Amazon River: The World's Greatest Waterway at Leticia
The Amazon River at Leticia — at its widest and most powerful — is the centrepiece of all experiences here; the river's wildlife, the communities on its banks, the indigenous peoples in their canoes, and the scale of the ecosystem all reveal themselves from the water
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Amazon River Scale
The Amazon carries 20% of the world's fresh water to the sea — the river's daily fluctuations at Leticia (levels can rise and fall 12 meters between seasons) create an ever-changing landscape; at high water the forest is flooded for kilometers; at low water the sandbars appear
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Canoe with flooded forest (Várzea)
During the high-tide season (March-July), canoeing through the flooded várzea forest - between the tree trunks, over the submerged undergrowth - reveals an Amazonian world impossible to access on foot; the fish swimming through the tree roots and the birds on the flooded roof are extraordinary
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Amazon fishing traditions
The traditional Amazonian fishing methods used near Leticia – the arrastão (trawl), the tarrafa (throw net) and the live-bait fish hook – represent millennia of accumulated knowledge; The tikuna and ribeirinho fishermen's understanding of fish behavior is encyclopedic
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Piranha night fishing
Piranha fishing in the Amazon at night — with a simple rod and meat bait by the light of a lantern — is one of the classic Amazon experiences; the fish bites quickly and with force; the teeth of the red-bellied piranha are extraordinarily sharp; the experience is memorable without being dangerous
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Amazon Sandbar Camp
The Amazon's seasonal sandbars—which emerge during the low-tide season—are used as temporary campsites; sleeping on a sandbank in a hammock under a mosquito net with the stars reflected in the river and the sounds of the forest on both banks is one of the finest experiences in the Amazon
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Canoe at sunrise
The Amazon at sunrise from a canoe — the mist rising from the warm water, the hoatzins calling from the riverside vegetation, the pink dolphins emerging to breathe and the sky turning from black to orange — is one of nature's most beautiful daily spectacles