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Over the span of my
time in college, I have never learned so much as when I
studied abroad last fall in the Amazon. The course I did
wasn’t the typical study abroad semester, however; it
was a NOLS course. The trip consisted of us camping in
the back jungles of Brazil, where our main source of
transport was either backpacking or canoeing. NOLS
(National Outdoor Leadership School) is the premier
school for teaching outdoor and leadership skills.
We began with a three
week hiking trip through an unvisited mountain range
called the Sierra Ricardo Franco. From there, we canoed
for a month down two tributaries of the Amazon River
called the Juruena and the Tapajos Rivers. This
untouched and pristine area is like no other in that it
is one of the wildest places that exist today. Monkeys
can be spotted during the day and pink dolphins emerge
from the rivers. Despite the beauty of this place,
however, the Amazon is a harsh environment in which to
survive. With the bugs, heat, and dangerous animals, the
jungle becomes more of a mental challenge than anything
else.
During our travel through the
uncharted territories of Brazil, we stayed with an
indigenous tribe for about a week. Each of us was given
a temporary family to live with, where our only means of
communication was through the few phrases we had been
taught and hand gestures. The people of this community
took care of each other as if they were one big family.
They grew and caught all their own food and lived a hard
way of life, but despite their hardships, they were so
happy and content with what they had. I grew to love
this community in the short time that  we stayed with
them and learned so much from their simple way of life.
By the end of the trip
we were capable of completely taking care of ourselves
in the wild: cook from scratch on a camp stove, first
aid and wilderness medicine, etc. Our leaders had
engrained in each of us leadership and survival skills
that I would
never have learned anywhere else. At this
point we were able to travel without instructors. After
a flight to Venezuela,
we were transported to a remote
area where there is a famous mountain called Mount Roraima. This mountain was the inspiration for the book
The Lost World, and later
the movie ‘Jurassic Park.’ When we began our hike, it
was more like stepping back in time to when the Earth
had just begun.
My entire experience
abroad was spectacular and one that I grew from in ways
I had never expected. The beauty of other cultures has
never ceased to amaze me, particularly that of the
Amazon. A place this beautiful is just too hard to
describe, and I hope everyone has a chance to get to see
and experience it.
Above Photo Courtesy of
Outside Brazil
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