Where the boardwalk ended we took a wooden boat, sliding inch by inch into the forest. A caiman floated two metres off, holding our gaze; neither of us moved. Nobody on the boat called out, nobody raised a phone — the guide simply held the paddle crosswise, let the boat rest there, and waited for it to sink away on its own.
But it was not what those days were for. After the first breakfast the guide handed out a bird chart and began to walk by ear: stop and listen, then point the direction, and only then pass over the binoculars. A bird goes from a sound to a direction, and from a direction to a definite shape — often two or three minutes in between. In four days I learned more birds than in all the years before. Not because there were more birds, but because someone was willing to show them to me one at a time.
On the third day we went up to the canopy walkway: thirty metres above the floor, more than three hundred metres long, seven suspension bridges strung between eight platforms, swaying faintly under our steps. Before we climbed, the guide said it plainly: today you may see nothing at all. And indeed there were no monkeys, no toucans — only mist moving slowly over a rolling roof of trees. But from thirty metres up you understand for the first time that a forest is not a wall; it is layers. The floor is dark, the middle is vines, and only this top layer has the light.
Coming down brought the opposite lesson: crouch. The guide moved the leaf litter aside with a stick and showed us a column of leafcutter ants — each holding a fragment far larger than itself, a thin green line dozens of metres long, travelling a road they had cleared themselves. The leaves are not food; they are carried underground to a fungus garden, to grow mushrooms on. Further along, a spider lay flat on the underside of a leaf, motionless, until the guide’s finger stopped two inches above it. That afternoon we covered less than eight hundred metres, and it took two hours.
Not one meal repeated in four days: patarashca — a whole river fish wrapped in banana leaf and laid straight on the flame; juane — rice folded around chicken, bound in a bijao leaf and steamed into a round parcel; chonta, palm heart, shredded fine and dressed with lime, onion and coriander; and afterwards a glass of camu camu, sour as a lime and a passion fruit meeting halfway. The local palate, unadjusted for outsiders. Some dishes you love at the first mouthful; others take until the third.
We went out once more at night. Only after the engine was cut did the sound really begin: insects, frogs, some bird calling one note after another. The spotlight swept the bank and two red points came up first — eyes. The forest by day and the forest by night are two different places: by day you use your eyes, by night your ears and one beam of light. Only the second pass finishes the water.
On the day we left, we asked that guide for his number. He became the first name Sojourn held in the rainforest. The list has grown the same way ever since: go once ourselves, and if it is good, keep the number and return the following year with guests.