PERU: In Search of the Source of the Amazon

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Jul 5 1996 (IPS) - A scientific expedition of Italians, Russians and Peruvians has set off up the Chila mountains of southern Peru in search of the source of the Amazon, in an attempt to prove it is longer than the Nile – until now the world’s longest river.

The Amazon pours 150,000 cubic metres of water into the Atlantic per second, and is indisputably the most voluminous river in the world even if the Nile still beats it in length.

The encyclopedias say the Nile is the longest river, measuring 6,695 km, though expeditions by the French Cousteau Foundation and the US National Geographic in the eighties suggested the Amazon is nearly 7,000 km.

Had it not been for some technical omissions the scientific communtiy would have accepted the data. The present trip is goiong better equipped, and should be able to substantiate the claim.

This issue of which is the world’s longest river has impassioned geographers for decades.

For many years the Mississippi was seen as the world record beater until the source of the Nile was traced up from Late Victoria, in equatorial Africa, to the river Kagera, which feeds into this.

The first explorer to reach Lake Victoria, on the border of present day Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda was David Livingstone who travelled up the Zambeze in 1853, and reached the Victoria falls two years later in search of the source of the river.

His subsequent disappearance had the world on the edge of its chair until the reporter and explorer John Stanley found him on the banks of lake Tanganika with the infamous greeting, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume.”

The international group making the present trip up the Amazon is led by the Polish-Italian Jacek Palkiewicz, a modern day sucessor of the men who opened the way to the East and first dived into the heart of Africa.

“Even though we are on the threshold of the 21st century, and humanity has started to break out of its eggshell to poke around in the immensity of the space surrounding the planet, there are still places to be discovered and mysteries to be solved here on earth,” said Palkiewicz.

This explorer has written 11 books on his travels through the forests of Borneo, the Sahara and Gobi deserts, the Ural mountains, and his single-handed voyage across the Atlantic.

Palkiewicz teaches survival skills in Italy and he also works as a correspondent on the Italian daily ‘Corriere della Sera.’

His trip upriver in Peru will be undertaken in the company of a geographer and glacier expert, both Russian, an Italian geographer and some Peruvian military and civilian scientists.

The expedition, supported by investment from Italian, Russian and Peruvian companies, will climb 5,957 metres above sea level, to where two small streams meet to form the early stretches of the Ucayali which later turns into the Amazon river.

The scientists will have to decide which of the two streams is the main contributor, tracing its course upwards to the glacier which, drip by drip, feeds the most powerful river in the world.

“When two rivers or streams meet, to establish which is the major source and which is the tributary, you not only have to consider the amount of water it contributes, but also the extension of its previous course, the height at which it springs up and the inclination of the run.

The exact source of the Amazon will be photographed, filmed and electronically tagged with a ‘GPS,’ a gadget which can give the geographical coordinates of any given point to within a few centimetres.

“Unlike on previous expeditions, we are taking very precise scientific aparatus: eclimeters, altimeters, barometric rulers,” and other instruments, said Palkiewicz.

“After sending the respective information to the most important geographical and academic societies in the world, I will be preparing my next expedition: to the mountain of Tepui, a forested place covered in thick mist and where there are plant and animal species which do not exist anywhere else in the world,” he said.