( instrumental music )
One of the things I like to do when I'm in the Amazon
is just bust all the myths.
I don't want all this nonsense
this romantic image we have of indigenous people.
They're just people.
You know, the reason I like these pictures because
we've... we always go and look at these places
to see how different we are and
what I... gets me about these... those two pictures
actually we realize how similar we are.
You know, my kids do stuff like this.
( audience applause )
Manú National Park is in the Peruvian Amazon, okay.
It's the far west side of the Amazon, alright.
At the bottom of... of the Andes.
As national parks go, it's pretty big.
It's 17,000 square kilometers.
It's twice the size of Yellowstone National Park.
What makes Manú special is
it has the highest diversity of life of anywhere in the world.
You're dealing with a place with 1,307 ( laughs )
known species of butterfly.
That's six percent of the world's total.
It has 15 species of monkey.
Ten percent of all the bird species in the world
live in Manú National Park.
There's more tree species in a single hectare
than the whole of North America.
You know, this is just, it's just nuts, the diversity here.
There's an undescribed species of Poison Dart frogs called SP3.
It hasn't got a name yet. It's only just been discovered.
A friend of mine,
a Peruvian Herpetologist found it.
Who knows how many species.
Manú has got more reptiles and amphibians
than anywhere else in the world.
There's a giant otter.
A six foot long, eat eight pounds of fish a day.
Eats Piranhas.
You know, how bad-ass have you gotta be to eat Piranhas.
- I've eaten Piranhas, you know. - ( audience laughter )
So, that doesn't mean I'm badass because I've eaten Piranhas.
But, they are.
Now, people say to me
"Oh, you know, I don't wanna go to the rainforest.
I'm scared of snakes and like, biting flies."
And I always lie to them and say, "Oh, you don't need to be."
Um... these things scare the crap out of me.
- ( Charlie laughs ) - ( audience laughter )
This is a Two Striped Forest Pit Viper.
It's perfectly camouflaged, as you can see
from the color of the background.
It's highly hemotoxic and cytotoxic
and it hangs at around neck height.
( Charlie laughs )
What have you got to worry about?
( audience laughter )
And I saw... I photographed this snake.
I'd been walking within 18 inches of that snake
for about half an hour, setting a camera trap up
backwards and forwards, back...
And then, my friend Lex
just suddenly freaked and just shouted.
And they call them 'loro machaco'
it's the local name.
Alright, and our hearts were going crazy because
we'd just been--
And then, so every time we went near it
it would contract, ready to strike.
And it can almost strike it's body length.
You know, if that thing gets you
you're gonna be dead in 25 minutes.
This is called a Cock-of-the-rock.
This is a supercool bird. I love these birds.
If you can't work it out...
( audience laughter )
You can, look, you can just see
the bottom of it's beak poking out.
Yeah? Maybe not. Okay.
( laughter )
So these... so, one of the reasons Manú is so diverse
is a bit of a cheat
because it actually starts at high altitude.
So, the Park starts right up in the Andes
and it goes right down to lowland rainforest.
And this, and in that process it goes through Cloud Forest
which is really diverse and, you know
one of the least studied regions of the tropics, actually.
That is an Ocelot, one of seven species of cat in Manú.
I think, I took nine camera traps
for three months and got one photo.
( Charlie laughs )
I'm not... clearly not doing very well.
Anyway, so, these are, I guess what you imagine
when you think of people of the forest.
These are, I guess what, slightly mis-correctly termed
'Uncontacted Mashco-Piro Indians'
Uncontacted in the sense, that they have almost no contact
with modern western civilization.
I took this image, traveling up through the southern
southern part of Manú on a boat one day and
a group of these women were washing a baby in the river.
Most of them vanished into the forest and you know, we...
You're not allowed to stop, so we carried the boat on.
You're not allowed to communicate with them
you're certainly not allowed to go and talk to them or...
or, you know, get close to them.
Because we could very easily give them flu virus
and it could wipe out their entire population.
This particular group are one of--
They think, around 800 uncontacted people
living in Manú at the moment.
They've been more visible and... since about 2011.
Coming out onto the... you know
an area on the southern end of Manú.
They've killed two people.
So, there's a slow process to come into contact with them.
Last summer, I went into Manú
to shoot a story for the magazine.
I went to live with the Machiguenga people.
And they're the most, sort of numerous of
indigenous people that live in Manú.
These people are hunter-gatherers still.
I took this photo from a plane.
This is what you'd call a first contact hut.
These people are living in
the early stages of contact with the outside world.
So, they're very remote.
I think this was 23 miles by plane from the nearest village.
These people are, they're really going to
only see people from that village, maybe once a year.
Maybe, do a bit of trading.
And then I went to stay in a very remote community
in the middle of Manú
which no one's allowed into, really.
You have to get special permissions.
I met this family.
These people were about two weeks in contact.
They'd come down from the head waters of the Manú river.
And these people have always just lived
very isolated in a tiny community.
They've never been to the big community village
called Yomibato, where I was.
This was their first trip there.
So, the villagers always... they, you know
referred to them as the uncontacted people.
And they'd come there and they'd get... machetes
You know, stone, uh, sorry, metal tools
which is the most important thing in the world to them.
