Where life has found its richest expression

Amazon Rainforest Day, first celebrated in 2008, aims to raise awareness about the importance of Earth’s largest rainforest. There is a place where the Amazon meets the Andes, where forests climb the lower slopes of mountains before giving way to the mists of the cloud forests. To stand there is to feel the weight of two great worlds converging. The immensity of the Amazon basin stretches out below, while above, the Andes rise in sheer defiance. In this meeting ground—across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia—life has found its richest expression. The numbers alone are striking. Thousands of plant species, brilliantly patterned insects, frogs still unknown to science, and birds found nowhere else share this space. Walking a trail here, the experience is rarely showy but always layered: P