We've come out of the Andes and are following the Urubamba River
into the hot and humid rainforest of the Amazon Basin.
There is no other way through the forest
and we have nearly a week of river travel ahead of us.
0ur guide, Barry Walker, can barely take the binoculars from his eyes.
If you're a bird-spotter like Barry, then Peru, with 2,000 species, is a land of opportunity.
The forest is attracting attention for more than its natural beauty, as I'm soon to find out.
Here we are in the Camisea River, Michael.
See over here. Here's one of the old oil exploration centres. Abandoned now, of course.
First piece of modern equipment I've seen on this stretch for a long while.
- Looks like a painted palm tree. - Badly painted palm tree.
What is the significance of that?
Was the drilling abandoned here?
They've done the exploration. They've got some capped wells in here.
For the last few years, everything's been abandoned around here,
but very soon the crews are gonna come in and start getting the gas out.
Has the exploration damaged the environment much yet, or will that happen later?
We'll find out round the corner. There's a settlement we'll call in at.
It will give us an idea of how much influence the exploration people have had.
I'm sure that when they start getting it out,
it remains to be seen whether it'll be negative or not.
We pull in at a Machiguenga Indian village.
There is a definite protocol for visiting.
We must first find the headman and ask his permission.
The village is being swept for the feast of St John the Baptist.
Missionaries must have come through here as well as oil men.
Has he encountered many foreigners like this, coming out of the blue up the river?
No. He's quite surprised to see us.
Initially he thought we were the advance party of the petrol people,
who donated, when they left, these sheets of corrugated iron.
We were saying that it's much better using that than thatching.
You see the odd thatched building here. It's a lot of work to put it together.
The headman has another role today,
as referee in an inter-village soccer match.
(SPEAKS LOCAL LANGUAGE)
The whole of South America is mad about football and the Amazon jungle is no exception.
The match is one of the feast-day attractions.
Oh! Nice try.
Man with no boots on.
The boots seem rather unevenly distributed, but it makes for some interesting tackles.
In the next match, between the women,
there's not a football boot to be seen and the game's a lot more exciting.
Children here grow up hoping that one day they'll be as good as their mothers.
Half-time refreshment is a bowl of masato,
a festive tipple made from the fermented juice of the yucca plant.
It's a bit like giving Manchester United martinis.
I decide a drugs test is in order.
- How's it made? They ferment it and... - It depends.
- Put other stuff in? - I'm not sure how they make it here.
In many communities the women chew it and spit it into a pot
and the enzymes from their saliva start the fermentation process.
But in more contacted places where they have access to sugar,
they prefer to use sugar.
- Do they have sugar here? - I'm not sure.
Doesn't look like it.
- Cheers. I'm game for anything. - Cheers.
Here you are, Nigel. Looks lovely, doesn't it?
Hint of a dry, slight raspberry-ish taste.
Like a mildly alcoholic raspberry yogurt or something.
That's sort of '96 saliva, that.
At the festive meal, the families gather round,
grace is spoken and they tuck into the day's delicacy,
tapir meat wrapped in banana leaves.
The presence of plastic bowls, containers and T-shirts show the village is modernising.
The old ways are looking increasingly out of place.
It's time for us to leave the party,
get back to the river and find a camp for the night.
The morning dip looks idyllic but could be dangerous.
If you pee in the river, there's a small fish with barbed teeth
which latches onto the urine stream and swims up your penis.
Give me a piranha any day.
The tropical rainforest is one of the richest natural environments in the world.
I find out it doesn't take kindly to intruders.
- Do you want the traditional machete? - No, I think we can get through.
It's just over to where the trail widens out down here.
- Do people still use machetes, or just in movies? - People do when they're cutting trail.
When you're in known territory they're not really necessary, although they might be here.
- Lend it me a second. - Yeah.
Thanks.
Oh! Cor blimey! Nearly knocked myself out.
- Here we go. The trail widens here. - Right.
Barry is a man with a purpose.
He's here to find rare and exotic birds. I think I'm an embarrassment.
- Looks like... - I've been bitten.
By what?
I just rested my hand on a tree and there must be an ant trail.
- A bit more like it. - This is good primary forest here.
