THE AMAZON RAINFOREST

Its hard to even begin to describe the Amazon Rainforest. At all times a deafening cacophony of noise; 1 inch insects that make a noise like a circular saw, the sound of a large pebble falling into a still lake that is actually the mating call of a large bird, the screech of stinky turkeys, the guttural growl of howler monkeys that may be 2 kilometres away but sound like a harley davidson engine gunning right into your ear, the all night party of a frog wedding under your hut, the scuttle of cockroaches under your bed, the high pitched whining of a mosquito closing in on your neck (the only exposed piece of skin yet it finds it!), the silent fear seeping into your skin that perhaps the 9 inch Goliath Tarantula you saw earlier that evening may have a brother lurking somewhere in your hut... and these are just the responses from one of your five senses.

The Amazon is an all out assualt on all five of them; the taste of the fresh unspoilt air, the 24 hour noise parade, the colours everywhere you look everywhere green yet everywhere bursting with colours and shadows both real and imaginary (that gnarled log looks awfully like a 6 metre caiman when you have just a dugout canoe between you and the water), the feel of the damp air and the hundreds of bites and itches crawling on your skin at all times of the day, and the smell. It smells of rotting thousand year old trees, fresh new shoots arching towards the sunlight of the canopy, the disgusting bin-juice stench of the stinky turkeys, the fresh early morning jungle mist hanging around your huts, and insect repellant. So so so much deet (and yet the b*****s still get through - how can a substance strong enough to cause skin cancer and strip the paint from a metal bottle be nothing but an unpleasant pog to a mosquito????).

We had five days, four nights in the jungle of the Cuyabeno National Reserve on the easternmost tip of Ecaudor. It is safe to say we loved every single second of it. We saw the worlds biggest Tarantula, the worlds smallest monkeys, the worlds largest snake, Ants and frogs that can kill a fully grown man several times over, 7 species of primate, Caimans snapping just a couple of feet from our canoe, the most incredible array of colourful birds huge and miniscule, an authentic ayahuasca (a hallucinogenic drink brewed for hours from the vine of a rare plant, they drink this in order to "see" a patients troubles and then what they should do to fix it)drinking Amazonian Shaman, and more flying, biting, stinging insects than we care to mention. In short we saw many of our wildest dreams (and nightmares) come to life right before our eyes.

Our first day found us a 4 hour drive from the nearest town, and then into a motorized dugout canoe for 2 hours (no roads where we were going!) along the amazon tributaries in order to reach our home for next few days - 10 quaint little wooden huts with nothing but candle light to see with, and more holes than there were planks making up the walls (a LOT of life managed to find its way into these huts!). Here we met Dan & Anna, a really nice couple who we immediately befriended and who would come to share in all our great experiences (and scary scary moments!) over the next few days. This was a rather good thing not only because they were nice, but also because the rest of our group was, well simply downright odd. We set off with our guide Neiser "Rambo" Toro, who was a cross between Dr Doolittle, Steve Irwin, Bear Grylls, and the action hero of the same name. Always wearing innapropriately short shorts, always lunging, fearful of nothing, and knowing of everything jungle related he was absolutely amazing! He could hear a bird or monkey from hundreds of feet away taking us directly to their sounds, he could catch a piranha in seconds, and he simply made what would have been a great trip into a spectaular one. All in all Rambo found us over 50 species of brilliant animals, and always had some amazing facts about them, most notbaly when Kate nearly stepped on a Fer-de-Lance one of the worlds deadliest snakes he casually remarked that his mum had been bitten by one and would have had less than four hours to live if she hadnt found the anti-venom. Obviously having Rambo as a son she lived to tell the tale. When I only managed to catch a pathetic sardine when we were supposed to be catching piranhas (i nearly had one but it decided it would rather jump off the hook with its fillet steak intact than be caught and peered at by me, so Rambo was the only one who actually caught any piranhas) he remarked that I had the tiniest fish he had ever seen. I am in no doubt this was a damning report on my masculinity, but its very hard to have a good comeback to a man who washes in the river, can pluck a caiman from the black waters of the amazon, and most importantly never ever ever takes off his machete sheathed around his neck.

We learnt from Rambo, and from simply seeing the beauty of the jungle first hand, what a tragedy it will be if the Amazon continues to be destroyed by the human need for oil and wood. We have never in the past, nor are we likely to ever in the future, visited a more fascinating, colourful and beautiful place.

Full species list (not including countless insects)

• White Piranha
• Silver Piranha
• Spot legged poison dart frog
• amazon tree boa
• Anaconda (3, one seven metres long!)
• Hoatzin (stinky turkey)
• Cocoi heron
• Blue & yellow macaw
• Greater Ani
• Great Kingfisher
• White throated toucan
• greater fishing bat
• regal golden grass frog
• amazon bullfrog
• yellow spotted amazon river turtle
• fer-de-lance
• black necked red catinga
• Lelins Urania Moth
• Chestnut fronted macaw
• orange winged parrot
• pygmy marmoset
• tiger heron
• greater yellow headed vulture
• amazonian manatee
• pink river dolphin
• monk saki monkey
• noisy night monkey
• common squireel monkey
• white fronted capuchin monkey
• red howler monkey
• spectacled caiman
• scale breasted woodpecker
• crimson crested woodpecker
• red necked woodpecker
• bufo
• common gecko
• ivory billed toucan
• golden headed manakin
• blue crowned manakin
• trpical kingbird
• black mantle monkey
• golden silk nefiliar spider
• scorpion spider
• horned micradena spider
• burchells soldier ant
• nasute termite
• conga ants
• spider hawk wasp
• capped heron
• red bellied macaw
• brown throated three toed sloth
• goliath tarantula
• leaf cutter ants

If you ever ever get the chance, go. And stop buying tropical hardwood - a table is a table.