Just like home

Wednesday 30th April

The cold wind of the previous night turned into rain. We were due to get up at 5am to see the sunrise, and all the animal activity at that time, but what our guides never told us was that if it was cloudy that trip was off, so we all got up early but we had no guides. So we all had to go back to bed and get up later for our next trip, to go hunting anacondas.

This involved going out into the pampas, to places where anacondas were know to live, and walking around trying to scare them into moving. And they live in a lot of mud, so we were walking around in a lot of mud, and getting wetter by the second. It was great fun. And we didn't get to see any snakes as it was too cold for them to be out (well one of the girls said she saw a small one, but nobody else did).

When I say just like home I do mean the weather. It was as cold and wet as a typical Irish day in spring or autumn. I'd say it was the first time on my trip that the weather at home was probably better than where I was (well maybe on the Tongariro crossing day as well).

When we got back to camp we were all too wet and muddy to do much else. A few people went piranha fishing, but as I had no spare clothes (we had been told to pack light) I has to stay in camp the rest of the day. It did get drier, and we did get to see some animals just around the camp, including some monkeys who live there, a toucan who flew over, and Pedro the alligator who lives right beside the camp. It might have been nice had we been warned about him, as a few people had been walking not too far from his den the day before.

We built a camp fire to dry out the clothes and in the evening we went to the sunset bar. It is a bar in the middle of the jungle, about 300 yards away from our camp by boat, that we were going to watch sunset from. But there was no sunset, like no sunrise. So instead we went after dinner, and had a good session with the guides and some other tourists, to drown our sorrows about being drowned during the day.

When we got back we had another drink, and then went to bed as again we were going to get up early in the morning. I did go to put the camp fire out with some water from a water bottle, only to find it was petrol. Luckily it was only a small amount, or I may have ended up hotter that night than the night before.