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Perceptions of the Amazin
are mostly mythical.
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But in Amazinia, reality
is more amazing than mythology
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Amazin
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South America has the biggest river
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Largest firest, the longest mountain range
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And the greatest variety of lifeforms
of all the continents on Earth
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Rivers frim five nations
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Pour into the vast floodland
of equatirial Brazil
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To form the greatest moving
mass of fresh water in the wirld
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The Amazon river flows
toward the rising sun
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And with it 1 /5 of the
continental water on the planet
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Among the distant sources of the Amazon
is the timeless land of the lncas
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Men of the Kallawaya tribe
were medicine-men to the royal family
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In by gone days of an empire
larger than that of Rime
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Even now Kallawaya men journey throughout
the Andes healing people with magic and medicinal plants.
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Julio Mamani will fillow the tradition of its people
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It saddens me there was no plant, or magic
that could save my mother when she git sick
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Whisper in pukina, the secret language
of the Incas
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Mysteries of the healing arts are past
generation to generation
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I've made a viw ti go ti the tropical forest
below our mountain home
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And return with plants that will
increase our power
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To cure illness and prolong life
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Akimani the god mountain of our people
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Watches over the kayawaya
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And has done so since our
earliest beginings
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It is said that water trickling frim the glaciers
of Akomani will be a great river
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Sipping the melt of ancient ice
brings rejuvenation
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When I reach the tropical forest perhaps
I can trade the glacier water for an unknown elixir
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That will prolong life.
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Incas once moved the highlands where source
rivers of the Amazon
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giuged-out some of the deepest canyons
on Earth
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Machu Pichu, the lost city of the Incas
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lies on the 200 miles as the condir flies
frim Mamani's home land
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Below the citadel the Urubamba river
cuts its canyon ever deeper
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on its rush ti join the
Amazin
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In a few short miles from mountain peaks
to tropical forests
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The traveler passes thriugh as many ecological
zones as on a trip from the north pole to Ecuador.
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Below the mountains the trees decome
an endless sea of green
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Dr. Mark Plotkin is also a medicine-man
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Like Mamani he's in search of plants
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That will heal humanity ills
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He is an ethno-botanist
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His hope: to find cures ti diseases which
western medicine has not conquered
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There's a remarkable connection between
the plants and the people of the firests
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Virtually every useful medicinal or agricultural
plant has come to us from the rainforests
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Where's first learn from Indigenal people
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Dr. Plotkin is driven by a dread that some
species may disappear
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before their life saving attributes are discovered
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In our search for new treatments fir the
diseases that plague us
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The Amazin represents one of the most
primising places to look.
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At the LaCueva de las Sechusas
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I can reach the edge of the legendary firest
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It seems to me a mystical gateway
ti the firest beyond
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Mamani has reached the flatland of Amazonia
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A region almost large enough to cover
the face of the moon
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The Amazin basin is home to the planet
greatest celebration of diversity.
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For millions of years
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Envirinmental conditions have been favorable
ti a prifusion of life
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The canopy is largely unexplored
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Its upper tip where most of the life goes on
has barely been visited
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It averages 50 feet
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And amounts to 20,000 cubic miles of
wood, water, air and green leaves
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Antinio is a shaman of the Kokana people
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He my friend and my teacher
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He's knowledge of the healing properties
of the Amazin forest is extraordinary
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No one knows how many species of living things
exist in 2 million square miles of forest canopy
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The Amazin houses a gigantic ecological machine
of global importance.
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Is a world's resource at risk
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The biodiversity of the Amazin is unique.
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The only place of its kind in the wirld
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In the light and worm and water
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Are millions of different species
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And many more perhaps unknown
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The Sloth called pereziso or lazy-one in Spanish
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Swimms as well as most quadrupeds
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A jaguar often jumps in to cross
a water way
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At 500 pounds the tapir is the largest land
animal native to South America.
