What our trav­ellers to the Ama­zon have just expe­ri­enced from 22 Octo­ber to 2 Novem­ber can hard­ly be put into words: “It was inde­scrib­able, an entire­ly dif­fer­ent world, the veg­e­ta­tion, the peo­ple, the sounds! None of us could stop our­selves from fre­quent­ly welling up! By far the best trip I have ever been on!”

We could con­tin­ue with such superla­tives. The group already expe­ri­enced the first high­light on the sec­ond day close to where they had arrived, i.e. in Bogotá: a salt cathe­dral with a nave and two aisles, 180 metres deep in a for­mer salt mine – gigantic!

And then it was off to the great Ama­zon adven­ture with Hervé Neukomm. The Swiss nation­al who turned his back on con­ven­tions has been liv­ing the ‘pura vida’ in the jun­gle for many years. On his 240-hectare prop­er­ty, the Resort Habi­tat Sur, he and his wife work on dif­fer­ent envi­ron­men­tal and cul­tur­al projects that are aimed at pro­tect­ing the rain­for­est and its inhab­i­tants. The ide­al guide for ENERGETIX’s trip! 

Joey Kel­ly was anoth­er per­son­al­i­ty who shaped this jour­ney. He’s a fan of ENERGETIX and had already made the trip to the Ama­zon region three years ago dur­ing which he was very touched by the unique nature, the peo­ple and Hervé’s desire to pro­tect the Ama­zon rain­for­est. Joey’s trip was the inspi­ra­tion for this prize for ENERGETIX’s com­pe­ti­tion and he was hap­py to seize the oppor­tu­ni­ty to return to this spe­cial place in the com­pa­ny of our busi­ness partners.

A jour­ney with­out roads. Dis­tances were cov­ered by speed­boat or canoe. Or on foot! There couldn’t be a more inten­sive way of expe­ri­enc­ing the jun­gle. The routes took the par­tic­i­pants across dif­fi­cult ter­rain, through mud and along paths with many obsta­cles. The trips were inter­rupt­ed with breaks for bathing in the mid­dle of the jun­gle – with spon­ta­neous mud packs.

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Spon­ta­neous and unplanned was also the encounter with an old heal­er, who was sum­moned by the inhab­i­tants of a vil­lage as a minor injury had been suf­fered and whose per­son­al­i­ty and her sin­cere inter­ven­tion made a very pro­found impression.

The qual­i­fiers were able to get up close to the ani­mals at a res­cue sta­tion for injured ani­mals. The encounter with an ana­con­da may well be described as sen­sa­tion­al, even if the staff did say it was ‘tame’.

The adven­tur­ers got some time to relax briefly with music and dance at a typ­i­cal vil­lage in the mid­dle of the jun­gle before return­ing to Bogotá via Leti­cia after a trip to an ani­mal reserve. This is where the group expe­ri­enced why this city of mil­lions is inter­na­tion­al­ly famous for its graffiti.

The clos­ing high­light was a vis­it to a fam­i­ly-run eco­log­i­cal­ly sus­tain­able cof­fee plan­ta­tion. These were def­i­nite­ly the first cof­fee beans to be har­vest­ed direct­ly by ENERGETIX busi­ness partners.

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‘Pura vida’ — the qual­i­fiers for the ‘Pure Nature’ prize were able to gain a small but inten­sive impres­sion of this spe­cial lifestyle and it cer­tain­ly pro­vid­ed lots of food for thought in regard to their own lifestyles on their return home. A trip that once again empha­sized the spe­cial and exclu­sive nature of ENERGETIX’s com­pe­ti­tions and demon­strat­ed how much the com­pa­ny appre­ci­ates its busi­ness partners.

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