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(posted 6.14.05)
Dr. Walden is a professor and Associate Dean of Medical School Development and Outreach at the Marshall University School of Medicine. He has taken more than seventy-five trips into remote regions of the Amazon Basin and is a recognized authority on living and trekking with Amerindian populations. The following is my research interview with Dr. Walden.
 More about the book, PART I
Q: What is the rain fall in the jungle like?
A: Rain. Well, sometimes it rains all day and throughout the night, day after day. At other times it will rain daily for an hour or two then let up until the next day. During the height of the rainy season, it is often an all day affair. Everything gets soggy. All your items become damp no matter how hard you try to keep them dry. There is also a dispiriting aspect to the daily rains, especially when they last days or weeks at a time. I see the average rainfall for Puerto Maldonado, Peru, in April is only 154.2mm. That’s not a lot of rain for jungle, actually. About 6 inches, more or less. But, what the hell, for the sake of a novel you can say you had oceans of rain and you wouldn’t be misleading anyone because some years it will rain multiples of what the tables of averages indicate. So, pour on as much rain as you wish to create the reality you want. I have a lot more thoughts on rain if you are interested since I’ve spent so much of my life in the rainforest.
 Q: Do you have to cut paths through the jungle?
A: Jungle density. If there are people, there will usually be cleared paths. If they are at war or on less than agreeable terms, the paths will rapidly revert to jungle. Even so, the indigenous people usually can find or recall the basic direction of a trail. Now, if you are along a river or in secondary growth (where forest has been cut, but has come back) you will find nearly impenetrable tangles of vines and small trees that make movement very difficult. In virgin forest you can usually walk without too much trouble because the canopy of the forest blocks so much sunlight that little things have difficulty growing. It is not particularly difficult to walk in deep, uninhabited forest. The last thing you want to do is try to clear a path with a machete. It only happens in movies, novels and when indigenous peoples are cutting new trails (something they rarely do). The one indispensable tool is the machete. It would be awfully hard to traverse jungle without a machete. A machete is difficult to use in unskilled hands and dangerous to boot. People who aren’t familiar with using a machete invariably hack at the forest in a frenzy. People who grew up using a machete use it with surgical skill. I’ve discussed this in Jungle Travel and Survival.
Q: What kind of natural dangers are there in the jungle?
A: Dangerous things. People are dangerous things. Spiny palms are dangerous. Stinging ants. Snakes are rarely encountered in most jungle, but they are there. Noxious (poisonous) plants. Scorpions. Biting spiders that inflict hideously painful bites. Falling trees: in some places as many people are killed by falling trees as by snakes.
Q: What is an average day in the jungle like?
A: Day in the jungle. Gee, there’s no quick answer. Some days are wearisome because of the monotony. Other days have more going on in a 12 hour period than you are likely to experience in a lifetime in North America. After awhile, even the strange things become almost routine.
 More about the book, PART II
Q: How many miles can you travel in a day?
A: Miles of travel. Depends on the terrain, the season and who is doing the travel. Indigenous peoples can cover about the same amount of distance no matter what the terrain. But outsiders cannot. If it is hilly or wet a non-Indian could probably go 3 to 5 miles without a guide. But it could easily be as little as a mile or two. With an Indian guide I sometimes make 12 to 15 mile treks over well traveled trails through deep virgin forest. But, I’ve seen days during the rainy season where we’ve spent two days just getting from a river to a trail because of high water.
Q: Is the jungle anything like the redwood forests of Northern California? (I asked this because I'd been to the redwood forests and wanted some perspective!)
A: Jungle as red wood forest. Don’t know a damn thing about red wood forests other than what I’ve seen in pictures. I suspect, however, there would always be significantly more undergrowth in any jungle than in a red wood forest. When I said above that you could walk without too much trouble, it is relative. There will always be some trouble going in a straight line in the jungle, even in virgin jungle; it just can’t be done. Jungle is mostly green. The colorful things are rather rare, but when they do occur, are breathtaking.
Q: Would anyone go into the jungle without a guide?”
