Where there are no roads, the river becomes the road.

Deep in the Amazon, vast stretches of jungle separate communities from one another and from the outside world. There are no roads in or out. Everything—and everyone—moves by water. The waterways are the highways.

Boats are the essential infrastructure of life here. They carry people, food, livestock, fuel, medicine and merchandise between communities scattered along hundreds of kilometers of river. They move not only goods and passengers, but provide the connections that allow these isolated communities to function.

Traveling from Iquitos toward Leticia, I spent three days moving through this river network, sharing space and time with families, traders, workers, students, teachers and travelers.

Life unfolded around the water: cargo was loaded and unloaded at muddy banks; families traveled with their belongings; workers hauled goods between boats; locals briefly boarded to sell fish and rice dinners; and children played among the hammocks on deck.

For the communities along these waterways, the Amazon is not a barrier separating them from the world, but the means by which they remain connected to it — a marketplace, a workplace, a playground, a highway and a lifeline.