This week we are going to travel to a magical place. Not a fictional location like Hogsmead in Harry Potter but a real place called the Valdivian Rainforest. This rainforest is so big that it's close to the same size as the state of Wyoming. It is a place so unique that many of the plants and animals live nowhere else in the entire world. It has giant trees that are more than 3,000 years old as well as flowers and animals that can’t be found anywhere else in the world. The Mapuche people have called the rainforest home for thousands of years. If I could travel anywhere in the world, this would be one of the top ten places on my bucket list.

On a map you can find the rainforest on the west coast of South America between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean in Chile. The humidity of the ocean is blown in, and gets trapped by the mountains causing it to rain. I know you're thinking, “So! It rains everywhere.” Can you imagine that some places in the Valdivian Forest get over 200 inches of rain? Even though that amount of rain is crazy it is not the wettest place in the world. There is a place in India and another one in Hawaii that gets over 400 inches of rain every year.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of plants and animals that live nowhere else in the world. When this happens the plants and animals are called endemic. One plant that doesn’t live anywhere other than in the region of the rainforest is the Alerce tree. Would you believe some of these trees are more than 3,000 years old and taller than a 20 story building? You may spot flowers, frogs and mice that live in the trees if you look hard enough. The most unusual animal is the Kodkod, it is the fourth smallest wild cat in the world and the smallest one in South America.

The forest is named after Pedro de Valdivia, a Spanish explorer, but the Mapuche people lived there long before that. When the Spanish tried to conquer them they fought back and were able to keep the Spanish out of their area. They have managed to keep many of their old beliefs alive. One of those is the Ngen. They believe the Nfen take care of the forest. It is said that these creatures get very angry if the forest or life in the forest is harmed. The Mapuche people care so much about where they live that they are leading the fight to preserve the rainforest. As humans cut down the Alerce trees for wood and to clear room for farming plants and animals lose their homes. If the damage to the rainforest continues it could become extinct, meaning it would disappear forever.