Hello from Lethem, a small town on the Brazillian border. I have just arrived after a three hour bus ride. In the process of getting here we managed to break a bridge and almost fall into a river, which was pretty exciting, but a powerful reminder that here roads are everything and so the main artery from Brazil to the capital will be closed for a few days until they can rebuild it. We have spent the last week at the Iwokrama canopy walkway, deep in the forest in a small hammock camp. There we've been cutting down trees, making posts, painting, varnishing, cooking, cleaning, fishing (I caught the biggest..it was this....................................................... big), climbing and clearing. My Cutlass arm is covered in cuts! Apart from the toads, locusts, ants and ticks we've seen plenty of wildlife - a troop of red howler monkeys with their babies who came basically every day, two dear, a red rumped aguti, weeping capuchin monkeys, a spider monkey, Hawks, puffer birds, hummingbirds, a dead tarantula, parakeets and the incredibly impressive Macaws which fly in formation.

Our guides were Archer Moses, Keith and Gabriel, and we basically became one big family, along with Peter, our man from the tour operator who stayed with us and helped us paint and sort things out, as well as telling us some scarily confessional stories. We also looked after the guests and helped guide them, we've met two odd Russians, some lovely Trinidadians, the Australian ambassador to T&T's wife (who had Vertigo) and some Guyanese. Everything builds up the the Canopy which you climb up a small hill to get to, then it just reaches out into the canopy, at one point 90ft hight. Crazy stuff but just amazing to see, especially at nightfall when the mists drift across the rainforest and the sun sets behind the green mountains in the distance. I feel so incredibly lucky to be here and to have seen such sights. Because no matter how bored we got we would just have to look around us for inspiration. Not only could we see all kinds of wildlife nearby but our showers were huge and had open tops so we would shower under star-lit skies as well as in the pouring rain and the beating heat of the sun.

The guys were great, Archer is a staunch christian but a brilliant guide, Keith and Gabriel were both incredibly cheeky but great fun. They told me they had lined up a girl for me in Surama, despite my protestations they kept telling me about her, a maiden, a good girl, very pretty. I was flattered but they wouldn't listen. So one night whilst bernadette was chopping onions I stood in the doorway and asked Archer who this girl Gwendolin was. With a straight face he told me she is a 14year old in a wheelchair who is far from a maiden. Keith chuckled, Bernie was wetting herself. Then with a borat-like delivery he told us that because she couldn't get away she was often molested we said "that's awful" he said, "oh no, she likes it now". Luckily Gwendolin has moved onto Brazil, but after that I tried not to believe keith at all. He only got me one more time when he made me taste a green-heart tree which he promised tasted sweet. It tasted so sour it was foul. He also would bite himself with ants and insects to make him stronger, strange man, rubbish at Uno but a great guide. They even had Bullet ants up on the canopy (as seen in Jackass). The whole place was teeming with life.

So after a busy week we left this morning, the rainforest was spectacular and I kept thinking that Brunty and all the scientists I know would love it, so I guess I feel v honoured to have stayed somewhere so nice, peaceful and yet exciting. But now we are in Lethem, we really enjoy the bus journeys and the different people we meet so this independent stage is going to be great fun. Lethem is tiny and pretty run down but it has some hostels and bars and even some other VSO's. Sorry for the brevity of the week's report, but we're being charged so reporting soon.