DailyMail.co.uk – By Bruce Parry
For his stunning new BBC2 documentary series, Amazon, explorer Bruce Parry and his production team travelled down the the world’s greatest river to meet some of the extraordinary people that live alongside it. Here, in an exclusive extract from his diary of the trip, Bruce recounts their hilarious experiences during Brazilian Carnival and the thrill of seeing one of the last remaining tribes untouched by the outside world, from the air.
1 February Benjamin Constant
This morning we travelled by boat to get to the small Brazilian border town of Benjamin Constant, which borders Peru and Colombia. Our assistant producer, Leti, had decided it would be the ideal place for us to experience Carnival. We were met in the town by two local guys, Vena and Tota; who wore matching black T-shirts with ‘Soro’, the name of their bloco (carnival community), emblazoned across the front in pink. They told us that it was traditional for all the men in the town to get dressed up in drag for the celebrations – and drove us to meet Maria, a legendary dressmaker.