The Boiling River and an Amazonian shaman. Photo by Sofia Ruzo
Thanks once again to Chau Tu at Science Friday’s weekly written article, we’ve learned something new about the natural world, and it sounds like pretty much everyone except maybe a couple hundred people were unaware of its existence too: a steaming-hot river in the Amazon of Peru that isn’t volcanically heated. As Andrés Ruzo, the first geoscientist to study the water body, said in his TED Talk on the subject in 2014 (just released this February), “At a time when everything seems mapped, measured and understood, this river challenges what we think we know. It has forced me to question the line between known and unknown, ancient and modern, scientific and spiritual. It is a reminder that there are still great wonders to be discovered.” Here’s more from Chau Tu on the subject, and make sure to visit the Boiling River Foundation website.
Andrés Ruzo first heard about the Boiling River from his Peruvian grandfather, who shared a legend with him when he was a kid about the Lost City of Gold in Peru. “One of the details of the story was a ‘river that boils,’” Ruzo recalls.
Twelve years later, when Ruzo was studying at Southern Methodist University in Texas to become a geophysicist, he asked colleagues and other experts if they knew anything about a large river that boiled in the Peruvian Amazon. No one had; some scoffed at the inquiry. While thermal rivers do occur on earth, they’re generally tied to active volcanic or magmatic systems—neither of which were known to exist in the Amazon jungle, they said.
At Xandari we offer a garden and farm tour that consists of showing guests through our botanical garden, Mandala garden, and orchid house and educating them on the properties of each of the plants. When I was asked to translate the tour for our head gardener Jose Luis I immediately accepted. However, after agreeing to be the translator it dawned on me that my rudimentary knowledge about plants (species, genus, and all that scientific terminology amounts to high school level biology) could be a limitation to the learning experience of the guests. Adding to my worry, the guests taking the tour are well versed in plant identification and were hoping to learn more about the tropical plants we have. To prepare myself, I skimmed the plant identification binder we have, decided to take it with me on the tour, and hoped for the best.
Organikos 