My 6 week tour kicked off with a shaky start to say the least. The maximum tour group was 16, ours was 3 (ironically the other 2 were a couple of Northern beaches guys I´d met in Cartagena). Not quite the crowd I had hoped for, but I was determined to make the best of things, unfortunately James and Steve had other ideas and spent the next couple of days trying to get out of the tour with a full refund. They were told in no uncertain terms that numbers weren´t guaranteed and to like it or lump it, so begrudgingly they knew they had no choice and it was the four of us, them, Rebecca the tour leader and myself the quasi aussie!

First off was a tour to the equator line and some fun experiments with water flushing different ways on each side of the line, balancing an egg on a nail (I failed) and walking the line eyes closed. Interestingly the boys veered off to the Southern hemisphere and I veered to the North.

Then it was off to the Amazon. Here´s something I wrote on my first morning there -

SPIDERS - AGH!!!There is no rational reason why those 8 legs should petrify me so much but as I sit here at 6.30am at the jungle lodge watching the river flow by an attempt to rationale isn´t helping. I´ve been through jungles in Queensland, Venezuela, Honduras and Guatemala, but here as Rebecca keeps telling me, it´s all about the spiders. Not just any spiders though- Bird Eating Spiders.I first demonstrated the symptoms of my phobia to the rest of the tour group at the Equator museum where they had one in a case. ¨But it´s dead¨ I was told as I wandered away attempting nonchalance and humming (when do I ever hum). I mean I was quite happy getting up close and personal to the strunken head. Next was getting into the canoe to bring us to the lodge, there was a spider in there. Confined space and a spider is truly a recipe for disaster for me, and the shrieks and jumping on top of my seat alerted just about everyone on the river of my anxiety. I was actually very close to jumping out of the boat! So my dilemma is the 4 hour trek that is on this morning. Lots of spiders are guaranteed, and the guide normally finds a bird eating spider to show the group and sometimes put´s it onto someone (hilarious!!!). I would say that I´m not normally one to give in to confronting a fear, but 4 hours of potencial spiders will quite possibly leave me on the verge of a nervous breakdown, despite the very pretty butterflies I´ve almost been promised.

The journey here was actually my first bus trip so far.We left about an hour late from Quito, and then took another hour to get out of the city with people jumping on and off at each traffic light to sell us snacks, newspapers etc…We climbed further into the Andes, the temperature plummeted and male passengers jumping off to answer natures call found the cold and the 40 bus passengers right behind slightly prohibitive to them doing the business. As we rose above the mist we had the most incredible views. The road had started well, but then was unpaved for sections. We´d been told the journey durations here are loose, very loose and as we passed mini landslides and with rain on the steep declines we could understand why. We turned the corner about 2 hours in to see, what we later found out to be the 4am bus (hallelujah for a late start) that had gone off the road being pulled out by a tow truck. GREAT.With relief we descended into the heat of the Amazon and Tena, onto another bus to Puerto Misahalli and the Napo river. The spider boat trip took us to the Anaconda lodge, cunningly named after the Anaconda Island it was on which in turn was named after 2 Anaconda´s who had called it home until they died about 5 years ago.

The lodge is great, very rustic, and just on the border of the river.It has a kind of musty Antique shop smell from all the wood having been soaked in the rain and dried every day.The rooms complete with fly nets and mossie nets have no electricity so candles are the only form of light. It´s so peaceful just the orchestra of birds and grasshoppers and the river flowing by. That is of course until the bar music starts at about 6 and 80's tunes fill the jungle air. In my group Rebecca is 34, skimming in a couple of years younger is myself and then the boys are 24, so when Rebecca and I reminesce about the songs, Steve and James only know them from recent films they´ve featured in or if they´ve been covered. Not that young any more¨

I decided not to do the trek and relaxed in a hammock - bliss, until Santiago one of the workers came to tell me lunch was ready and show me something. My eyes had barely focussed on the jar he was carrying before I realised it held a huge tarantula. Poor Santi certainly hadn´t been expecting a reaction like mine, as I quickly turned away, took deep breathes and pleaded with him to take it away. By now however I think everyone is well aware of my fear. We spent the afternoon in an Animal rescue reserve and saw the victims of animal trading, beautiful birds, toucans, playful monkeys and very large rodents (70kgs!) small bears and cats called Ocelots. Almost everything is bigger here, mammoth leaves, Condor ants almost 2 inches long. It wasn´t however anything quite as large and impressive that gave me my first taste of natures defenses. It was a caterpiller, albeit a black extremely spiney one, that wasn´t too impressed when I sat on it. I jumped up quicksmart, my leg on fire and then it was down with my trousers to get it seen to. Quickly assured that it would have been a lot worse had it been one of the colourful ones, Fausto our jungle guide iced it and and all was well.

My final full day in the jungle was going to see a village community making chicha, gross drink made of Yuca they almost live off, as the food they grow normally all goes to market,we learn´t that most of the girls get married at 15 and 10-15 babies are the norm. They couldn´t believe I only have one brother.The evening we witnessed Equador crucifying Peru 5-0 in their group qualifiers in the world cup and saw exactly what soccer fever here is like.