Amazon Part I: The Outer Amazon
A Perspective That Changes Everything
December 2025
Most people imagine the Amazon as one country, Brazil, but the truth is more intricate and far more astonishing.
The Amazon rainforest spans nine countries, and Ecuador, though small on the map, holds one of its most biologically rich and ecologically important regions.
The Amazon River itself does not flow through Ecuador, yet this country forms a vital part of the greater Amazon Basin, fed by powerful tributaries like the Napo, Pastaza, and Putumayo. Ecuador contains only a small percentage of the Amazon by size, yet it holds some of the highest levels of biodiversity ever recorded anywhere on Earth.
This is because Ecuador sits at a rare convergence of the Andes, the Equator, and the Amazon Basin. Where these three worlds meet, life explodes into possibility.
Stepping into the Ecuadorian Amazon does not feel like visiting a place. This is not wilderness in the way humans define it. It is a self-sustaining organism, a continent-sized network of trees, rivers, insects, birds, mammals, fungi, and microbes all communicating, balancing, adapting, and stabilizing the planet.
I felt that entering the Amazon touched something very deep inside me and impacted the way I see life itself. I sensed the presence of something far older than humanity. I was able to witness and understand how deeply everything is connected. I felt the difference between noise and intelligence. I very much slowed down, not because I chose to but because the forest invited me to.
It is impossible to walk into the Amazon without being changed, even in ways you may not understand at that moment.
Where the Rainforest Opens Its Door
Reaching Sacha Lodge feels like stepping into a hidden world deep within the Amazon. Nothing about this place is simple or direct, and that is exactly why it remains so pristine.
After landing in Coca, my journey continued by speedboat for 2.5 hours along the Napo River. The farther I traveled, the wider and quieter the river became, its surface carrying the color of earth and time. On each side, the rainforest rose like a living wall.
As I traveled the Napo River, I noticed scattered dwellings along the riverbanks, small wooden homes raised on stilts, with canoes tied to the water’s edge. They were few and far between, each one separated by long stretches of dense forest.
There were no large villages, no clusters of houses. Life here is isolated, quiet, and spread out, shaped by the flow of the river and the vastness of the land.
Somewhere along that river, something in me shifted. It felt as if I were leaving the human world behind and entering a realm that existed long before us, a place where time stretches differently and life listens.
When the boat finally slowed, we stepped onto a narrow wooden platform where we were greeted by a few local guides. I was traveling with a group of adventurers like me. Then we began a 30-minute walk through the forest, surrounded by towering trees, dense undergrowth, and air that felt warm and heavy with life. Every step drew us deeper into a world that watches as much as it welcomes.
At the end of the trail, another transition awaited: a cut-out canoe. For about another 30 minutes, we glided through a narrow waterway where trees bent close above us, their branches tracing shapes in the air. The water was still and dark, reflecting the forest like a quiet mirror.
This is the only way to arrive. There are no roads, no vehicles, no interruptions from the outside world.
Sacha Lodge can be reached only by water.
When the channel finally opened, the lodge appeared, a sanctuary built entirely on pillars above a peaceful blackwater lagoon. Wooden walkways connect the rooms, dining spaces, and observation platforms, all suspended above the water. The forest surrounds everything, not as scenery but as presence.
Nothing here feels imposed. The lodge rests within the rainforest with a quiet humility, as if it were placed gently into the landscape rather than built upon it.
Each time I returned from an excursion, I felt drawn to pause before entering my room, to listen to the forest breathing, to watch the light shift across the lagoon, to feel how the rainforest holds you without words.
Sacha Lodge was not simply where I stayed. It was the threshold through which the Amazon opened itself, a place where the human world softened, and the ancient world began to speak.
In the Amazon, every mode of exploration reveals a different dimension: the canoe offers first contact, walking brings deeper intimacy, night opens the mystical realm, and the canopy reveals the forest’s higher intelligence.
The Amazon by Canoe, Where the Forest First Speaks
The Amazon reveals itself in layers, and the first layer is always water.
