Post Script To The Jungle Experience

As we depart the Amazon rain forest, we go by boat from the Jungle Lodge to the river dock to meet our transfer to the airport; and I notice something that somehow escaped me on our initial arrival.

I notice the sign on the little "store".  The name of this community, this "tribe", if  you will;  this village is called "Infier'ino".  Inferno. You have to roll the r to get the full effect.

They say it has no meaning in their language.  But when the Spanish first arrived here and experienced, firsthand, the oppressive heat; coupled with 100% humidity; the bugs; the poisonous snakes and spiders; the swarms of Malaria-bearing mosquito's (also Yellow Fever and a bucketload of other diseases); they named it Inferno ~ they believed it to be hell.

Now that I've spent the last few days experiencing the whole gamete of what the rain forest has to offer, this has a little more meaning than it did previously.........and the irony is not wasted.