Amazon August 5, 2009

Follow the Amazon River from its source in the high Andes, through the rain forest, and into the majestic Amazon basin. Join an American scientist and a native medicine man on their parallel quests to find healing plants. Dr. Mark Plotkin is a real-life ethnobotanist, a scientist who studies cultures and plants. As Plotkin travels upriver, a fictional shaman named Julio Mamani descends from the Andes. Both the scientist and the traditional Indian shaman contribute to finding medicinal plants that may yield cures for disease.