You enter the forest not by walking into it, but by gliding through its veins, the narrow, dark, reflective channels that carry life in every direction. Only from a canoe you understand that the rainforest is not just a forest. It is a water system, a breathing network of rivers, tributaries, creeks, and flooded worlds.
And these waters carry you into three different kinds of forests, each with its own rules and character.
The Flooded Forest: This is the forest that spends months underwater. Trees grow with their roots submerged, their trunks rising straight out of the river like pillars. Fish swim among roots. Birds perch on branches that once hung over dry land. As you move through it, every reflection looks like a doorway into another world.
The Blackwater Forest: Here, the water looks dark and still, almost mirror-like. It is stained naturally by tannins from fallen leaves. The silence is thicker, softer. This forest feels ancient, undisturbed, like a place time has forgotten to measure.
The Terra Firme Forest: This is the dry, never-flooded jungle. The solid ground world. Its roots anchor deep, its trees stand taller, and the density is overwhelming, layers of vegetation built on top of each other, competing for that narrow thread of light.
What surprised me was how different each forest felt, not just visually, but emotionally. The flooded forest felt like movement. The blackwater forest felt like memory. Terra Firme felt like endurance.
And yet, as our canoe slid through these worlds, everything blended into a single continuous intelligence. I felt the sensation of gliding through a living labyrinth.
The channels were so dense with vegetation that they looked chaotic, a tangle of branches, vines, leaves, and shadows. But the closer you looked, the more you understood that nothing in the jungle is random. Everything has a role.
Plants climb not because they are wild, but because they are purposeful. Roots wrap around trees not because they are messy, but because they are strategic. Layers overlap because this is how the forest maximizes life.
I felt like I was in a trance; the movement of the canoe, the softness of the light, and the density of green created a kind of hypnosis. That is the Amazon’s way, it slows your mind until you begin to perceive not only with your body but mostly with your soul.
And then there was Geranio, our guide, whose presence in the forest felt almost symbiotic. He didn’t “spot” animals. He sensed them.
In the Amazon, perception is not a skill, it is a relationship. Geranio reminded me that awareness is a form of intelligence that science is still learning how to measure.
On the canoe, this became undeniable. Geranio didn’t search left or right. He didn’t use binoculars. He simply listened, not with his ears, but with his presence.
He paused, tilted his head slightly, and then pointed: “There,” he whispered.
And suddenly: a troop of squirrel monkeys leaping at the edge of a branch, a capuchin monkey watching quietly from behind leaves, a heron standing still like carved bone, or even the smooth, dark curve of an anaconda resting near the waterline.
Geranio explained it simply: “you communicate with nature through resonance.” He was tuning himself to the forest’s frequency, literally and not metaphorically.
Geranio’s mother is a healer, and his grandfather was a shaman, he is a descendant of Kichwa people. He did not scan the branches the way a tourist might. He listened. With his whole being.
And in that moment, I understood something essential: the Amazon does not reveal itself to the eyes first. It reveals itself to resonance.
Moving through this watery corridor felt like drifting through the threshold of another dimension. The deeper we traveled, the more I felt myself dissolving into the rhythm of the forest, carried by wonder, silence, and the sensation of being both an observer and in the same time observed.
It was here, on this quiet stretch of water, that the Amazon first opened its soul to me.
The Amazon on Foot, Where the Forest Teaches Without Words
Walking through the Amazon felt like entering a place where everything is alive with purpose. Nothing here exists by accident. Everything communicates something, protects something, feeds something. And nothing reveals itself unless you slow down enough to see.
Geranio, walked through the forest with a quiet familiarity, and the forest seemed to recognize him. With him, the Amazon became more than a landscape. It became a teacher.
Learning to See the Forest’s Intelligence. The forest floor was dim and warm, alive with the scent of soil and decomposing leaves. Only a small amount of sunlight reaches this layer, so life adapts by climbing upward, attaching itself to anything that gives it a chance to rise. Plants grow on plants. Roots twist around fallen trunks. Every ending becomes a beginning.
