To get to Volker Lehman's compound in the Amazon, kept really wanting to get there.

For me, that involved a red eye from Miami to Santa Cruz, Bolivia's biggest city, then

a puddle-jumper to a town called Trinidad, a sweaty night there, and then nine grueling

hours in a collectivo taxi, squeezed between farmhands and crying babies, hammering over

washboard rows at 30 miles per hour, which is about 20 miles per hour too fast.

At last, I got dropped off at Volker's place.

It's changed this by visit 12 years ago for our river trip.

There's built himself a crazy new house, all-screen, no walls, a few feet away there's

an outhouse with tree frogs in the toilet, a workshop with a generator, and a big greenhouse

for fermenting cacao.

There's papaya trees and bananas, and a tiny white local chili called Gousanita.

It looks like little worms, they're brutally hot, but Volker munches them like popcorn.

Surrounding it all, of course, are the cacao trees, 500 acres of them.

Volker calls the place Trinquilidad, it means tranquility in Spanish, and most of the time,

the name fits.

Most of the time.

So, can you run down all the things to watch out for, if I'm wondering around?

I always tell the people when they come, please don't touch anything.

I think National Geographic and all animal planet, they give a false perspective.

They have people, you know, gripping crocodiles and snakes and whatnot, and they don't touch

the crocodiles, or the snakes, is the bedroom.

Yeah, no.

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