I'm off to stay in a jungle lodge for two nights. We got a plane from Lima to Cusco the to Pueto Maldonado. Cayman logde is a 3 hour boat ride down the river and we seen loads of animals along the way, although after about an jour the novelty of being on a tiny boat in the rainforest kind of wore off. The lodge is even better than I imagined, it is owned by a French lady who was a tourist 8 years ago and decided she loved the jungle that much that she brought some land and bulit the lodge. She even has a pet monkey called Jana Macarena who wears a nappy and likes to swing on your arm with her tail... i'm considered sneaking her back in my racksack. We went on a night hike and seen loads of crickets and small spiders. Then Side (our tour guide) made us turn off out torches and stand around a small hole in the ground. He then poked a stick down the hole and a big fat hairy spider came out and Side fed it a cricket.... I nearly died! I hope there is none nearly my room.

28/07/2009
There is no electricity at the lodge so out rooms are lit by candlelight. This also means that the showers are cold. Having a shower that morning took my breath away but at least I was wide awake the that days 5 hour hike around the jungle. I opened my bedroom door and was greeted by an Añuje which is a rat the size of poppy. I don't like normal sized rats nevermind ones that look like they like by a nuclear power plant! Jana has a taste for anything sweet so the jam and sugar on the breakfast table all contained monkey paw prints... it kind of added to the jungle experience somewhat!

Todays hike was to learnabout plants in the jungle and how the natives use then in medince. The large tree outsize my room is used to dissolve cellulite... I think I may be sucking the sap clean from the tree when no one is looking! We all tried a plant that looked like bamboo, which is used as asprin... I'm wondering if we will end up overdosing if we are going to end up overdosing if we try all the plants in the jungle! We stopped for lunch by Tambopata lake, which was proper jungle packed lunch of rice and chicken wrapped in a leaf. After lunch we went on a canoe around the lake... There was 7 of us in this little canoe which would tip over if we all leaned the same way. We had been in the boat for around 5 mins and I was wondering if there was more water in the canoe then when we got in... Then Side announced that there was a hole so we would have to paddle back to the jetty... The fact the lake was full of piranhas and we were searching for cayman didn't fill me with much hope of getting out of the lake without being eaten. Once in a non-holey canoe we paddled around looking for cayman and annacondas, then went fishing for piranhas, unfortunatley they all got away!

Dinner was a Peruivan dish of salted beed with rice and chips... which is offically my new favorite meal, washed down with Pisco Sours.