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Whether you look at it up close, from the ground or a boat, or fly over it in a plane, the Peruvian jungle seems endless. In fact, it is disappearing at an alarming rate. However, while awareness of its importance as a unique eco-system and as a vital component of the global environment (not to mention the wealth of wildlife and sheer beauty of the vegetation) has brought it into the international spotlight, few people think of Peru in terms of jungle. In fact, well over half the country is covered by dense tropical rainforest, with its eastern regions offering unrivalled access to the world's largest and most famous jungle, the Amazon . Of the Amazon's original area, around four million square kilometres (about 80 percent) remain intact, fifteen percent of which lie in Peru, where they receive over 2000mm of rainfall a year and experience average temperatures of 25-35°C. Considered as El Infierno Verde - "the Green Hell" - by many Peruvians who've never been here, it's the most bio-diverse region on Earth, and much that lies beyond the main waterways remains relatively untouched and often unexplored. Jaguars, anteaters and tapirs roam the forests, huge anaconda snakes live in the swamps, toothy caimans (of the South American Alligatoridae family) sunbathe along riverbanks, and trees like the giant Shihuahuaco, strong enough to break an axe head, rise from the forest floor. Furthermore, there are over fifty indigenous tribes scattered throughout the Peruvian section alone, many surviving primarily by hunting, fishing and gathering, as they have done for thousands of years. At about six times the size of England, or the size of California, it's not surprising that the Peruvian Amazon possesses a variety of ecotypes. Easier to access than many other South American jungle regions, increasing numbers of travellers are choosing to spend time here, and the tangled, sweltering and relatively accessible Amazon Basin never fails to capture the imagination of anyone who ventures beneath its dense canopy. In the lowland areas , away from the seasonally flooded riverbanks, the landscape is dominated by red, well-drained loamy soil, which can reach depths of fifty metres. Reaching upwards from this, the primary forest - mostly comprising a huge array of tropical palms, with scatterings of larger, emergent tree species - regularly achieves evergreen canopy heights of fifty metres. At ground level the vegetation is relatively open (mostly saplings, herbs and woody shrubs), since the trees tend to branch high up, restricting the amount of light available. At higher altitudes, the large belt of cloud forest ( ceja de selva ) that sweeps along the eastern edges of the Andes has been the focus of significant oil-prospecting during the last decade and has revealed some of the world's largest remaining fossil-fuel reserves. The biggest river in the world, the Rio Amazonas originally flowed east to west, but when the Andes began to rise along the Pacific edge of the continent around one hundred million years ago, the waters became an inland sea. Another forty million years of geological and climatic action later saw this "sea" break through into the Atlantic, which reversed the flow of water and gave birth to the mighty 6500-kilometre river. Starting in Peru as an insignificant trickle on Cerro Huagra, the waters cascade through the ceja de selva down some 4450m in just under 1000km, passing through the Toto, Santiago, Apurimac, Ene and Tambo valleys until they reach the Ashaninka tribal territories in the Gran Pajonal. From here, where the Rio Tambo meets the Rio Urubamba to form the larger Rio Ucayali , the river is less than 200m above the level of the Atlantic, and from Atalaya onwards, the river and its tributaries - still the basis of jungle transport - are characterized by slow, meandering courses broken occasionally by tumultuous rapids ( pongos). Erosion and deposits continue to shift these courses, and oxbow lakes are constantly appearing and disappearing, adding enormous quantities of time and fuel to any river journey in the lowlands. In fact, as it languidly meanders past Iquitos , an isolated, land-locked city, on its way towards Brazil and eventually the Atlantic, it's still at least ten days by boat to the mouth of a river which, at any one moment carries around twenty percent of the world's fresh water.
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