I spent my first afternoon in the jungle swimming in the Amazon River while pink and grey dolphins jumped in the water around me. 
  
Above, a quarter of a rainbow poked out of a cloud. To say it was surreal may be an understatement.

That same sensation repeated itself on my fourth morning. I watched the sunrise from a canoe in the same spot, but this time the dolphins jumped under an unbroken double rainbow.  

  

The guide said it was unusual because rainbows typically appear on the east bank of the river, not over the west bank.

The problem: the rainbow was so big I couldn’t get the whole thing in a picture.

Swimming in the river was fun but it’s very murky. 

The river is higher than it has been since 2012, probably due to climate change. Most houses, including the lodge where I stayed, are several feet under water.

  

In addition to hundreds of plants,  

birds, and insects too numerous to name I saw sloths,

 

howler monkeys, squirrel monkeys, giant bullfrogs, tarantulas,

 

scorpion spiders (the largest spider in the Amazon), myriad birds, a wild boar, meter-long iguanas, 

 

caimans (a type of crocodile),  

a tree boa, and a copperhead viper.   
 

I went fishing for baby piranhas.

  

I did not get a good look at the copperhead viper because as we were trudging through the swamp one guy on the tour was so excited to see the snake he grabbed at it and scared it off. I was behind him and froze because I no longer knewwhere the poisonous snake was in the water.

 
The guide told me it was okay to keep walking because the snake couldn’t bite me through my boots. Since the boots stopped a couple of inches below my knees I wasn’t really comforted.

 
Snakes were the things we did not see a lot of mostly by my guide’s design. He claimed that snakes are harder to find when the river is high, and while I’m sure that’s true in part, but he also told us a couple of war stories and he’s had some pretty close calls. While it would have been cool to see a giant anaconda, I’m not too broken up about it.

 
The Amazon is a spectacular place. It is a crime that our short-sighted modern culture is not protecting it.  We are destroying an amazing natural wonder.