As we moved along the trail, small flashes of life appeared and disappeared again, a toucan calling from high in the canopy, an oropendola weaving its hanging nest, a prehistoric-looking bird with blue skin and red eyes rustling in the leaves, a single parrot crossing in a streak of green.
Birds appeared in brief glimpses, as if the forest were revealing them by choice. We saw two spectacled owls perched in the shadows of a tree, watching us with deep, unmoving eyes. It felt like a quiet blessing.
The smaller creatures in the Amazon carry as much mystery as the larger ones: dragonflies, butterflies, cicadas, and many other insects that I cannot name. Despite the immensity of life, the rainforest does not overwhelm you. It invites you to look, to notice, to slow down enough for wonder to find you.
While walking and feeling enchanted by this magical world, I saw Geranio pointing to a humongous tree, the kapok tree. This is one of the great elders of the Amazon, living 200 to 300 years, sometimes over 500. Its enormous base supports a vertical world that, from below, you can only guess at.
The kapok is not just a tree. It is a city. More than a hundred species may live on it: orchids, bromeliads, vines, insects, small mammals, birds.
Indigenous communities call it the Axis of Life, the connection between the spiritual world, the human world, and the underworld. When I placed my hand on its massive trunk, something inside me steeled. A clarity rose from somewhere deep:
To rise, you must be rooted. To support others, you must stand in your own strength. And growth is both upward and inward.
The kapok does not dominate the forest. It holds it.
And for a moment, it held me too. That was later, on a 130-tall tower deck.
Medicine in Motion: At one point, Geranio stopped beside another tree.
He pressed his finger gently into a nest of tiny ants, let them swarm over his skin, then rubbed them between his palms. “This is insect repellent,” he said.
The ants released a sharp, clean scent. Their own defense became ours.
As we walked, Geranio started to reveal the silent genius of the Amazon: its medicinal intelligence.
Bark used as natural antiseptic. A leaf that stops bleeding. A vine that treats fevers. A resin that heals wounds. A root that calms inflammation. None of this is accidental.
The Amazon holds one of the richest concentrations of medicinal plants on Earth, many still unknown to modern science. And the people who live here don’t memorize them, they inherit them. Knowledge passes through generations as naturally as birdsong. The forest doesn’t simply grow plants. It grows solutions.
And this is when you realize another truth: every step you take in the Amazon is a step through a living pharmacy, a reminder that nature often solves problems long before humans name them.
When scientists study the Amazon, they often look for isolated molecules. But Indigenous knowledge sees each plant as part of a whole system, a relationship of roots, soil, fungi, climate, and spirit working together.
In the Amazon, medicine doesn’t begin with symptoms. It begins with the forest’s logic: balance, adaptation, and coherence. In the Amazon, plants are not ingredients; they are collaborators.
The Bluetooth of the Forest: A little farther along the trail, Geranio stopped beside a low bush and picked up a broad green leaf, thick, paddle-shaped, and firm.
He held the leaf in one hand, folded it sharply, and tapped one half against the other, like a natural hammer. The impact produced a loud, crisp crack that echoed through the trees, far louder than I expected a single leaf could sound.
“This is how you call for help if you are lost,” he explained. The leaf becomes a signaling device. The forest becomes the messenger. Sound travels far, bouncing off trunks and roots like an ancient acoustic network.
He joked that it was “the Bluetooth of the forest”, simple, reliable, and effective long before technology existed.
The Genius of Leaf-Cutter Ants: Then we came across a long, perfect line of leaf-cutter ants, each carrying a piece of leaf far larger than itself. They moved with precision, as if part of a single, organized mind.
“They grow a fungus underground,” Geranio said.
“The leaves feed the fungus. The fungus feeds the colony.”
Every movement had meaning. Every member had a role. Nothing was wasted.
Tools Born from Nature: He also showed us how the forest provides tools. Within just a few minutes, he folded large leaves into a strong, reliable bag used to carry fruit or seeds. No plastic. No waste. Just design, function, and respect for nature.
When the Forest Notices You: As we walked, the forest shifted between sound and stillness, not silence, but a quiet awareness, a sense that something was observing us from just beyond our perception.
