The Amazon Basin gets as much as a hundred inches of rain each year, three times as much as New York City. The rain forest itself generates 60 percent of the precipitation through the transpiration process, and most of it falls during the months of March and April. The temperature was consistently high, usually in the mid-to-high eighties, but the heat was powerless to counteract the effects of the relentless rain. “There would be a heavy downpour,” Kermit wrote. “Then out would come the sun and we would be steamed dry, only to be drenched once more a half-hour later.”
