Day 5

Due to the excitement of the festival that was coming closer each day, a community across the river set off fireworks at dawn and Tumbira locals responded in kind. Fireworks were a common but nerve-racking thing to hear in the week we spent there. 

This was the day that we travelled up the river to a different community called St. Helena do Ingles and we spent the day there. Approaching the community was one of the most amazing sights to witness, with colourful houses reflected perfectly onto the water to welcome us. Our guide, Demetrio, rowed us down the Iguapo Ingles into a swampy area and deep into the forest again. We had to watch our feet everywhere we walked to avoid the ants and spiders and we saw the pawprint of a jaguar in the mud. Not for the first time I wondered what I had gotten myself into. But even with the dangers and obstacles, the rainforest still felt like a welcoming place to enter.

Demetrio gave us sugar cane to taste and showed us some abandoned farmlands and casava houses. It was such an honour to meet Demetrio, who showed us his forest and trails with pride and believes that we all learn in conversation with others. After our walk and an amazing-as-always Amazonian lunch of fresh Tucunare and Jaraqui fish (and cupuaçu mousse for dessert), we had a swim in the river where the pier stretches far into the water. It was flooded at that moment, so it was partially submerged. That was the worst flood that the region had seen in years and we realised that all of our boat rides have been over the canopies of submerged trees, where we saw the tops of the canopy stick out from the river like tiny islands of shrubs.

In the afternoon we had a session on traditional medicine with Dona Pequena, who is married to Demetrio. She made a medicine for the chest problem that Nirvana had struggled with since the beginning of the journey, she let us taste the different herbs and oils that she makes and told us what they are used for. We discussed the importance of traditional knowledge and how to carry it over to the next generation as verbal and practical knowledge because none of this is documented on paper.