Opinion – É Logo Ali: The difficult path to our Amazonian Everest

Even in school benches we learned that Brazil does not have high mountains because it is an older territory whose highest peaks have suffered more millions of years of erosion than those of other parishes, remember? There is still intense discussion among academics who question whether or not we can call mountains what, in fact, would be just mountains, hills, anything far from the majesty of mountain ranges such as the Andes or the revered Himalayas, these, yes, undeniably worthy of being called mountains.

But while experts can’t decide whether or not we have mountains to call our own, a group of mountaineers anxiously counts the days to go to the highest summit in Brazil — the Pico da Neblina, at exactly 2,993.78 meters in altitude according to the most recent measurement. confirmed by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) with the help of satellite. Or Yaripo, “mountain of the wind”, as the Yanomami Indians reverently call it, residents and owners of the piece coveted by prospectors.

And it is for Pico da Neblina, or Yaripo, that the possibility of access to very special tourists has just been reopened: those who have enough physical and psychological conditioning to face not only the usual perrengues of a climb, but the journey to its base. through the muddy trails of the Amazon rainforest in an old Toyota, plus seven hours of “voadeira”, the canoe with a traditional outboard motor in the region, to the heart of the Pico da Neblina National Park, within the Yanomami Indigenous Land. From there, after the blessing of the Yanomami, the ascent begins. In all, there are seven to ten days of journey, depending on the participants’ breath and weather conditions.

Adventure is not even for any pair of legs and a backpack full of goodwill. Entrepreneur Magno Souza, owner of Roraima Adventures, from Boa Vista (RR), specialist in Amazonian experiences such as the ascent to Mount Roraima, says that he began to articulate the operation of access to Pico da Neblina in 2007. Only in 2009 was he able to climb the for the first time, after much conversation with the Yanomami, Funai and Ibama.

“But, suddenly, in 2010, it had become Joana’s mother’s house, many people began to want to explore access without experience and without respecting the culture and customs of the Yanomami, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office forbade access once and for all. “, he says. The isolation would last until 2015, when Funai published a normative instruction regulating tourism in indigenous areas. After the conversations were resumed, three operators were authorized to be responsible for organizing the journey, indicated by the pioneer Souza. “We didn’t want a monopoly, but we needed people who knew the environment, the specific difficulties of the region”, he explains. In addition to Roraima Adventures, Amazon Emotions and Ambiental Turismo are accredited as operators.

From conversation to conversation, the first pilot expedition, carried out in partnership with Roraima Adventures and Amazon Emotions, took ten guinea pig visitors to the top in 2017, including a reporter from Folha. Everything was ready to start the packages in March 2020 – but then the pandemic came and, with it, the suspension of all programming.

Just a few days ago, more precisely on March 17, the first group of ten tourists left São Gabriel da Cachoeira (AM) towards the National Park. Of these, two were left on the way.

In the forest, the most predictable is the unforeseen

“The impact of the forest, food and culture so different from the Yanomami, who accompany the groups throughout the journey, forced two of the group members to give up on the second day of the expedition”, says Souza. “They recognized that they did not have the psychological condition to face such a difficult trail, and they left in time”, he adds.

On the website of the operators and partner agencies, it is clearly warned that this is a very difficult trail. People who are more than 10 kg above the so-called “ideal weight” must undergo an interview before closing the package. And those who have knee problems, back problems or any type of chronic or psychological illness should only go to the agency’s window after consulting a doctor. The thing there is serious.

“It’s not an exaggeration, it’s care and responsibility”, emphasizes Souza, remembering that this is a journey in which, no matter how hard the support team makes an effort to take care of camp, food, transport, first aid and even communication by satellite for emergencies, “the most predictable is always the unforeseen”. And the unforeseen, in a place so far from everything, can be a big trouble, if not end up in death.

But then why would anyone want to dabble in such a challenge? Well, first always comes the famous answer that the British climber George Mallory gave to the reporter of The New York Times who asked him, in 1924, why he wanted so much to climb to the top of Everest (a journey, by the way, in which he would die) : “Because it’s there”. For nothing like knowing that something “is there”, challenging our abilities, to force the first step forward.

But there are more than perrengues, according to Souza, who accompanied this first group of the recovery: “Nothing can describe the intensity of what you feel when you reach the peak after so many difficulties, a lot of rain, cold, heat, humidity, the forest, the river, so many different experiences in a row”, sighs this Mato Grosso native from Campo Grande with the smile of someone who, at the age of 60, can’t wait to go up again.