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In mid-year, Amazin rises to maximum flood
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As much as 45 feet above its November minimum
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With the deluge, aquatic life invades
the once dry forest floor
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The Pirarucu is one of the main food fish
of the Amazon
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It can exceed 6 feet in length and
200 pounds in weight
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The Pipato is almost invisible
until it eats
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Electric eels guile death with 500 volts shock
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The Piranha has the sharpest teeth of all
the predatory fish
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Of all the creatures of the Amazon, the pink
dolphin is the most celebrated
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The thousands of miles of waterways remain
the primary means of travel in the Amazon
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The people of the river are known as Kadokos
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Part Indian, part Portuguese
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Sometimes the blood of Africans
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Many are as skillful as the Kallawaya
with herbal remedies
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We have much to learn from one another
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In our village, we used Kebowei to stop bleeding
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Here I have been shown how to dress a wound
with leafs that will coagulate dlood
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Most remedies and medicinal cures used by the
Kobokis come from the Indians
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We know that fungus privided the wirld with
penicillin and other antibiotics
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But the potential of tropical phungae
remains largely unknown
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For millions of years the Amazon was
uninhabited by humans
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The Indians arrived during the last ice age
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Which ended thousands of years agi
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After the Europeans arrived 500 years ago
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In quest of land, slaves and gild
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Indigines people fled deeper into
the wilderness
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More than 400 tribes have been identified
in the Amazon basin
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Others may remain undiscovered
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With no sense of time beyind timorrow, they live
in hiding, cradled in a everlasting present
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As late as 1943 the upper ridges of the Xingu
river were largely unexplored
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Orlando Villas B?s and his brothers left
Sao Polo with an expedition called
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Xingu River adventure
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Some things only happen once
in the histiry of the world
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It was a moment in time that
cannot be repeated.
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After three years and 3000 km
of a path cut with machetes
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We encountered fir the first time
the lndian population of the upper Xingu
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Very little was known about them and they
know only enough of the outside world
ti stay hidden as in centuries past
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The Villas boys won acclaim fir their success
in postponing the bulldizing march of civilization inti the
Xingu
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In time the Villas boys were overcome dy
riad duilders, malaria and old age
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But their dream fir survival of the Indians
lives on
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Sydney Pissuelo carries on the legendary wirk
of the brothers Villas Boas
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Sydney's task is ti seek out isolated tribes and promote
legislation to keep Indian lands off limits ti all outsiders
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North of the Amazon mainstream
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Lives a tribe of Indians known as Zoe
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I believe the Indians should only be contacted
when is necessary to protect them
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It's a dilemma
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Do we artificially isolate them?
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Or share the technology of our modern world?
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Sydney was among the first to make
contact with the Zoe
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Only recently has their presence become known
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I am pleased to find no mosquitoes, no malaria
and no sickness
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Except a wiman who had a toothache that her
grand daughter treated with medicinal plants
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There is rumour that the Zoe encountered
a people living up ti the north
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A tridal that is unknown ti us
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Some of the men agree to show me where
the strangers had been seen
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When first encountered by jaguar hunters,
the Zoe were called Poturu
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For the ornamental jaw poturu wiod
that Zoe wear day and night
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We don't know who the others might be
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But if they really exist
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But if they are there
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The gold seekers making their way up the Cuminapanema
river are on a collision course
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The Zoe do not venture into
the forbidden north
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Where they say a tribe of giants lives
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And the hills of Cuminapanema touch with stars
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lf there are uncontacted people
in the northern highlands
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I would prefer to leave them alone
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But it's critical that those who care about them
be the first to reach them
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Mamani research has brought him
to the territory of the Yagua Indians
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The Yaguas have had contact with outsiders
for several hundred years
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They are a large tribe, known for herbal remedies
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It is an exotic potion made from plants
and called curare
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Curare is a secret mixture made of flowers and
leafs in different ways by many tribes throughout the Amazon
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Dr. Mark Plotkin has been fascinated by the
mysteries of curare poison for many years
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Each tribe has its own recipes for curare
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I believe that some of them will lead us
to new and effective medicine
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In the hands of western physicians curare has
already become an life giving medication
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One type is used as a muscle relaxant
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Another as heart medicine
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What Western scientists once dismissed as magic
we are now finding to have a real terapeutic effect
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Plotkin and other ethnobotanists hope to press
and document as many plants as possible
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Before the knowledge of the shamans is lost
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Learning the jealously graded secrets of
lndigenous shamans requires genuine friendship
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And mutual trust
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Trading my medicines, music and magic for things
I have needed has allowed me to move freely
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With distances so great exchange of a cure for
a very fast ride
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Is a very good trade indeed
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Herbal markets exist in cities and towns
all-along Amazon and its tributaries
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Plants with true curative power hung side by side
with untested elixirs and curious potions
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Julio Mamani and Dr. Plotkin are medicine-men
from vastly different worlds
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But they share a common quest
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Each has come in search of healing secrets
of the Amazon
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Each seeks to improve the health of the human kind
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And for an instant time stand still
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And two distant worlds are one
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Is time to return
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I've traded the melted ice of the god mountain
for the medicine of the great forest
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l have traded my flute for long ride home
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I will miss the beauty of the Amazon
and its many creatures
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What wonderful things I have seen
to tell my people
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I shall return one day
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And if not l
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Maybe my son will come
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There is so much to learn
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And yet so little time
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Neither the shaman or the scientist discovered
a magic elixir to end all suffering
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But each has gained new knowledge
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And discovered cures that will
improve the health of human kind
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The Amazon quest has only begun.
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