Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
been in a Michael Jackson music video, about how, to his shame, he had once almost be-
come an exotic-species smuggler.
The iPod Touch, it turned out, was part of a scheme to supplement his guiding income.
Accepting it as partial payment for his services, he told us that iPod Touches were rare in
Santarém; he planned to sell it at a 100 percent markup. “I should have everyone pay me in
iPod Touches,” he said. And then he told us some more about windsurfing. Always wind-
surfing. He was a man feasting on life like a crazed animal. If something was funny, or
pleasant, or nice, then laughter was not enough. Instead his eyes would bug out, his teeth
would flash, and he would emit a bloodcurdling scream. “
AAAGGHH!!
” He was a man af-
flicted with joy.
There were beers in our hands and we were leaning against the terrace, watching the
good citizens of Santarém stroll the waterfront. Gil was the luckiest guy in the world, he
told us breathlessly. He didn't know how he could be happier. He loved Santarém, loved
the forest, loved his girlfriend, loved guiding, loved us. At forty-six, he was about to be-
come a father. He shared the crumbling four-room house with his pregnant “bride-to-be.”
She was seventeen—not much more than a third his age.
“I've got the best life here, really,” he told us, and then seemed to become overwhelmed
by what he had just said. His eyes widened. “I love this town! I really love it!
AAAGGHH!
”
The conversation turned to deforestation and soy. It was disorienting the way Gil, with
a maniacal gleam in his eye, somehow made screaming and drinking and cogent conversa-
tion all work together. He talked about the Cargill terminal, about the patterns of deforest-
ation in the region.
“The roads in the Amazon were all built in the seventies,” he said, his accent a reedy
mix of Brazilian, British, and surfer. “Before that all the human pressure was along the wa-
terway. With the roads, it's gone into the land.”
The Amazon is a frontier forever under the sway of a new rush. Just the past hundred
years have seen rubber booms, timber booms, gold rushes. Now soy and bauxite were tak-
ing the lead. But exploitation came in many forms. Even something as simple as boats with
onboard refrigeration, which allowed fishermen to stay out longer, meant huge pressure on
the fish in the river.
Would we like another beer?
In Gil's view, though, the exploitation had a flip side. “I got a lot more interesting work
once they started devastating the Amazon,” he said. “Normally, I'd be guiding nature lov-
ers, but as Amazon conservation and everything gets bigger, I do more and more work with
people like you, who want to see nature's problems.” He was operating on the bleeding
edge of ecotourism.
