We started our day off by visiting one of the local communities near the reserve. One community member, Sandro, has been giving tours for 20 years and told us that the community we were in is only about 6 years old. They have to relocate every few years, because the area of the reservation that they’re in changes so rapidly during flood season, that new islands can be drowned and formed in only a few years. The people are able to grow many different crops and sell them to Tefe, the town we flew into from Manaus. We thought that their entirely different lifestyle was extremely interesting, because the flooded jungle forces them into a semi-nomadic lifestyle. The simplicity of their lifestyle is the polar opposite of life back home for us.

Individuals from different communities work for several days at a time at the Uakari lodge, where we are staying to make extra money, and then return back to farm until they next go to the lodge. There is a unique dynamic like nothing we have ever seen, where the lodge and communities coexist to generate money for everyone so that the jungle can be preserved, and the Uakari  Monkey, which the lodge is named for, can thrive once again.