CLUB . . . You're wrong and you don't even know it !

Today is the last proper day in Peru :-( Tomorrow we will just be engaged catching the plane back home which will no doubt be really depressing.

The three weeks we have spent here seem to have lasted a lot longer, it seems like ages since we arrived in Lima.

This last week we have been staying at the Eco Amazonian Lodge ( enter "[Jungle Joe]" ) in the middle of the jungle and going on tours of the jungle and rides up and down rivers in Canoes, for me I think this has been the highlight of the trip.

We arrived in Puerto Mandolano ( where I am now, a town at the junction of two huge rivers in the Amazon basin ) last Tuesday and immediatley noticed it was very very hot, and humid. I like the heat though so it is nice. From there we saw the rest of our group arrive for the boat journey up the river to the lodge and wandered around the local market.

The boat journey took about 1 and a half hours and was very picteresque - lots of water and trees. These rivers are about 70 - 100M wide and flow amazingly fast, along the banks you can sometimes see Caiman sunbathing. Caimain are kind of like Crocodiles and Alligators, I am not sure of the distinction but the biggest one we saw about 4-6M long I think.

The lodge it's self was very nice, much nicer than most of the hostels we have stayed in. [The Hut] was well equipped with both beds and hammocks, truly we had landed on [Easy Street] - or so we thought! We were greeted with some kind of interesting tasting cocktail and then went in to east dinner which was lot's of horrible ricey stuff but some lovely Wild Boar joints which I liked a lot. Over dinner we became aquainted with the other people who would be staying with us, these were an English family on holiday visiting their daughter who is working in Cusco, 2 [Ozzie Sheilas] - Sindy and Sally who were very amusing people and another English guy called Steve. There were some other people but I never really bothered talking to them much.

After lunch we went off in the canoe to go [Into The Jungle] on Monkey Island where there are, as you may guess from the name, a lot of Monkeys. They are quite used to the guides bringing them bananas so some of them come right up to you or sit on your shoulder whilst everyone stands in a circle taking photos like mad. We saw a lot of different kinds of monkey but the only names I can remember are the [Spider Monkey] and the [Pocket Monkey]. Leaving the Island we stopped off to admire the lovely [Sunset], ruined only by another group from the lodge loitering directly inbetween it and us.

In the evening we started off in [The Bar] drinking wine and pretty much continued drinking wine and beer all night until they kicked us out of the bar at which point we all, Steve the 2 Australians and us, to our Cabin where we played I-Spy for a while ( I spy something beginning with J... ). We were playing I-Spy because previously we have been playing a version of the Card game UNO but with no one knowing all the rules exactly we had ended up with everyone contributing rules and a version of UNO which was essentially endless - it took over an hour and a half to play one hand so we didn't fancy another try at that. Once we were bored with I-Spy we went back to sit around by the river until Steve suggested we go and see if there was any kind of takeaway service in the bar so we could get more beer. We thought there might be a takeway service if we could only find a way through all the locked doors in the pitch dark. It turned out all the doors were locked but I got lost in a maze of mosquito nets for a while.

In between the drinking in the bar and elsewhere we went out on the river in the dark to look at the stars and spot Caiman, we spotted one tiny Caiman but the stars were absoloutley amazingly bright and clear. The Milky Way was blazingly obvious and I saw the Southern Cross, Orions Belt which the Australians apparently call the Saucepan and the Plough which was upside down.

The next day I didn't feel very well at all which I put down to the horrible fish we had for tea but may have also been abbetted by the dreadfully early start at 7Am and lack of sleep. We went for a canoe ride up a much smaller [River] than the one the lodge was on, an hours walk through the jungle being told about all the various things you can do with trees and plants and stuff. I thougt this walk would never end and was waiting for the guide to show us the Hangover tree but this never happened.

During the walk the guide smeared some plant on everyones hand, initally it was clear and you couldn't see what it was but then he told us it would dye our skin blue for about 15 days. A while later my skin had a turned a very pale blue but nothing very spectacular so I wasn't very impressed. A while later than that the mark had turned bright blue and has been getting more and more vivid every day.

Once the walk had finished we went fishing from the boat which was a nice opportunity to sit in the sun and I felt much better afterwards. The guide caught a huge fish but we only caught the same tiny fish 3 times. Some people went swimming but not me, not in that river - no sir.

Back at the lodge it was time to go the bar again only this time there was no Caiman spotting to interrupt the drinking. A lot more people turned up who had been on 'The Long Walk' with the Australians that day so there were quite a few people in the bar and we spent a lot of the time watching the numerous rats run around the wall and throw themselves onto peoples feet and heads from the ceiling. This time rather than boot us out the barman brought us candles when he closed the bar so we could sit there a lot longer.

Later that night there was a huge thunderstorm which we stayed up to watch with one of the Australians until very late. It was a very impressive storm.

Unfortunatley the next day we were scheduled for the 'Long Walk' which the Australians had done before us and delighted in explaining how long the walk was in the hot steamy jungle and how much mud there was along the way and how very tired they had been afterwards. As if that didn't sound bad enough you also had to get up for breakfast at 5AM ! Arrrgh. By the time I finished watching the thunder and went to bed it was pretty close to 4AM so I wasn't looking forward to the long walk, especially not in the pouring rain which was so heavy and continous when I went to bed I thought it would never end.

I was woken up by the guide at 5Am shouting to me that I didn't have to get up until 6Am because the walk had been put back a bit. Thanks for waking me up to say that guide. It had stopped raining which was nice.

In the end the walk was no where near as bad as, some, people had been making out, although there were about 1 billion mosquitos lining the route and waiting for us and there was a lot of mud it was still good fun. We saw a troop of monkeys swinging through the trees, 2 [Anaconda], an eagle heron, a [Bat Log] which was home to dozens of Bats, hundreds of frogs and a giant snail. We also go to go up the most rickety looking [Treehouse] I have ever seen !

In the afternoon we went to visit a planation and wander around some locals back yard ripping up there plants.

Back at the bar most of the people had left in the morning so it was a much quieter night just talking to another English girl who is on a years journey around South America. Not fair all these people on holiday for so long.

This morning we came back to Puerto Mandolano where I am now, there is not too much to do here although Steve who we met at the hotel when we arrived ( he stayed here last night ) did find some more interesting things to do in the evenings.

Tomorrow we fly to Lima and wait in the airport where by some quirk of fate almost everyone else we met on the trip will also be this Saturday.

Then on Monday I will be back at work unless I can contract some useful tropical disease in the next 24 hours. If we follow Steves entertainment advice that is not so unlikley as it may seem.