Our perceptions of the Amazon are mostly mythical.
But in Amazonia, reality is more amazing than mythology ...
South America has the biggest river,
the largest forest, the longest mountain range,
and the greatest variety of life forms of all the continents on Earth.
Rivers from five nations ...
pour into the vast flood land of equatorial Brazil ...
to form the greatest moving mass of fresh water in the world.
The Amazon river flows toward the rising sun,
and with it 1/5 of the continental run-off water of the planet.
Among the distant sources of the Amazon is the timeless land of the Incas.
Men of the Kallawaya tribe were medicine men to the royal family ...
in by-gone days of an empire larger than that of Rome.
Even now, Kallawaya men would journey throughout the Andes ...
healing people with magic and medicinal plants.
Julio Mamani will follow the tradition of his people.
"It saddens me there was no plant, nor magic that could save my mother when she got sick."
Whisper in pukina ― the secret language of the Incas.
Mysteries of the healing arts are passed ― generation to generation.
I've got made a vow to go to the great tropical forest below our mountain home ...
and return with plants that will increase our power ...
to cure illness and prolong life.
Akomani, the god mountain of our people,
watches over the kayawaya,
and has done so since our earliest beginnings.
It is said that water trickling from the glaciers of Akomani,
will lead one to the great river.
Sipping the melt of ancient ice brings rejuvenation.
When I reach the tropical forest,
perhaps I can trade the glacier water for an unknown elixir ...
that will prolong life.
Incas once knew the highlands where source rivers of the Amazon,
gouged-out some of the deepest canyons on Earth.
Machu Pichu, the lost city of the Incas,
lies only 200 miles as the condor flies, from Mamani's homeland.
Below the citadel, the Urubamba river cuts its canyon ever deeper ...
on its rush to join the Amazon.
In a few short miles from mountain peaks to tropical forests,
the traveler passes through as many ecological zones ...
as on a trip from the north pole to equator.
Below the mountains, the trees become an endless sea of green.
Dr. Mark Plotkin is also a medicine-man.
Like Mamani, he's in search of plants ...
that will heal humanity's ills.
He is an ethno-botanist.
His hope: to find cures to diseases which western medicine has not conquered.
There's a remarkable connection between the plants and the peoples of the forest.
Virtually every useful medicinal,
or agricultural plant that's come to us from the rainforests,
was first learned from indigenous people.
Dr. Plotkin is driven by a dread that some species may disappear ...
before their life saving attributes are discovered.
In our search for new treatments for the diseases that plague us,
the Amazon rainforest represents one of "the" most promising places to look.
At the "La Cueva de las Sechusas",
I can reach the edge of the legendary forest.
It seems to me a mystical gateway to the vast forest beyond.
Mamani has reached the flatlands of Amazonia,
a region almost large enough to cover the face of the moon.
The Amazon basin is home to the planet's greatest celebration of diversity.
For millions of years,
environmental conditions have been favorable to a profusion of life.
The canopy is largely unexplored.
Its upper tier, where most of its life goes on has barely been visited.
It averages 50 feet thick,
and amounts to 20,000 cubic miles of wood, water, air and green leaves.
Don Antonio is a shaman of the Kokama people.
He's my friend and my teacher.
His knowledge of the healing properties of the Amazon forest is extraordinary.
No one knows how many species of living things exist ...
in 2 million square miles of forest canopy.
The Amazon houses a gigantic ecological machine of global importance.
It is a world resource at risk.
The biodiversity of the Amazon is unique.
The only place of its kind in the world.
In the light and warmth and water ...
are millions of different species,
and many more perhaps, unknown.
The Sloth called "perezoso", or lazy-one in Spanish ...
swims as well as most quadrupeds.
A jaguar often jumps in to cross a waterway.
At 500 pounds, the tapir is the largest land animal native to South America.
In mid-year, the Amazon rises to maximum flood,
as much as 45 feet above its November minimum.
With the deluge, aquatic life invades the once dry forest floor.
The Pirarucu is one of the main food fish of the Amazon.
It can exceed 6 feet in length and 200 pounds in weight.
The Pipato is almost invisible, until it eats.
Electric eels deal death with 500 volts shocks.
The Piranha has the sharpest teeth of all predatory fish.
Of all the creatures of the Amazon, the pink dolphin is the most celebrated.
The thousands of miles of waterways remain the primary means of travel in the Amazon.
The people of the river are known as Kaboklos,
part Indian, part Portuguese.
Sometimes the blood of Africans.
Many are almost as skillful as the Kallawaya with herbal remedies.
We have much to learn from one another.
In my village, we used cobwebs to stop bleeding.
Here, I have been shown how to dress a wound with leaves that would coagulate blood.
