After lots of intense planning (by Alice) we had a truly intrepid Amazon adventure roughed out. We were to fly into a small town called Leticia, which is the very end of Colombia which is only accessible by boat or plane & also borders Brazil & Peru, then organise an amazon trip from there. We would then cross the border into Peru, take a river boat up the Amazon to Iquitos, which is the worlds largest city unreachable by road. Very cool. We were travelling with a group of Aussies we had befriended who were currently in Medellin, so through a long string of facebook messages, we arranged to meet up with them at the airport.

Even the flight in was amazing. As you approach you get an idea of the sheer scale of the river & the rainforest & it is incredible. The views are breathtaking. You get to watch the river snake through the dense green of the rain forest and seemingly out of nowhere you suddenly spot a few clusters of buildings, which is Leticia (Colombia), Tabatinga (Brazil) and Santa Rosa (Peru) where the three countries meet on the river. How cool is that!!

As you step of the plane the heat doesn't so much hit you as knock you straight off your feet! Having come from Bogota which is kind of chilly, we all entered the airport (which is tiny) shedding layers of clothes!

For the first night the boys stayed in town & we had booked into a lodge called Omshanty just outside in its own patch of jungle. The cabin was everything we hoped for & the lodge was run by a very well informed biologist guy called Kyke how gave us various tips - some helpful, some not so much! Taking advantage of our free afternoon, we got a bus back into town & took a wander to grab some jungle provisons on the way. As we were there during wet season large portions of the streets were underwater (at some point up to waist deep!) so there were rudimentary walkways made out of planks of wood. A quiet night & a super noodle dinner later we retired to bed, lullabyed to sleep by the sounds of the jungle.

The next day the boys joined us at Omshanty & we hit the town again to try & book our trip. After chatting to various groups (including one very suspect guy outside a bar who told Alice she could 'stay home' while the boys went hunting!!) we found a really cool company who would take us where we wanted to go for a very decent price. We were to leave early the following so we headed back to Omshanty & did the only sensible thing; drank a shed load of rum before bed time!

The next morning at 6am, miraculously without sore heads, we got moving. First stop was Tatabinga, a Brazilian port town 5 minutes down the road, luckily with no border crossing formalities! Being from the UK definitely has its advantages… there are a few countries in South America which charge extortionate "reciprocal fees" (over $100 a time) to anyone from the USA, Oz etc!

We arrived in the first car so Alice ran off and grabbed coffees which came in small plastic pots while we waited. It was really nice of the guys in car 2 to wear matching t-shirts so we could spot them easily looking lost & about a foot taller than all the locals! We jumped on our boat & met our guide Marco & our boat captain Marco. That wasn't gonna get confusing! We set off down river, blown away by the views & also the height of the river. Apparently there had been so much rain recently that the part we were boating down was normally crossable on foot! The water level definitely made it more interesting as we saw some houses underwater, some on stilts & stranded domestic animals in the strangest places. It also meant the jungle was hanging over the edges of the river so we could get right into the thick of it. With Alice operating as our designated translator we continued onwards. Our first stop was at an indigenous settlement for a hike through the rough. It was initially a little awkward as they all lined up to sell us locally made trinkets or in one woman's case, lined up topless with a confused looking sloth in her arms! After this though the guide took Team Alice (for this is what we had been named) exploring through some fairly serious terrain & showed us both flora & fauna including lots of different trees & fruits & even a baby tarantula. Due to the high water levels, the usual trek was impossible.. so our guide had us scrabbling through rivers, pole vaulting over rivers and precariously balancing over felled trees which were acting as a bridge. Although it clearly wasn't going exactly to plan for our guide, for us it felt like a proper adventure! Our guide kept running off ahead and after a while we realised why - we'd been tracking a troupe of monkeys for the last half hour! We thought we were just on a nice walk!! We watched them jump around and as quickly as we saw them, they scarpered. Satisfied he had done his job, our guide started to lead us back. We were supposed to trek to another village a few kilometers away but the high river levels had made this impossible. Instead, we went back to the original village where the impromptu market had dissipated and we sat on the dock waiting for our boat to pick us up again. Marco had definitely scarpered for a beer somewhere! We set our rucksacks down and watched all the locals kids swimming in the river. Not a bad idea after a long sweaty hike! If the kids aren't being eaten by Piranhas we'll probably be fine, right?? So… in we jumped! After about half an hour of jumping in and watching the kids perfect their backflips into the river, our boat turned up so we pilled in and headed up river for lunch.

