A typical patch of four square miles in any part of the Amazon is home to more than 1500 species of plants with flowers, 750 species of trees, 125 species of mammals, 400 birds, 100 reptiles, amphibians 60 and 150 of butterflies. Surprisingly, the Crown of a single tree, perhaps of more than 15 metres, may invoke more than five thousand species of insects. This is a region marked by diversity biological, geological, economic and social; documented for centuries by explorers. For example, many will recall the well-known legend of the Amazons, a myth created when the first man to travel from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic, Francisco de Orellana, supposedly He found en1542 to these women who were ferocious fighters. Since then, other adventurers, scientists and visionaries have traveled, studied, and occupied the region, albeit with varying degrees of success.
Among these, the most notable include: Alexander von Humboldt, whom mapping a passage that connects the basin of the Orinoco River in Venezuela with the Amazon basin, the Casiquiare Canal 300 miles long, available today but only for the most adventurous travelers. Henry Walter Bates and Alfred Russell Wallace, who together made one of the most productive discoveries in the Natural History category. Later, Alfred discovered, along with Darwin, the theory of evolution. Jacques Cousteau, the scientist and bold modern adventurer who, from what I know, is the only person with enough courage to have swum within a school of piranhas. When you visit the Amazon one cannot but appreciate the difficulties that these browsers they faced and the wonders that they found. From the airplane, the green carpet seems endless and peaceful; on the ground is precisely the opposite of input, the traveler will receive gurgles, squeals, Caws, chirps and a plethora of other strange sounds coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. Immediately, the scent of freshness of flowering plants mixed with the rancid smell of those in breakdown, which mark the incessant cycle of life and death in this jungle.