Human impact
Traveling to remote areas such as the Upper Amazon is important in helping to appreciate the need for maintaining a healthy world environment — natural and political — to be shared with diverse peoples whose lives are different from our own. Having the opportunity to be guided by experts through lands filled with exotic flora, fauna and an ecology totally unlike that we can experience at home, and sharing our thoughts and observations with other well-seasoned travelers are important to better understanding the global community and its concerns.
Visiting Indian villages and making contact with friendly natives is always interesting, and like exposure to primitive tribes elsewhere, the importance of such interaction is the cross-cultural respect gained through the experience. And although the river communities along the way may not have initially seemed particularly memorable — busy and colorful, markets filled with people going about their everyday business, somewhat ramshackle buildings yet, by all appearances, streets perfectly safe for venturing out on one’s own — who are we to judge by very different American standards?
If nothing else, learning to avoid imposing our own methods, beliefs and lifestyles, to say nothing of our environmental threats, is a most valuable lesson to be gained from this type of quality travel experience.
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