The Rivers Amazon -- Take 2

Yet another book and yet another country in my march across the southern hemisphere, which will end with Brazil.  I completed The Rivers Amazon in less overall time than I expected, but the last 50 or 60 pages were a bit of a struggle. Up to that point, though, I found it to be a quick read.

The author, a bit of an amateur botanist and explorer, set off in the late 1970s to see what he could learn about the medicinal Amazonian plants and the tribes who use them, while simultaneously hoping to recover from personal troubles which we hear no more about.  It is always the irony of those who want to see the unspoiled, though, that by their mere presence, they may have spoiled it. In fact, there is one passage near the end where the author reveals that his guide has tuberculosis and may have been the Patient Zero who killed hundreds of remote natives simply by his presence.  But what of the author himself? What illnesses may he have had, whether or not he knew about them, that he passed to the native peoples?

The adventure is reasonably interesting, but read with today's eyes, it comes off as a bit tone deaf.  I cannot dismiss, though, what fun it was to read about plants and animals we had seen while we were in the Amazon ourselves. That experience puts the whole book into context which I really enjoyed.