This is very good indeed.
- (BIRD CHIRPING) - What's that one you can hear?
That's a plain-winged ant-shrike.
That lives in the sub-canopies. Quite vocal at dawn and dusk.
No white-browed ant-birds.
There's a few other callers, but they're not...
- I think we should try further down the trail. - Don't touch any trees.
(BARRY) Let's see if we can get through here.
The trouble with such a fertile environment is that you can't actually see anything.
The birds have the same problem.
They stay way above us where they can fly around without banging into trees.
After a while, one day becomes much like any other.
The forest seems endless,
the climate it generates hot and uncomfortable.
It's six days before we reach a settlement.
- Is this it? - Sepahua.
Sepahua. Civilisation.
- (BARRY) Lots of boats. - Not sure about it.
I bet you can get beer here.
(MICHAEL) Cold beer, maybe. Not the 90-degree beers we've been drinking.
(BARRY) The biggest place we've seen for a while.
- Hotel, or are we under canvas again? - (BARRY) Under canvas, I think.
Sepahua fits the description by the Amazon explorer Colonel Fawcett
of somewhere that "looks a dump on the way in and a metropolis on the way out."
It's a place of convivial and infectious idleness.
But it does have an airstrip and there are no queues at the terminal.
A Russian-built cargo plane puts down here every now and then
with military and civilian supplies for this jungle outpost.
It could be our way out.
As refuelling begins, we look around for an airline official to talk to.
Barry finds the co-pilot, who bears a passing resemblance to a certain film star.
He seems to have a grip on things.
He promises to squeeze everyone in, so long as we don't mind sitting on the cargo.
After a week on the river, we'll sit on anything.
Barry. Time to go. Thanks ever so much.
- I'll see you... - Great times. From Cuzco onwards.
- If you're in London, come to my local. - What's the local pub?
(INDISTINCT)
- Have a great trip. - Take care.
It's been a pleasure.
We fly north over a vast, largely unbroken swathe of forest.
It's a 600-mile journey that would have taken ten days by boat.
0ur destination is lquitos, capital of the Peruvian jungle.
By now, the Urubamba has become the Amazon.
It's the dry season and the world's greatest river is low,
scarcely reaching the bank on which the city's built.
For a place surrounded by jungle and with no road communication with the rest of Peru,
lquitos is surprisingly stylish.
It owes most of its faded charm to the rubber boom of the 1880s.
The new houses of the rubber barons showed 0ld World taste.
Lquitos is two towns in one.
The Europeans live up on the hill
and the Indians down by the river, in a shanty town called Belén,
short for Bethlehem.
- It's a great street-vending city. - Definitely.
- We have a good market. - That's rather nice.
This is a bandstand that was brought from France in the early 1900s.
Yeah.
My companion, Jorge, comes from uptown lquitos
but clearly loves the bustle of Belén.
It doesn't always look like this.
When it floods, how much of this is going to be under water?
- Where we're walking now? - Somewhere like about two metres.
- The big boats come directly to the plaza. - This becomes a canal.
This is what we call the Peruvian Venice.
- Let's get a gondola! - You see canoes here and there all the time.
There are plenty of things for sale. The stalls are full.
What about the services here?
Does the town provide sanitation or electricity?
Yes, the city provides electricity, as you can see here, the wiring.
They also have potable water, but there is no sewage system here yet.
Everything is down onto the floor.
You can see on the other side, all those outhouses.
There's a lot of rubbish. It must be bad for disease.
We have a very high per cent of infant mortality.
Somewhere like 18-20% infant mortality in the first five years, caused mostly by parasites.
This is one way they make the conditions tolerable.
A do-it-yourself distillery makes aguardiente, sugar-cane spirit.
The city council wants to move people out, but the locals refuse to go.
They like their shops and their market, and there are things you'd never find in Safeway.
When the river lowers, you're going to see catfishes here.
- Yeah. - Vicious piranhas here.
- That's a piranha? - Look at the teeth.
Sharp as a razor blade.
The Indians in the Amazon use the piranha's jaw for sharpening their darts,
to shoot the animals with a blowgun.
A lady called Julia is a one-woman cigarette factory.
She rolls about 3,000 pieces of this tobacco here.