I think we were all expecting something pretty simple, so we were chuffed when we stopped at a beautiful place on the waters edge & they plied us with fish, rice, a huge salad & curried stewed beans followed by coffee & a cake! They were spoiling us! After lunch new English speaking guide arrived finally giving Alice's translating skills a well earned rest.

Ronny was a really lovely guy & just full of information about the river, the local area & the wildlife. He was from Iquitos, the Peruvian amazon city we were due to travel to in a few days time.

Re-energised, we headed back onto the boat. The plan for what was left of the afternoon was to head down a tributary of the river to spot some wildlife and get to the village we were due to spend the night in before dark. Yeeeeaaah…..

The wildlife spotting was awesome. Among others, we saw caiman and a sloth… which were unlike the other sloths we have seen before (normally just curled up in a ball napping), this sloth moved from branch to branch veerrryy slllooowwllyy… it was so funny looking! Like Alice!

We were all enjoying drifting along the river, so much so that we weren't remotely worried when the route to camp was completely blocked off by reeds… naaah, its all part of the adventure! While we cowered under the tarpaulin to avoid the dusk attack or mosquitos, Ronnie and the two Marcos set about finding us an alternative route to camp. Their tactic of ramming the reeds was abandoned when we all realised the reeds spread the whole width of the river and as far as we could see with our torches. Time for plan B!

We veered into the overhanging jungle by the power of our head lamps and they began hacking us a route through the branches between clearings. After about an hour and not much progress, we were beginning to get a bit concerned when the guides hacked us free and suddenly we were on the open river! What a relief! Us gringos had completely lost our bearings but it was clear we weren't headed for camp anymore! We sped on down the river and after a while a few dots of light appeared in the distance. Luckily, our guides knew someone who had a house in this area of the jungle and as we moored Marco went inside to ask them if we could stay the night. We were welcomed into the house where a generator buzzed loudly, powering the single bulb above our heads and the Tv and DVD player playing a 5 movie "monster vs. monster" special. We sat down and joined the various neighboring families watching Super gator vs. dino croc while Ronnie cooked us up chicken and rice. The boys were in heaven!

Our guides set our beds up upstairs with roll mats and mosquito nets and once we had eaten we all retired to bed. Asleep by 9pm, a hardcore adventurer life takes it out of you!

The following morning we awoke inside our mosquito net cage with loads of mosquitoes on the inside.....hmmm, not sure this is working correctly. We were treated to another brilliant meal of eggs, bread, coffee & fruit. No mean feat considering our location! When the movies finished and the generator was turned off the night before, the neighbours had all got into their respective boats and rowed off into the darkness. It was just the family and us left, so it came as a surprise when there were many more people around when we woke up. Ronnie explained that when the reeds grow during the wet season, anacondas slither around on top of them and use them to get around. One of the neighbours had woken up in the middle of the night to find one in their house and had promptly evacuated! No wonder the guides were anxious to get to camp the night before!!

After many thanks to our hosts we were back underway. We spent the morning fighting our way back to the main river & then more general exploring. We managed to arrive at the intended camp destination for the night before for lunch. Well it is all on South American time! Unsurprisingly half of this site was underwater as well, this did however enable a quick dip & some diving from a nearby tree into the water. Lunch was suitably spectacular again, fresh fish, noodles, chicken, potataoes & miraculously some much needed coffee. Towards the end of the meal a fairly torrential downpour started & after trying to wait it out for a while we gave up & set back out into the storm. We continued our river journey as far as a small Brazilian town called Benjamin Constant where we went ashore, well…. onto the planks above the flooded water anyway. Its crazy to see the Amazon during rainy season and see how these communities just deal with the flooding. Its fun for us to walk around a town on planks because it's a novelty but it's a real obstacle to overcome. Add this to the constant mosquito attacks and it can be unbearable to those not used to it! When I asked Ronnie what purpose mosquitos serve, he said that the locals think it's a small price to pay to stop people from moving to the amazon! Very true!

Back on the boat & heading home, the river had one final treat in store. River dolphins!! From a first subtle glimpse suddenly they were everywhere, diving in & out of the water. We even managed to see one pink dolphin, albeit briefly, but still amazing. The beautiful creatures put a brilliant lasting memory in our minds on the way home. We just had time for a quick crash into the shore on the last leg to wake us up! Minor miscalculation of how far away a dock was. After some spectacular driving from Marco and fighting through that much jungle we crashed into the shore.....brilliant! A truly incredible couple off days was rounded off by a couple of crazy nights in the hostel drinking crates of beer & dining on street food before we headed on the next boat to Iquitos.