So, it was really interesting
meeting them and photographing them.
And as a photographer, you wanna go and hang out
and shoot people as they are, shoot them relaxing and really--
You wanna be invisible.
But, with these guys, that was impossible.
I said to them, "Have you ever seen a white guy before?"
They said, "We've never seen a non-Machiguenga Indian before."
They didn't change their expression at all
for the entire time I was there.
They just stared and...
( Charlie grunting )
They were totally underwhelmed
by the entire experience as well.
Here I was thinking, "Oh, this is amazing!"
( Charlie grunting )
( audience laughter )
So I posed them. You know, arrange them
and try and photograph them.
Because it was all I could do with them.
But, I kind of like the portraits we were getting
and I lived in the community. One of the things I like to do
when I'm in the Amazon is just bust all the myths.
I don't want all this nonsense.
This romantic image we have of indigenous people.
They're just people.
And their culture is fascinating and everything else...
But, they are just people and we tend to over blow that a bit.
I went on the school swimming lesson.
And the teacher took all the kids
she put like, 30 kids in a boat.
She directed everyone with this enormous carving knife.
She crossed the river, got out of the boat
and then just buggered off into the forest on her own
to cut guavas or something
and all the kids just went swimming.
That was the swimming lesson.
I thought this is the way to live, isn't it.
This is Yoina.
Every day, she would walk past our camp
with her Saddleback Tamarin
which is that gremlin on her head.
And that was her toy, and she'd take it swimming and it...
it just absolutely hated water.
( audience laughter )
It was just this protracted awful experience for it
going in the water.
And all it wants to do is get onto her head.
So, I said, "Can I take your picture?" "If you want."
She was so like... you know, whatever.
So for three days, I just...
I took every day that Yoina went swimming
I'd take this picture of her with this thing on her head.
This is eventually what happened.
You know, and her story is very sad.
I don't wanna bring a downer on it,
but I'll tell you her story.
After this picture was taken
the monkey died when a pot of boiling water fell on it.
Her mum died in childbirth.
She now, wanders around with her sister
who is called Grace Kelly. I have no idea why.
And she's... you can see in this picture
she's got so many head lice so she shaved all her head off.
So, you know, just in a few months since I took this picture
her entire life and world has completely changed.
- ( audience laughter ) - ( Charlie laughs )
I wanted to photograph the education system.
You know, this was a story about
how an indigenous group of people live in a national park.
Well, they have healthcare, education
everything they should have.
So, I wanted to photograph that.
And this photo and this picture as well.
You know, the reason I like these pictures, because
we've... we always kind of look at these places
to see how different we are.
And what gets me about those two pictures is
actually, you realize how similar we are.
You know my kids do stuff like this.
This is the wisest man I've ever met.
He's called Don Alberto. He's a shaman
and he blew my head off with
the most powerful hallucinogen, known to man.
Which is probably why
I'm grinning so much in that picture.
( audience laughter )
What I didn't have
is any form of spiritual connection with the rainforest
because I don't have a spiritual connection with anything.
I'm the least spiritual person in the world.
So, I thought, alright, I'll be open-minded.
Blow my head off, let's see where we go with this.
And he did.
Charlie:
parahippocampal areas of the brain
that are involved in processing emotion and memory.
Don Alberto describes
how forest spirits will talk to Charlie in a dream
and show him his true path.
( Don Alberto chanting )
Charlie:
There were a lot of animals in the visions.
But the only ones giving me messages
were actually the rainforest animals.
( Don Alberto chanting )
Charlie:
What I wanted do, was go on a journey
to discover more about the forest.
And irritatingly, it was about me.
( Don Alberto chanting )
The understanding of myself and
being given this understanding by the creatures of the forest
was the most enlightening and profound experience
I've ever had.
It absolutely blew me away.
So then, you know, a few years later, do I feel the same?
No, I just feel more confused about spirituality
than I was before.
But, I did see the forest spirits...
in my... in my visions.
You know, I was out for three hours.
I saw a world made of toffee Lego, at one point.
I saw all kinds of, I had a whole world of
nice frogs on that side and nasty frogs on that side.
( audience laughter )
I was kind of rolling a bit and then I was...
They were filming me, as you saw and they'd talk to me like...
because you're sort of... you have a conscious level as well.
So, I was talking and I was watching these blue words
coming out of my mouth and going into the lens.
And at one point, I was flying over the Shetland Islands
looking down on it. It was crazy.
One thing about Ayahuasca, that drug, I gotta tell you, right.
It's made out of a vine.
They pound this vine and they mix it with a leaf.
Right, and if you just...
and you boil it for like, a day, this pounded vine.
And if you drink it, it does nothing.
You have to mix it with a specific species of leaf
in order for your body to really metabolize
and for it to do its thing.
Well, that's great, isn't it!
There's 17,000 species of wooded plant there.
Now, how did they figure that out?
That always just blows my mind. How did they figure it?
Pound that up, boil it for a day...
You know, they didn't have Jamie Oliver
or the Barefoot Contessa, do they?
Put those leaves in it, mix it up
it's gonna blow your head off.
Mind blowing.