Amazon with Bruce Parry is a British documentary television series co-produced by Endeavour Productions and Indus Films for the BBC which follows former Royal Marine Bruce Parry on a 10,000km journey down the Amazon River as he meets and lives with tribes, coca growers, loggers and illegal miners.
The series aired in the UK on BBC 2 from 15 September to 20 October, 2008. There are six hour-long episodes in the series.
Amazon with Bruce Parry premiered in South Africa on DStv's BBC Knowledge channel on Thursday 8 October 2009, at 20h30. New episodes air weekly.
Repeats
Fridays: 01h15, 08h05
Synopsis
Explorer Bruce Parry embarks on an epic journey to the source of the Amazon – the world's greatest river, its largest forest, the most bio-diverse habitat on the planet and home to some of the last uncontacted tribes left on Earth.
This landmark series follows Bruce on a breathtaking journey from the Amazon's source on a slope of Nevado Mismi, an 18,000-foot mountain in the Peruvian Andes, all the way to the sea, 6,500km away on Brazil's Atlantic coast.
Along the route he tells the stories of the people – from loggers to soya farmers, cattle barons to tribespeople – who inhabit the greatest forest on Earth.
The Amazon is a complex, shifting environment.
The deforestation ruthlessly driven by the profits of logging and soya bean plantations has seen one fifth of the Amazon destroyed already - the lands of the indigenous tribes are disappearing and their traditional way of life is seriously threatened.
Travelling over 6,000km by foot, light aircraft and boat, Bruce travels far and wide to meet the tribes that live beneath the rainforest canopy.