a description of where we found it, the conditions we found it in; and if it appeared we would not harm the population by doing so, take a sample to be studied later.
After the first week and a half we had made lots of excursions out, and between Andre, Dr. Onders, and myself, a decent chunk of the map had been explored. Most days it rained for at least a couple hours. You got used to it, and you had to accept that unless you were under a roof you were going to get pretty thoroughly drenched. A poncho could only do so much to protect you. I began to look forward to the evenings when I would strip down and change into some dry clothes for the rest of the evening.
While we hadn't yet found the plant at the source of the rumors, we had found quite a few plants of potential interest. I had been still wondering what I should look into for my thesis, and a couple of the specimens had sparked some ideas. There was a small flower that grew on the bark of trees that seemed to have developed a relationship with a certain species of ant. The ants would leave the bodies of their dead by the rhizomes of the flower, and in turn collect the dead and dying leaves of the plant, returning to the nest with them. It seemed at this point at least an intriguing line of inquiry.
It was a couple weeks later when Dr. Onders found what we were looking for. It was a muggy early afternoon, and we were following what seemed to be a game trail through what we deemed to be the 'Oscar' section of the forest when we spotted it. The two of us had spent most of the morning working our way around the base of a cliff, following it around as best we could. Eventually, the cliff turned until it met another rise of land. Between them a small canyon formed, that as we followed up, eventually opened up into a little valley sheltered from the rest of the forest. Scattered about were little clearings, which wasn't the astonishing part. The thing that stopped us in our tracks was in the heart of the valley. There we found around the trees in that valley were thousands and thousands of vines, completely extraordinary in nature.
"This is remarkable! Look, look at this!" Dr. Onders exclaimed excitedly. He pointed out a vine that had wrapped itself around a tree near us. "My god, look at the texture on that. That looks more cactacae than any liana I've ever seen."
