Simon Reeve’s South America episode 2: Simon visits Brazil, the biggest country on the continent. He starts in one of the remotest regions of the Amazon with the Waiapi people. They have managed to cling onto their traditional way of life, which is under threat from logging and mining interests. The tribal leaders argue that preserving the forest is not only crucial to moderating the Earth’s climate; they are working with Brazilian scientists to show how the Amazon can be managed to produce valuable crops and lifesaving medicines without destroying the environment.
At this point, in early 2020, Simon’s journey was interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and he returns two years later to see how Brazil became one of the countries worst hit by the virus. In Manaus, a city in the heart of the Amazon, he visits a neglected indigenous neighbourhood and meets the nurse who was the only source of healthcare during the pandemic. On the outskirts of Manaus, where the Amazon jungle meets the city, he catches bats with a veterinary scientist who is hoping to identify potential future pandemics before they enter the human population.
Simon ends this leg of his journey on the west coast of Brazil, in the iconic city of Rio de Janeiro. As well as being under threat from climate change, the city is vulnerable to flash floods and baking heat. The government has built a high-tech Nasa-style control room to monitor all parts of the city for potential disasters. In one favela, Simon meets the woman who has planted an urban forest to cool her neighbourhood and grow fresh food for many of the city’s neglected children.
Simon Reeve’s South America episode 2
Simon Alan Reeve is a British author and television presenter, currently based in London and Devon. He makes travel documentaries and has written books on international terrorism, modern history and his adventures. He has presented the BBC television series Tropic of Cancer, Equator and Tropic of Capricorn.
Reeve is the New York Times’ best-selling author of The New Jackals (1998), One Day in September (2000) and Tropic of Capricorn (2007). He has received a One World Broadcasting Trust Award and the 2012 Ness Award from the Royal Geographical Society.
Reeve was born in Hammersmith and brought up in west London, attending Twyford Church of England High School. He rarely went abroad until he started working. After leaving school, he took a series of jobs, including working in a supermarket, a jewellery shop and a charity shop, before he started researching and writing in his spare time while working as a postboy at the British newspaper The Sunday Times.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Reeve began making travel documentaries for the BBC. Tom Hall, travel editor for Lonely Planet publications, has described Reeve’s travel documentaries as “the best travel television programmes of the past five years”.