- 3,000 pieces a day? - Yeah.
This roll has 100 pieces.
- It costs about four soles. - Wonderful tobacco.
- Can you buy these elsewhere in the city? - No, you have to come here.
You can buy it by units.
- Are they strong? - Very strong. You want to try?
I don't smoke. I'll probably blow my head off.
We can try. You can try. You'll like it.
No. You've got to smoke a little.
The future shaman of the Amazon.
God, it is... Very strong. Very bitter.
The closest comparison would be with the Gitanes from France.
Bless you all!
You have to walk quite a way in the dry season to find the river.
- It's almost a kilometre and a half. - Down that street.
This is a tributary of the Amazon, called the Itaya.
Now it's very low, but it gets much lower too.
- Lower than this? - Yes, but this is a main entrance to the city.
River transport remains basic.
Goods are carried on backs, and passengers squeeze on public ferries called collectivos.
Though you can splash out on a water taxi.
The rise and fall of the river each season does not encourage an air of permanence.
Ten years ago, Frenchman Didier Lacasse came to the rainforest
to research the healing properties of jungle plants.
He stayed, set up a medicinal garden
and has become a shaman, a traditional healer.
- A leaf from this bush here. - Yeah.
He uses the leaves of many plants,
but the most effective of all his potions is the root of the ayahuasca,
which is pounded into a paste.
It's then boiled up into a powerful brew.
Is it important for the healing that there is a hallucinogenic experience?
Yes, it's very important. It helps you to see.
When you see, you have the power to heal, basically.
The seeing is a basis for healing.
Didier's herbal surgery has many elements of religious ritual.
He's the high priest. The ayahuasca is the sacrament.
Despite the intensity of the experience, Didier has allowed us to film what goes on.
Now he's drunk the ayahuasca, I ask him how long he'll feel able to answer my questions.
Five minutes, ten minutes.
You will be hallucinating, so presumably you will be seeing things that we can't see.
But can you control that?
You have them in their place and you're aware of the situation here at the same time?
There is a certain amount of control, obviously.
It's... It's the skill of the shaman
to be able to control this flow of energy, of hallucination,
that would turn someone else crazy, probably.
So we learn how to control that craziness, if you can say that.
Didier's style may be unfamiliar, but the powerful properties of the plants are not in dispute.
The rainforest is alive with drug companies looking for the secrets.
But Didier prefers to treat and cure local people.
(CHANTING)
Eventually it's time for each patient to come for a consultation.
(CHANTS)
The consultation is like a seance
in which the shaman uses his new-found insight to sense what is wrong with the patient.
Then he asked for me to come forward.
The chanting sets up a pleasant aura of spiritual relaxation.
I feel comfortably out of place, as an Amazon Indian might at choral evensong.
You can carry this with you
on your many journeys that you will be taking.
It's for good luck...
Didier gives a blessing, wishing me good luck on my journey
and the hope that when I meet people, they will always be good friends.
This seems the right note on which to leave.
The El Arca, a British-built riverboat, first sailed the Amazon in 1882.
Today she's taking us out of lquitos.
She makes a weekly trip downriver and will take us to the Colombian border,
now only 300 miles away.
It's hot, it's cramped, but a childhood dream has come true. I'm on the Amazon.
The people from a local village come out to meet us.
0ne of them carries something I've rarely seen in the Amazon. A wild animal.
- What is this? - This is an ocelot.
- They don't grow too big. Just this size. - Yeah?
- This is like two or three months old. - Yeah.
- Can I hold him? - (SPEAKS SPANISH)
Oh, yes. There we are.
That's a first, isn't it?
You poor thing. You're very sleepy, aren't you? I know the feeling.
- This species are in danger now. - Yeah.
They are always chasing away because people are killing them.
They are always hiding.
People from lquitos are coming down here looking for this skin. They pay cheap.
- They're hard to find now. - You have to go way into the jungle.
- Walk hours, days to get them. - Oh, look. Oh, yes.
What happened to its parents?
I think they already killed its parents.
What will happen? He wants to sell it?
200 dollars.
Anyone want an ocelot? I can't take it. I'm going to Alaska.
You'll die of cold there, won't you?
