Before I left to come out here, Euan had told me that a bat weighs the same as 11 paper clips (as small boys do as you're quietly sitting having a cup of tea). Well the bats here haven't been told that and would have put one of my chickens to shame. They look huge but are only around at night. I was expecting the fruit bats of **** D'Ivoire which launch themselves from the trees in the daytime, flipping and flopping about for a few minutes, before getting tired and going for a natter with their pals before having another snooze. The ones here are obviously teenage joyriders and spend all night swerving around everything at a hundred miles an hour.

We had a free day today and as I was expecting a date at 01.00am with some turtles laying eggs on the beach, I thought I would relax this morning. Unfortunately there was no ranger last night so the date is tonight. There was a full moon here the first night we got here, so I think that might mean it'll be turtle mayhem.

The rangers are definitely here today as one of the men in his uniform, hat and gun in a holster, is having a manicure from one of the waitresses in the bar.

It's too hot here to walk that far unless you're swimming at the end of it, and ever one to practice what they preach I got sunburnt with all the swimming yesterday. I'm going to try and stay out of the sun until later in the day and try and relax which I'm not very good at. This is made more difficult by a leathery old man wandering around with a pair of budgie smugglers on. It's enough to put you off your arepas.

I wandered back down to the lagoon and passed lots of stripey lizards on the way......they didn't look overburdened with intelligence and weren't great at conversation but I liked them. They make so much rustling you think there's a bloody great python in the leaves only to see a 6 inch long lizard with blue feet. I think I saw a frigate bird too which would be very exciting if I had.

I walked to the end of this beach doing a bit of beach-combing, but there was just a couple of plastic spoons and a limpet. Not much else was going on down there and as I was dragging myself along the sand in searing heat, I walked about a mile before giving in. Time to wash my hair for the second time in 5 hours.