Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Amazon Rainforest

by Paul Rosolie

Rating: 8/10

Summary

The book is narrated in first person and goes over the life of the author navigating from a dyslexic student in a Brooklyn school to deciding that he wanted to live in the Amazon Rainforest and save it where he takes the steps necessary to reach that goal.
It starts off explaining that Paul was a terrible student at school and not really being able to read properly or do math like the other students so he was always getting suspended and never got good grades. Though through all that Paul kept reading about nature conservationists like Steve Irwin and Jane Goodall who convinced him that nature needs saving, and he also found his passion in 'collecting' various animals and going with his friend Noel on hikes that took several days through the forest.
Eventually Paul decided to the dismay of his parents that school wasn't for him and decided to drop out of high school and get a GED instead, through that period he was cold emailing researchers in the Amazon trying to convince them to take him with them though it was tough as he didn't have a biology background only one person agreed who was a british researcher named Emma.
Paul reaches Emma's place which was a lodge in the Las Piedras river in the Madre de Dios region in the Peruvian Amazon which took several planes from JFK airport and a boat ride. Paul then adventures with Juan Julio Durand (JJ) who's an indegenous local and also Emma's husband and with them he learns the different plants and animals and how to navigate the trails with a machete.
JJ then gets notified that a local farmer shot an anteater and was raising it's daughter so JJ and Paul goes to visit this farmer to try to help the anteater as they're becoming rarer to find. They then have dinner with the farmer and find his wife calling out to the anteater "Lulu" and then the anteater responding to it's name which was remarkable. They managed to convince the farmer to take the child anteater so over a month or two until his college semester had to start Paul spent them raising Lulu and gradually helping her to acclimate to living on her own. Through raising her he understood more about the Amazon ecosystem and he gave examples encounters with her where aneater children live on the back of their mother so Lulu always wanted to be on Paul's back when they were going somewhere and would sleep with him in his hammock, waking him up by licking his face. Lulu also showed a lot of emotion and it was obvious when she was sad, happy, playful or scared. Like she was scared when Paul was walking on a trail and Lulu was outside the lodge then Paul found Jaguar tracks so he ran towards the lodge and found Lulu hiding underneath the bed as she was afraid of the Jaguar.
Paul then recounts his various adventures with JJ and JJ's family where at one point they wanted to measure the population of anacondas in a neighbouring river so Pico, JJ's brother, while manning the boat's mototr Paul and the other brothers were surveying the river and to jump at any anaconda, grip it by the neck, then fully extend it to measure it's length and width.
He also mentioned several of his encounters with poachers, loggers and gold miners and he sees them as lacking in morals as they don't see the influence their actions have over the rainforest.
He mentioned the lack of funding at the beginning in their eco-tourism business where over the years money had run out and Emma's optimism had faded and eventually she had to sell the lodge and several thousand acres and went back to the UK with her and JJ's son Joseph. But they got the lodge back when the buyer paid for the land but was several years behind on payments and had never paid for the lodge.
The final two or three chapters were on Paul traversing past the 'West Gate', an area that Don Santiago, JJ's father, had told him that he should visit. He describes how it took him several days alone to get there and the locals that dropped him off to the starting point thought that he was suicidal and he says that past the west gate basically no one has ever been there before unlike the area which Paul lives in which is more sanitized. He describes his seeing of creatures that are very rare like river otters or the black caiman crocodile that wanted to eat his food.

Notes

I really liked this book to be honest and I've listened to many of Paul's podcast episodes with Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman so I was excited to read this book.
I found Paul's description of the first time he went to the Amazon fascinating and the process of convincing researchers to let him pursue his goal fascinating.