A: No, no one in their right mind would traverse long stretches of jungle without a guide. I don’t and I’ve been doing this since 1966. On the other had, in an emergency they would have no choice. If one of your guys has spent time in the jungle, he still won’t know squat about actual survival but he will know enough to realize he and his companion are at great risk and he will go out of his way to take precautions. Such as blazing a trail (marking with his machete or knife or whatever he has on one side of the of the trail) so if they have to return to a starting point or get lost and wind up back on some part of the trail they will know which direction they came from.
Q: How do you keep clean in the jungle?
A: You do what the natives do, jump in a stream (even a shallow creek can provide enough water to clean you off) twice daily and clean off. The rain itself tends to be unexpectedly cold and uncomfortable. I only see children running naked through rain. They do that for fun, not to keep clean.
More about the book, PART III
Q: What types of weapons do the indigenous people use?
A: Indigenous peoples today mainly use shotguns though some continue to use spears, arrows or blowguns. It depends on the tribal group. (Some have switched totally to shotguns; some occasionally use shotguns, but prefer blowguns. Very few use spears. Very few use bows and arrows other than for big game such as tapir, monkeys or killing other humans.) Virtually all tribes now have contact with the outside world and shotguns, sometimes crude muzzle loading types, are ubiquitous. Only a few indigenous people know how to use the poison from frogs for dart poison. This is not something an outsider would know how to prepare. Besides, the usual delivery system is a poison tipped dart shot through a blowgun. A blowgun is an extraordinarily accurate weapon, but one that only an indigenous person would be able to make. I don’t know one person raised outside the jungle who has the skill to make a blowgun from natural materials. It takes years of practice to get it down right
Q: Do the rivers have lots of rapids? Are they easy to travel?
A: Unless the river takes exceptional twists and turns such that you travel for miles and find yourself hours later just a few hundred yards from where you started (because the river has doubled back on itself), it is always faster to travel by river. Rivers are the jungle highways. My book explains how to make a bamboo raft. All the military guides explain how to make various types of rafts. Sometimes there are rapids, sometimes not. Depends on the local circumstances. I was on one expedition where we had 350 miles of rapids. There are other rivers where you could drift for weeks without ever encountering swift water.
Q: My hero is using the machete a lot. He's spent time in Brazil in the jungles, would he really be good with it?
A: Yes, it is realistic to have your character (the one who has spent a lot of time in the jungle) use the machete. Yes, it makes an excellent weapon. People carve each other up all the time with machetes.
Q: How well does modern electronic equipment work in the jungle?
A: Satellite phones usually work in the jungle. Best in a clearing (a village or along a river beach). Rain eventually destroys electronic equipment, but the latest generation of satellite phones are tough and would generally hold up, weather-wise, for a reasonable period of time. The GPS would make life a lot more certain. I recommend GPS for all expeditions in the Amazon. (Not that I always take one myself…)
Q: I'm always seeing people eaten by snakes in the jungle movies. Does that really happen?
A: There are no confirmed human deaths from anacondas. I’ve researched the literature. There are silly photos on the NET and so on but as of the last time I actually did an extensive literature review (about 4 years ago), no deaths. Here was how I put it in my chapter on Jungle Travel and Survival in Paul Auerbach’s encyclopedic text, Wilderness Medicine: “Anecdotal reports of anacondas attacking and swallowing humans, particularly children and women bathing at the edge of jungle streams, are unconfirmed.”
The Amazon Strain began life as Jungle Jane. Ever since I saw Romancing the Stone I wanted to be a romance novelist and write a story of jungle adventure. So Amazon is the culmination of those dreams!
I got to explore the very exciting world of infectious diseases as well as the Amazon Basin. Because these subjects had long intrigued me I found the research to be almost too much fun. I started by reading a book called Level IV Virus Hunters. And I came to realize what the lives of these virologists were like. How their world revolved around hot spots that break out around the world and how they live to find cures to diseases most of us aren't aware even exist.
The jungle was as much fun to research. I started with an image in my head that came straight from Hollywood movies. But quickly learned the reality of the jungle was more complex. That it was a vast eco-system that has been untouched by time and progress in many places.
The jungle is as much a character in this book as Jane and Mac. I hope you will enjoy reading The Amazon Strain as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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