The palm-hunting odyssey unfolds in four parts:

• Swamp Trekking: Solo adventures in a seasonally flooded ecosystem where rubber boots are a must.
• The Itaya Expedition: “Iquipo Iquitos”, a crack team of explorers - Jeff and Suchin Marcus, Bill Baker from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Victor Vargas author and surveyor of palms in the region,  and naturalist Lander Peña Ramirez, and the Locks, chasing down Itaya amicorum armed only with scientific papers, good humor (mostly), and bug spray.  Not quite Attenborough, but at least one of the team had a British accent.
• The Official IPS Caravan: A curated group tour from lowland Amazon up to the “eyebrow” of the rainforest, experiencing a different mix of palms with climbing elevation.
• Birding on the Backtrack: Retracing their route, the Locks add some feathered friends to the story.

Along the way the way Norm and Voltaire met up in Iquitos and later Jerry, and Cindy fly in after visiting Machu Picchu when the IPS group converged at Ceiba Tops Lodge— proving once again that Hawaii Island Palm Society makes a strong showing, even deep in the Amazon.