And strangely, this presence felt gentle. I did not feel like an intruder. I felt like a guest.
Walking through the rainforest on foot was not simply a hike. It was a conversation with the plants, the insects, the unseen eyes in the shadows, and with the part of myself that still recognizes what it means to be in relationship with the natural world.
The Amazon at Night, When Fear Turns into Reverence
At first, while walking, the darkness felt very dark and intimidating. But very quickly, something remarkable happened. I felt fear dissolving and reverence taking its place because the forest is not threatening, it is simply alive at a level humans are not used to sensing.
The impossibly dark darkness stopped being intimidating and threatening and started being magnificent. That’s an extraordinary, transcendental feeling that’s very hard to describe.
It’s during the night when the rainforest truly comes alive. The sounds intensify into a full orchestra: frogs calling, insects vibrating in layered frequencies, wings brushing the darkness, a sudden splash in the water. Eyes reflect in the beam of a flashlight, small, large, golden, green.
At night, the forest reveals its true face, its rhythm, its pulse, its cosmic nature.
The Glow of Eyes in the Dark. One of the most surreal experiences at night is spotting the reflection of eyes. Flashlights don’t illuminate animals, they reveal their presence: caimans, night birds, mammals, spiders.
You begin to understand how many beings watch you from the dark, not with fear, but with curiosity. This moment shifts everything inside you. You realize that in the Amazon, humans are not the observers. We are the ones being observed.
Night Canoeing, The River Beneath the Moon. When you take the canoe at night, the forest transforms again.
The water turns black and reflective, like liquid obsidian. The only movement is the paddle dipping gently into darkness. Sounds feel closer, more intimate. The boundary between sky and river dissolves into a single mirrored world. In that silence, the jungle becomes less visual and more sensory.
You feel the air, the vibration of insects, the faint pressure changes that precede movement. Your awareness expands horizontally and vertically, you listen not just forward, but to the sides, above, behind, and beneath.
It is a full-body perception.
The Amazon from the Canopy, Seeing the Forest’s Soul
The canopy is luminous, warm, and vibrant. Birds flash between branches. Orchids cling to trees. The forest’s architecture, invisible from below, becomes clear and breathtaking from above.
Standing on the suspended bridges, I felt the immensity of the rainforest and the precision of its design. It felt cosmic, as if I were looking at the blueprint of life itself.
This was one of the moments when I felt a childlike wonder lift inside me, the feeling of seeing something surreal without needing to understand it.
The canopy is where 70% of rainforest life interacts: monkeys, macaws, tanagers, orchids, frogs, and insects.
Light is stronger. Wind moves differently. Colors sharpen. Sound disperses gently rather than echoing.
From the canopy walkways, the forest’s architecture becomes visible: emergent giants piercing the sky, branches forming a living carpet, vines connecting tree to tree, epiphytes living on borrowed branches. What appears chaotic from below becomes understandable from above.
The canopy is the rainforest’s clarity, its overview, its blueprint.
You feel it inside you, a sense of perspective that doesn’t dominate, but illuminates.
Closing: What the Amazon Left Within Me
When I left the Amazon, I didn’t feel like I was returning from a trip. I felt like I was waking up from a dream, one of those rare dreams that stays with you long after morning comes.
I felt mystery, wonder, and a softness I had not expected. I felt as though I had witnessed something cosmic, a world that exists beyond human understanding but welcomes human presence.
The Amazon didn’t ask me to make sense of it. It asked me to feel it.
And in those days, drifting on the water, walking through shadows, listening to the symphony of the night, I felt part of something vast, sacred, and beautifully interconnected.
The forest didn’t overwhelm me.
It held me.
It expanded me.
It reorganized something inside me quietly, gently, without force.
I carry one truth from that experience:
You don’t simply see the Amazon.
You connect to it, and if you allow it, it connects to you.
That resonance, soft, cosmic, childlike, is the gift the Amazon left inside my soul.
And I will carry it forever.
Live by Design, Not by Default.
Until the next horizon,
Coach • Traveler • Believer in Intentional Living
