Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest

If there is only one book you may read about the Amazon, if there is only book you may purchase on the Amazon, then this must be that book.

Sy Montgomery loves the Amazon, and her prose brings it alive. Although her style of writing is entertaining and light, she doesn't ignore the serious environmental challenges facing the Amazon. She merely incorporates into her tale, one more facet in an alien, multi-faceted world most of us will never see.

Sy smoothly melds living native characters and native legends, unbelievable wildlife and fearsome insects, incredible scenery and the pursuit of the elusive pink dolphins into a story that will live with the reader long after "The End".

Newly released on Kindle at Amazon.com, this book was long show more available only by resellers of used copies. Now even more accessible, there is no excuse for missing one of the most unique adventure tales ever told about the single most amazing place on the planet. show less

I was really looking forward to this book as I'd lived up the Amazon myself at one time but it was a dud.

I knew no more about pink dolphins at the end of the book than I did after the first few chapters. The author did say that no-one knows anything much about the pink dolphins, including researchers who had studied them for years.

Don't tell me that the dolphin needed to look into your face to feel a great, perhaps human, connection with you. Don't tell me how they caressed you with the bubbles they blew, where is the evidence that is true and not just an anthropomorphic interpretation? What I want to hear is what brings them into certain rivers, how they choose a mate, how they raise their young, how they hunt fish, and interact with show more each other and other denizens of the jungle. I'm glad the author liked swimming with them but what was there in that to read?

A great deal of this book is made up by the repetition of folk stories that the Indians tell. There are many such retellings in the book, but essentially there are only two stories.

1. The dolphins want to lure you into their undersea world of Encantado which is just as enchanted as it sounds but no-one wants to go there. (Why not if its so fantastic?)

2. Dolphins often turn into very handsome men who turn up at dances and then impregnate Indian maidens. This second story is repeated ad nauseum.

When I was going through the Amazon, I had a hardback copy of the entire Forsyte Saga. A good book, but not one I treasured. As I read a page or two I would rip them out to use as necessary* and if I'd been reading this Pink Dolphins I would have not even been freaked that I needed more pages than I'd read, I'd just have ripped them out.

Plus points: its got a great cover and I liked reading about places I had been to myself and if you have sympathies with New Age tree huggers, then you might enjoy this book a lot more than I did.

*Until I was introduced to the toilet paper bush that the Indians I was with used. It was a lovely big leaf, quite thick and slightly hairy, very soft. When it was crushed it released a perfumed 'lotion'. If I knew what it was I'd grow it in pots in the bathroom. show less

This book is amazing, it takes you on a journey, sometimes sad, informative and enlightening in its tales of man-made destruction of a place so mystical to us in the western world. I would some day love to do as Sy has done and swim alone with these magical boto's.