Near the village is a lagoon which seems as close to a Garden of Eden as you'll get.
Everything from giant lily pads to giant spiders
seems to flourish here in extraordinary profusion.
And for once you can actually see the birds.
I'd like the Amazon to stay like this, as I'd imagined it.
But it's changing.
Deforestation has reduced rainfall here by 120 per cent in a generation.
And if there's oil and gas to be found, more trees will have to go.
The unceasing heat of the days and the hothouse stickiness of the nights
saps the energy.
Before the river lulls us into total lethargy, it's time to move on.
After three weeks on the Peruvian river system, we've now reached a crossroads.
The Amazon has brought us to Peru on this side, Brazil over there and Colombia over there.
The Amazon goes on 2,000 miles into the Atlantic.
We're gonna head north through Colombia and back up towards the Pacific, wherever that is.
There are only two ways out of the Colombian frontier town of Leticia.
By river or by air.
A river journey back to the Andes will take two weeks.
A flight will take two hours.
We board a plane to take us across the equator to Bogotá.
We could be said to have swapped one jungle for another.
Colombia's capital is the biggest city we've seen since Sydney.
It has a reputation as one of the most violent places on earth.
To find out why, I go to see Tim Ross, a British journalist living and working here.
- Hey. - Hi. Pleased to meet you.
- This is Herman, the driver. - How do you do?
This is the car we use for the streets. It's the most unobtrusive.
I'm told you do a great city tour.
The city is great. I think it's fun, but it's not a city with tourism.
That has ended because of the dangers.
One of the world's highest per capita homicide rates.
100 murders per 100,000 population here. 50 times the British murder rate.
- So it's not exaggerated. - No. This really is a dangerous city.
Not just for murder and major violence, but petty things.
The pickpocket, the snatch artist, the man who grabs your glasses.
People try to grab them... Anything they can sell for drugs.
It has a major drug problem, which is crippling it.
- You've worked here a long time? - Yes, a long time.
We work the streets, usually on foot, but for filming we take Dodge Dart.
It takes us out there unobtrusively. It's big enough for cameras. It's great.
The troubled streets to which Tim takes us
are only six blocks from the presidential palace in the heart of downtown Bogotá.
His advice to us generally is to stay in the car, but this corner, he says, is safe enough.
Let's go round here.
Tim is well known here. He's reported on these streets for 20 years.
Death squads watch this area and kill people at night.
This next street, they've put posters up.
Who are the death squads? Who do they compose? What justice are they dealing out?
Justice? Bullets in the head.
It's shopkeepers, off-duty policemen, private security guards.
People who have been mugged go back with a gun and kill street people.
- Vigilante groups. - Yeah.
At what sort of rate do they kill people?
Sometimes four, five, six cases a week.
Two or three people a night killed.
Armed police patrol neighbourhoods reduced by the drug trade to war zones.
Tim knows many of the casualties.
(THEY SPEAK SPANISH)
It was a knife stab. They had to open it up and stitch him up inside.
(THEY SPEAK SPANISH)
- It touched the heart. - Who did that and why?
(THEY SPEAK SPANISH)
On the main street, to rob him. He's a street person, a drug abuser.
Those are the stains of drug use. They're bright orange.
- You're lucky to survive that. - (SPEAKS SPANISH)
Look at the scars.
That's typical of the transvestite male prostitutes, the self-mutilation.
He has Aids. He has to go back to the foundation for Aids patients.
- Will he do it? - Yes. He wants to persuade his friend.
The trouble is to persuade the friend. He doesn't want to leave him.
(SPEAKS SPANISH)
- Have you got a small bill? - (SPEAKS SPANISH)
I've only got a small bill. That's all I have.
(THEY SPEAK SPANISH)
- Bye-bye. - Bye.
Back in the car, we head for the most notorious street of all. Calle Cartouche - Bullet Street.
This is where they start recycling.
See all the recyclers here. Grimy people all over these streets.
One of the main activities is consuming drugs and obtaining money with which to consume them.
Their lives revolve around it. They get high, come down, find a way to get high again.
Round the clock. They sleep for only the time necessary to recover enough
to get on with another day of obtaining scrap and garbage, selling it, getting their drugs.
