Amazon Rainforest Sans Internet

First, we took a five-hour bus ride along a gravel road, too narrow to credibly allow the passage of a bus, let alone two vehicles struggling by in opposite directions. We didn’t have to go that way. There was a three-hour bus ride on a paved highway, but for reasons I still don’t fully understand, we didn’t get on that bus.

But anyway, following our harrowing bus journey, we boarded a large motor canoe and traveled down the Napo River for three hours, slowly watching the signs of civilization grow farther and farther apart. Absolute pristine rainforest screaming by on both sides, powered by 200 horsepower worth of Yamaha engines, dodging floating debris like a slalom skier as the Andes Mountains are slowly delivered piece by piece to the Atlantic Ocean. Mutely observing the periodic barge carrying trucks and equipment for oil companies pursuing their ongoing project of despoiling the rainforest to make our cars and trucks—and the Yamaha engines—go. Then putting on rubber boots and hiking for 30 minutes through calf-deep mud, through ever more dense and beautiful rainforest. More observed species in five minutes than in a week in the Galapagos. But all of it more timid, hidden. First, a blue butterfly, flapping drunkenly up and down the path, and then gone. Then another pier on a small inland lake and another, smaller canoe. And then our lodge hoves into view: a half dozen cabanas and a central lodge. A cistern on a platform in the rear, it’s most prominent feature. And no internet of any kind.

It’s funny; I would have guessed that the Galapagos would have been more communicatively deprived, being a set of islands 600 miles off the coast of South America. But there are towns and research stations in the Galapagos. Forty thousand people live there. There were never any indigenous people on the Galapagos Islands, no signs of human habitation when European’s first set foot. But beautiful islands on the edge of civilization attract people, various countries fought over them, and Ecuador won in the end. People from various backgrounds have made it their home. And so as you weave between the islands, even without intending to, you come within range of a cell tower every day or two. And for fifteen minutes, your phone explodes with messages and emails. And then it is deathly silent again.

But in the Amazon, there’s no change, no surprise. There’s no signal. No trace of Wi-Fi. No televisions, radios, or walkie-talkies. You’re just where you are, and the rest of the world is where it is. And if you want to see them or talk to them, you get in a canoe.

The world doesn’t change a lot in five days. And I’m not important enough to be needed urgently in such a short time. So it’s remarkable with what frequency we check our devices to see if anything interesting has happened in the last seven and a half minutes, or if I’m desperately needed apropos some emergency that probably hasn’t happened. The first day or two, I still caught myself reaching for my phone to check the weather rather than looking outside. Or get updated on the state of the world that probably hadn’t changed that much. Or tell me answers to obscure fact-seeking questions—rather than asking our expert guides. It took a while to think of my phone as just a camera and not a lifeline. Something to take for walks into the jungle and clutch while hoping a monkey will come back into view. And nothing more.

But as I sit here again in the large motor canoe, unwinding the many hours and miles that brought us to our little piece of Eden, I wonder if I’ll remember how little importance the internet needs to play in my life. Or if again I will reach plaintively for my phone every time I hear a bell.

Take a break, Pavlov.