Reviews for The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness

The average rating for The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-29 00:00:00 Oscar Wylde The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness is actually two books: The first part is a rather slipshod diary of a trip encompassing parts of Brazil, Peru, Chile, and Argentina in a diary format. It almost seems as if the destinations are selected haphazardly. The second part makes up for it. It consists of a mostly failed expedition down the Urubamba and Ucayali Rivers to find (1) the jungle ruins of Picha and (2) a strange fossil mandible found near the Mapuya River. Peter Matthiessen and his partner Andres Porras Caceres contact one Cesar Cruz to join them, but he never shows up with the promised equipment at the rendezvous. Instead, Peter and Andres are forced to make their own way down the treacherous Urubamba, especially the rapids at the Pongo de Mainique. Eventually, they meet up with Cruz, who apparently was hoping the expedition would never show up. They never make it to the ruins at Picha, which are in the territory of a very violent Machiguenga tribe; but they do get the mandible. But instead of Matthiessen flying it to the U.S. with much acclaim, it winds up in a lawsuit between Cruz and the man on whose property it originally lay. If you should read this book, I suggest you concentrate on the long sixth chapter, "Beyond Black Drunken River," which deals with the Urubamba/Ucayali expedition.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-01-25 00:00:00 Helio Filho The Snow Leopard is one of the powerful books I have ever read, and I keep thinking I will find something meaningful in his other work. I imagine there are these books he wrote before his interest in Buddhism and his opening into mysticism, but this is the 2nd or 3rd book I have read and disliked immensely. There were a few times I imagined myself on a boat drifting down the Amazon, and around every corner, discovering some new bird or tree. But his absolute racism and disregard for the indigenous peoples he encountered is unforgivable. Over and over he writes of their ignorance and stupidity, and judges them in Western terms that are biased and inaccurate and hateful. I can't quote his horrible words, and yet, there is such promise of a better man he may become and how he sometimes gets it right when he observes: "In New England one walks quite gradually into a wood, but not so in the jungle. One steps through the wall of the tropic forest, as Alice stepped through the looking glass; a few steps, and the wall closes behind. The first impression is of the dark, soft atmosphere which might be described as "hanging" for in the great tangle of leaves and fronds and boles it is difficult to perceive any one plant as a unit; there are only these hanging shapes draped by lianas in the heavy air, as if they had lost contact with the earth. And this feeling is increased by the character of the earth itself, which is quite unlike the thrifty woodland floor at home; here the tree boles erupt out of heaped-up masses of decay, as if the ground might be almost any distance beneath. The trees themselves are so tumultuous and strange that one sees them as a totality, a cumulative effect, scarcely noticing details…and it is true that the jungle seems strangely silent, even when the air is full of sound; the sounds are like sounds form another sphere of consciousness, from a dream, and then suddenly they burst singly on the ear."