- The people we're seeing... - See this guy smoking there in the cap?
And the people next to him. They're all basuco addicts.
(SPEAKS SPANISH TO DRIVER)
The left-hand side here is stronger.
If you can shoot across Herman's shoulder, you'll see these people there.
(SPEAKS SPANISH TO DRIVER)
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
The man on the left just warning us. "Be careful round there or they'll rob you blind."
If they see someone like this going through, do they see it as a target?
Yes.
They're already yelling insults at us. Now they're throwing rocks.
Whoops.
They've started getting hostile.
They assume we're a death squad or police or something.
Stabbings are frequent. They use broken bottles on each other's faces.
A squabble can start for nothing. A squabble over 50 cents' worth of marijuana.
Why is it so particularly bad in Colombia?
It's a producing country. Wherever you get drug production, you get drug consumption.
The United States and Europe are blamed for the drug trafficking problem because of demand there.
What the Colombian government ignores
is the level of substance abuse, drugs and alcohol.
A million alcoholics in a country of 36 million. An estimated 900,000 solvent abusers.
That means sniffing gasoline, petrol, glue. Legal things. It's a vast problem.
Basuco, cocaine base. Nobody's done any proper survey work.
The desolation is matched by political inertia.
There is money, but those who have it are not prepared to share.
Tim, I've been recommended a rather eccentric restaurant called Margarita del Ocho.
- Do you want to come? - I'm not going there.
It's owned by the Ochoa family
who are renowned for their involvement in the Medellin cartel, drug traffickers.
I was warned against them when there was an attempt to kill me for another documentary.
- Sorry. I was only gonna buy you lunch! - Thanks.
- It's a serious drug connection? - Serious drug connection.
It's run by old Fabio Ochoa, the Fat Man, as he's known.
One of his sons just got out of prison after five years,
to the great distaste of the US, where he would have served life.
He's one of the biggest drug traffickers.
(APPLAUSE)
The sign says "restaurant", but once inside, Don Fabio's priorities are clearly elsewhere.
It's easier to get a horse than a waiter.
The Spanish legacy seems to have created an obsession with horses.
There are 700 on the premises.
Children learn to ride before they can walk.
Don Fabio's daughter sets an example.
Then comes the moment I'm not sure I've been waiting for.
Don Fabio has granted us a rare interview.
I keep the questions friendly for my own safety and because I'm overawed.
As would anyone be interviewing Marlon Brando for the first time.
(SPEAKS SPANISH)
The place, he says, symbolises a tradition.
100 years of tradition for the 0choa family.
From it have come some of the finest horses in the world.
(MICHAEL SPEAKS SPANISH)
I ask if a demonstration of horsemanship is on the cards.
He seems delighted to be asked, though it throws his bodyguards into a spin.
They appear from all sides and rush to help him up,
at least two to each limb.
The raising of Don Fabio is not an elegant sight,
but once he's in the saddle, he's a changed man.
(SINGS IN SPANISH)
Lucky diners can watch the paso fino performed by a magnificently trained horse
whilst enjoying bits of other less fortunate animals.
This is a family business run by the family.
Don Fabio's new wife flashes the sweet smile of success.
They're opening similar places up and down the country.
It's clearly big business. And it's legitimate.
It's not recommended to drive through the mountains west of Bogotá.
There are believed to be a dozen armed guerrilla groups operating there,
each seeking to control its own area of influence.
0ne of the bitterest battles was fought for control of this mountain, Cosquez.
3,500 people lost their lives in the fighting, but then the stakes were high.
This is the Colombian Wild West,
the largest, richest, most dangerous emerald mine in the world.
Cosquez mountain is being slowly and painstakingly ripped apart
in the search for emeralds.
They call this "black land", and a lot of hard work goes into finding very little.
We're here at the right moment.
Unlike diamonds, which have to be fashioned,
an emerald comes out of the ground bright green and fully formed.
So that's what it looks like? Yeah. That's good.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
This, I'm told, is a good piece, worth around $10,000.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
At the bottom of the mountain, beyond the company fences,
a stream runs out of the mine.
Here the guaqueros, the scavengers, can sift through the crumbs from the rich man's table.
