If you have ever taken a bath in a river that runs with crystal clear waters, you will know that it is a most satisfying experience. Except in the Seine and… well, in a few other rivers scattered around the planet. The dip is refreshing, but there is one in which we better not even put our feet in: the Shanay Timpishka, also known as the ‘boiling river of Peru’.
The reason is obvious: the temperature of the water is close to the boiling point. And the most fascinating thing is that there is no volcano in the area that causes the river to be practically boiling.
Legend. As is often the case with colonialism, we think that something has not been discovered until someone claims to have done so. The boiling Amazon River was known to locals, but for a long time, the rest of the world thought it was a legend.
One day, the Peruvian geologist Andrés Ruzo became obsessed with a story that his grandfather told him when he was little:
“Atahualpa, emperor of the Incas, had been captured by Francisco Pizarro. The Spanish conquistadors had grown rich and stories of glory reached Spain. New waves of Spaniards arrived, eager for gold and fame. They went to the towns and asked To the locals, where is there another civilization to conquer? Where is there more gold? As revenge, the Incas told them to go to the Amazon, where they would find all the gold they wanted, even a city called Paititi. made of gold.
But what awaited the Spaniards was something else, and the few who returned told stories of powerful shamans, of warriors with poisoned arrows, of trees so tall that they blocked the sun, of spiders that ate birds, of snakes that devoured men, and of a boiling river.”
Five-time. Ruzo himself told this anecdote years ago, but far from remaining a simple bedtime story, it had a deep impact on the young man. He became obsessed and, twelve years later, while working on his doctorate, asked about the river’s existence. University classmates, government officials and heads of mining, gas and oil companies always gave him a resounding “no.”
It was logical that it did not exist, since these rivers with almost boiling waters are usually near volcanoes, but there are no volcanoes in the area, so the existence of the river was unjustified. Until one day, at a family dinner, Andrés told the story and an aunt of his told him “I bathed in that river.” Thus, and with the guidance of his aunt, the young geologist entered the Amazon area of Peru and found it: waters that gave off dense vapor.
not so strange. When he took out the thermometer to measure the temperature of the water, he discovered that it reached more than 90 degrees Celsius, with an average of 86 degrees. It’s not exactly boiling point, but it’s close. Accompanied by a shaman who prepared him tea with river water, Andrés discovered that the locals had completely normalized the situation and told him that he was not the first ‘outsider’ to see him. Now, what Andrés did was analyze it and create a school.
The name Shanay-timpishka means “boiled with the heat of the Sun” and it must be said that it is not such a unique river in the world (yes because of the temperature it reaches, but not because its water is hot). There are several because it is something natural: there are inland rivers that have a high temperature, which is maintained when they emerge on the surface. These manifestations are called hot springs or, as in this case, ‘boiling rivers’.
A sauna. Although the legend part and the water temperature itself are interesting, the surroundings of the river and these types of areas are almost more curious. In a recent BBC report, an exploration team tells how, based on Ruzo’s discoveries and analysis, they ventured out to investigate the area.
They realized that the conditions were extremely stifling because in the cooler stretches of the river, the most typical of the forest, the average temperature ranged between 25 degrees in the coldest places and 29 in the warmest areas. In the boiling river segment, that temperature was 45 degrees.
The humidity is suffocating, the air practically burns, even though there is vegetation everywhere, and they realized that, in that area, although there is a lot of steam, the vegetation was much drier. Trees were also scarce and that vegetation was less dense, with species completely absent.
Boiling pot you can swim in. Have you ever cooked chicken? I mean throwing a piece of breast into a saucepan of almost boiling water. If yes, you know what happens. If not, what happens is that, practically immediately, the pink color changes to a whitish one. I tell you this because Andrés details that he has seen many animals fall into the river by accident and the first thing they lose is… their eyes.
They acquire a whitish color and what comes next is that the exterior meat is cooked, but also the interior because they ingest boiling water. However, there is only one situation in which someone might swim in that river: right after heavy rain.
It must be protected. In the end, the river has different meanings. According to Andrés, for the shaman and his community it is a sacred place, but for the government and illegal loggers and ranchers it is just another resource to exploit. Ruzo has a foundation dedicated to the protection of the river, and as subsequent research shows, studying areas such as the boiling river is very useful in order to predict the effects of an increase in freshwater temperatures due to climate change.
Of course, the increase in these temperatures is not the only thing that jungles like the Amazon are fighting against: deforestation caused by man’s action is influencing the flow of air above the forest, making the areas become warmer, less humid and with a lower volume of precipitation.
Global problem. And given that reality, the boiling river allows researchers to get an idea of the plant species that would survive. For example, short trees would succumb, but others, such as the giant Ceiba, or Ceiba lupunawith its more than 50 meters high, could resist an increase in temperature. And, in areas that are being deforested, perhaps creating microclimates under a forest cover made up of resistant species is the key to repopulation.
Chris Boulton is a researcher at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom who, in the BBC article, states that protecting rainforests from rising global temperatures is an obligation, since, “if the rainforest disappears, much of the carbon it absorbs will pass into the atmosphere and affect the climate. It is not just a local problem, but a global one.”
Images | TED
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