Up at 4.30am today. We headed off on a walk to the canopy tower. We saw some of the leaf cutter ants that we'd seen the night before still hard at work. Our guide William said he felt something moving inside his boot - he took it off and found a tarantula in there!

The canopy tower was a metal structure 30 meters high, and a little wobbly... From the top we could had an excellent view of the forest, the river and the mist drifting over the landscape. Saw the top of a Brazil nut tree and it's seeds; you really wouldn't want one of those to fall on your head! We also saw wild turkeys high in the tree tops and a pair of Red and Green Macaws flying past; these were the first 'exotic' birds to fly close enough to us that we could see their colours without binoculars (i.e. they weren't just a black blob!). It was quite noisy at the top of the canopy; we heard the sounds of the monkeys asserting their territory by shouting very loudly at each other.

On the way back to the Lodge we saw some small monkeys high in the trees. After breakfast it was time to leave. And it was time to say goodbye to two members of the group we'd been travelling with throughout Peru. Anne and Frank, our resident ornithologists, from whom we'd learnt an awful lot, were heading deeper into the jungle to another lodge. After our goodbyes we took the boat then bus back to Puerto Maldonado then flew back to Lima, back to the hotel we'd stayed in on our first night. This time we were staying on the top floor, which had a very nice roof terrace outside. The room even came with a ceiling fan, which we put to good use to dry our clothes overnight (they'd have had no chance without it due to the humidity). We had a final meal out with the remainder of our group and our guide before saying our goodbyes. We'd had a great time with these guys and they had all been fantastic travelling companions.