Most folk remedies and medicinal cures used by the Koboklos come from the Indians.
We know that fungi, have provided the world with Penicillin and other antibiotics,
but the potential of tropical fungi remains largely unknown.
For millions of years, the Amazon was unhabitated by humans.
The Indians arrived during the last ice age ...
which ended a few thousand years ago.
After the Europeans arrived 500 years ago,
in quest of land, slaves and gold,
indigenous people fled deeper into the wilderness.
More than 400 tribes have been identified in the Amazon basin.
Others may remain, undiscovered.
With no sense of time beyond tomorrow,
they live in hiding, cradled in an everlasting present.
As late as 1943, the upper reaches of the Xingu river were largely unexplored.
Orlando Villas Bôas and his brothers left São Paulo with an expedition called:
"Ronkido Shing Gu".
Some things only happen once in the history of the world.
It was a moment in time that can never be repeated.
After three years and 3,000 km of a path cut with machetes,
we encountered for the first time the Indian populations of the "Alto Xingu".
Very little was known about them and they know only enough ...
of the outside world to stay hidden as in centuries past.
The brothers Villas Bôas won acclaim for their success in postponing ...
the bulldozing march of civilization into the Xingu.
In time, the Villas Bôas were overcome by roadbuilders, malaria and old age.
But their dream for survival of the Indians lives on.
Sidney Possuelo carries on the legendary work of the brothers Villas Bôas.
Sidney's task is to seek out isolated tribes,
and promote legislation to keep Indian lands off-limits to all outsiders.
North of the Amazon mainstream toward the Guiana Highlands,
lives a tribe of Indians known as Zoë.
I believe the Indians should only be contacted when necessary to protect them.
It's a dilemma.
Do we artificially isolate them?
Or share the technology of our modern world?
Sidney was among the first to make contact with the Zoë.
Only recently has their presence become known.
I am pleased to find no mosquitos, no malaria and no sickness,
except a woman who had a toothache that her granddaughter treated with medicinal plants.
There is rumor that the Zoë have encountered a group of people living up to the north,
a tribe that is unknown to us.
Some of the men agree to show me where the strangers had been seen.
When first encountered by jaguar hunters, the Zoë were called Poturu.
For the ornamental right poturu wood that Zoë wear day and night.
We don't know who the others might be.
But if they really exist.
But if they are there,
the gold seekers making their way up the Cuminapanema river are on a collision course.
The Zoë do not venture into the forbidden north,
where they say, a tribe of giants lives,
and the hills of Cuminapanema touch the stars.
If there are uncontacted people in the northern highlands,
I would prefer to leave them alone.
But it's critical that those who care about them be the first to reach them.
Mamani's research has brought him to the territory of the Yagua Indians.
The Yaguas have had contact with outsiders for several hundred years.
They are a large tribe, known for herbal remedies.
The Kurusar was killed by poison on the tip of the dart.
It is an exotic potion made from plants and called "curare".
Curare is a secret mixture made of flowers and leaves ...
in different ways by many tribes throughout the Amazon.
Dr. Mark Plotkin has been fascinated by the mysteries of curare poison for many years.
Each tribe has its own recipes for curare.
I believe that some of them will lead us to new and effective medicines.
In the hands of western physicians, curare has already become a life-giving medication.
One type is used as a muscle relaxant.
Another as heart medicine.
What Western scientists once dismissed as magic,
we are now finding to have a very real therapeutic effect.
Plotkin and other ethno-botanists ...
hope to press and document as many plants as possible,
before the knowledge of the shamans is lost.
Learning the jealously guarded secrets of indigenous shamans,
requires genuine friendship and mutual trust.
Trading my medicines, music and magic for things I have needed,
has allowed me to move freely about.
With distances so great, exchange of a cure for a very fast ride,
is a very good trade indeed.
Herbal markets exist in cities and towns all along the Amazon and its tributaries.
Plants with true curative power hang side by side ...
with untested elixirs and curious concoctions.
Julio Mamani and Dr. Plotkin are medicine men from vastly different worlds.
But they share a common quest:
Each has come in search of the healing secrets of the Amazon.
Each seeks to improve the health of humankind.
And for a fleeting instant, time stands still.
And two distant worlds are one.
It is time to return.
I've traded the melted ice of the god mountain for the medicine of the great forest.
I have traded my flute for the long ride home.
I will miss the beauty of the Amazon and its many creatures.
What wonderful things I have seen to tell my people.
I shall return one day.
And if not I,
maybe my son will come.
There is so much to learn,
and yet, so little time.
Neither the shaman nor the scientist discovered a magic elixir to end all suffering.
But each has gained new knowledge,
and discovered cures that will improve the health of humankind.
The Amazon quest has only begun.