6,000 people live on the mountain.
0nly a third of them work for the mining company.
In almost intolerable heat and discomfort,
men, women and even children scour the black silt
for a glimpse of something that might change their lives.
Crowds cluster round the head of the stream like rescuers at the scene of a disaster.
The guaqueros search largely in vain, but always in hope.
Surprisingly, I see no fights or arguments amongst them.
Though these people may be desperately poor, they help each other out.
0r maybe I just came on a good day.
At the top of the mountain, the guaqueros have a shanty community,
with shops, bars, kitchens, cafes, brothels and banks.
It's up here that the most important part of the process takes place - the buying and selling.
Hundreds of emerald dealers in four-wheel drives grind up the mountain each morning.
Those who've struck lucky bargain with the hard men from Bogotá.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
Experts.
So I can find out what to look for. It's just... That's a good one?
(MICHAEL SPEAKS SPANISH)
Serious money is changing hands here.
It's worth remembering that 50 per cent of all the emeralds bought from scavengers here
will be sold abroad as the last word in luxury.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(MICHAEL) Más verde es más bueno?
I feel the pressure building. They want me to put my money where my mouth is.
(SPEAKING SPANISH)
(MICHAEL) Ten thousand dollars.
American Express?
(ALL LAUGH)
I think that means that won't do nicely.
Not all Colombia is a battle zone.
The guerrillas and drug barons don't seem interested
in what Colombians call the Zona Cafetera - coffee country.
I hitch a ride in one of the American army jeeps they call Willys.
They use them to carry coffee beans from the plantations to the markets,
and occasionally to help travellers down from the mountains to the sea.
The coffee country around Armenia lies about 3,000 feet above sea level.
It's lower and warmer than Bogotá,
but positively chilly compared to the thick tropical heat of our next destination, Cartagena.
Cartagena de Indias is one of the best-preserved colonial cities on the continent.
The Spanish treasure fleets loaded up here en route to Europe.
These mighty walls were built to protect their cargo.
Cathedrals and churches were built to thank the Almighty for being on Spain's side.
With wealth came a desire to run their own affairs,
and the first South American state independent of Spain
was set up here by Simón Boliívar, the Liberator, in 1811.
Protected by its great sea walls,
the houses of the old town haven't changed much in 300 years.
It's a shock to find that it's like this because of neglect,
because the developers could make more money building a new town nearby
than by messing about with the old.
Much of the hard work of preservation has been done by enlightened individuals.
What was the house like when you got it? Was it like this?
Jacqui Basile is from an old Cartagena family.
She and her husband have eschewed the comforts of a modern apartment
and moved back into the heart of the city.
You had to start from scratch, did you?
Yes. You buy the facade and inside it's an old, crumbling house
and you have to start from scratch.
Most cities have changed a lot and modern buildings have gone up.
Did somebody deliberately stop Cartagena from changing?
No, I think it was just we were lucky
that the mayors and all the governmental people didn't think about the old city.
They wanted new places to be developed.
So they saw this city like a church, like an old thing to be left there,
and then about 30 years ago, only,
the city started to be looked at.
- Nobody had looked at it before. - As someone who's just passing through here,
what would you recommend for me to do to get the feel of Cartagena?
- Well, to start warming up, maybe a Chiva tour. - A Chiva tour. What's that?
A typical bus that we have in all Colombia.
They run from the south to the north.
Here they've become a place with music, drinks, where people from all over meet.
- It'd be good for an inhibited Englishman? - No, for everyone.
Colombians get together and afterwards they know what to do.
(B0TH LAUGH)
(SINGING IN SPANISH)
- Do they have just one bus or lots of buses? - No, a lot, like ten.
Ten buses? Do they get full?
One night you can have ten of these noisy, drunken parties going round the city?
At the end of the evening, what do they do? Dump you all?
By one o'clock you start having fun.
- What's the time? - It's ten.
- Ten? Three hours before I start to have fun. - Three hours to go.
I'll just stay quiet. Anyone got a book to read?
(SINGING IN SPANISH)
Nine weeks and a day since setting foot on Cape Horn,
we've reached the other end of South America.
The last lap of my journey is in sight.
That is provided I survive tonight.