The Amazon is announced by great rivers: taking the road of the Western Llanos, the Apure, the Arauca, the Payara, the Riíto, the Capanaparo (the most crystalline and majestic of all), the Cinaruco and the Meta rivers, whose confluence with the Orinoco is the entrance to the northwest end of Guayana from where the road leading to the Atures streams starts. The landscape of the plains of Apure is covered by an immense extension of green pastures, marshes and watering holes, morichales and some trees or group of trees scattered in the greenish and seemingly infinite that in some stretches becomes undergrowth and more inside gallery forest. Already in Guayana, the large ancient stones dominate in various gray scales and in the most striking formations, which can be covered by a green frosted mantle and a dense jungle that grows around them. Small rural houses with their patios for sowing and breeding animals are built on both sides of the road.

A few days in Puerto Ayacucho, the multi-ethnic capital of the immense and flagelated state of Amazonas, have been enough to eat again the typical dishes and taste a range of exotic fruits until now unknown to me: if I had already an account of the manaca protein, the acid túpiro and the threaded sweetness of the moriche, on these days join my gustatory memory the arazá guava, which combines the guava with a stronger flavor of the passion fruit, and the coconut-shaped copoazú, slightly bitter but causing the dionysian experience of the soursop when sweetened.

Fried fish served on cassava bread. Typical Amazonian dish. The bowl at the bottom contains ajicero, a spicy broth with small portions of yucca, chili, chicken and fish.

If the introduction of chicken or rice reveals foreign influences in Amazonense cuisine (demonym of Venezuelan Amazonian people), the dominant note of yucca in almost all dishes shows that this tuber is still the staple food, a fact that is repeated in other countries of the Amazon basin and is a reality also for the Creole and African population, which in Puerto Ayacucho is surprinsingly demographically significant. The cassava breas is made from yucca, which the natives season with murejuy and the coveted manioc, the manioc flour which the inner jungle uses as a currency of exchange and that is the Amazonian cereal: it can be seen in all the dishes and even in the juices, but the most common way to consume it is in form of yucuta: manioc submerged in water that is drunk in a group from the same container and that alliviate the diligent heat of the tropics.

Rural indigenous women in the kitchen.

In my ten-day stay I have been able to get to know two indigenous communities, settlements of a few dozen or a hundred people who practice barter and subsistence economy: Pavoni, with large houses closed in the western way, with wooden slatted walls and brass ceilings between which a churuata can be seen and which was originally a Kurripaco settlement, but which is now multiethnic; and Nueva Jerusalén, a uwottüja (piaroa) farmhouse of about ten houses and a community centre around a large central square.

The trip to New Jerusalem was made at night between a narrow road where hardly a truck could fit, since usually only the motobikes that the Uwottüja use to take their products to the markets of Puerto Ayacucho pass through. The path is limited by thick grass and is extended by narrow bridges, which are also covered with earth. The farmhouse is saturated with a magical force: only three people speak Spanish and act as translators, the fire remains lit in the community house and the little artificial light (only available inside the houses) gives the responsibility of drawing the contours of the night to the stars, summoned in myriads that remain undaunted, with the serenity of the stones before the saturated voltage of a lightning bolt in the clear eastern sky and that still does not thunder.

And now the imposing Amazon rivers, which give the impression of arms cut into the sea. The sand is almost always as fine as a caress and if the heat and the flow would allow it, it would be enough to make a mattress. Only in the brooks it is possible to keep your feet in the sand and face simultaneously breathing air. Sometimes some of the rocks to which the landscape has accustomed us appear between the water, sometimes by will of a whim and other times obeying a natural and meticulous design as in a Chinese or Japanese garden. Underwater you can see little fish and small or medium sized snakes appear swimming even in the spas, although they prefer to take night baths. However, they are no more dangerous than the plague of mosquitoes, midges, gnats and other agents that transmit tropical diseases, and peace can come to your mind even in front of them if you are always in the middle of potentially edible eyebrows. After all, there is a saying that goes, 'whoever eats first eats best'.

My journey will continue in the coming weeks through this threatened and blessed land, whose preservation will prove crucial for the continuation of life. Resistance against the commodification of nature does not sorrounder, no matter how much time, and the economic interests, and ethical misery of transnational corporations and states place us at a bitter disadvantage.