We had decided on getting an Amazon speed boat (8 hours) rather than cargo ship (5 days or something ridiculous!) so we had to depart at 4am. We knew what day the boat ran. We knew where it went from. However, no one could tell us where we needed to buy the tickets from. We set off into town, figuring that someone would be able to point us in the right direction. We asked a police man, a travel agency, a local boatman and a woman working in a dock ticket office. Everyone gave us an answer but each time it would lead to another dead end. Finally, we bumped into Marco, our boat captain from the previous few days. We needed to go to Santa Rosa (an island in the middle of the river) to get them. So into the boat we pilled. We pulled up next to an open air restaurant (which is normally accessible by street but the whole town was completely flooded) and Marco pointed behind it. So on we went. Eventually, after trailing down many boards over flooded streets, we found someone sat at a table in a corridor with a poster of a speed boat on it and the words "IQUITOS". This was our "ticket office"! We had found it at last!! Very proud of ourself for our intrepid adventuring, we reserved our spots and found out that we could stay the following night in the boarding house the following night, rather than trying to get from Leticia to Santa Rosa in the middle of the night! Very helpful! We rewarded ourselves with more beers.

We had arranged with Marco to meet us the following day and he would take us over to Santa Rosa and help us get our passports stamped. When we turned up, we had a very confusing and pointless exchange with the local police who seemed intent on busybodying and telling us we couldn't go with Marco, we had to go with the official boats. Our broken spanish got us nowhere so after a quick change of boats we finally got to our island (flooded) paradise! To get from A to B you had to carefully & stealthily manouvere across wooden planks over the water. After misunderstanding both of these words & foolishly listening to some beer drinking locals I tried to walk between the planks in the wrong place & promptly fell down a hole! Yep thats right, after surviving a whole Amazon adventure I nearly drowned after falling chest deep in a hole next to a bar! Amazing! I managed to save the passports in my left hand but sadly this was at the expense of my foot, our bag & most importantly my pride! Sadly there were no photographers on hand to capture the incident or my fairly pitiful squelch into the ticket office where I was greeted by several bemused faces!

Alice's version:

I was escorting the boat with all the backpacks around to the passport office while the boys took a shortcut. Coming around the corner… we saw Steve crossing over the planks in front of us, seemingly drenched up to his arm pits! Figuring he must have fallen over and clearly missing girlfriendly concern for a few seconds, I burst out laughing with one of the auzzies also on board. When we climbed out of the boat and entered the passport office, and rather grumpy steve said "the f****** floorboards had a hole in them! Thanks for f******* telling me, locals!!". Sensing that he wasn't seeing the funny side yet, I stiffled my laughter (the auzzies were unable to…) and tended to his wounded pride. He explained that he had been walking in ankle deep murky water and fell straight through a hole in the floorboards. Unfortunately, everyone else had been ahead of him so no one saw the drama! Disappointing!

The 'hostel' itself was fun, just a selection of rooms, most flooded, connected to the bar by more wooden planks. After a beer & food we all settled for an early night & headed CAREFULLY across the planks & to bed. The boat ride itself was fairly uneventful, 8 hours on a large motorboat with a fairly dubious meal halfway through. With a 4am start most opted to try & sleep.

When we arrived in Iquitos we were definitely back in the city vibe as dozens of people tried to sell us hostels or taxis before we were even off the boat. We grabbed a selection of tuk tuks & headed off to town. Nothing much to report, we had a nice meal in a steakhouse as picked by the vegetarian & then in the morning me & Skip got hair cuts for a dollar in a shop that blew over in the rain. After cutting my hair my 80 year old barber said "it's raining & cold so I'm going to sleep" sat down in a chair & passed out. Awesome!

In the morning we had flights booked for Lima,so we headed for the airport leaving plenty of time to check in. This was completely unnecessary as we were promptly delayed by 6 hours. On the plus side it meant I managed to watch Die Hards 2 & 3 thus giving me the complete set for the trip! Always a great idea to watch films about planes blowing up at airports! We arrived in Lima late at night so didn't explore until the following day but we were surprised by how Americanised it was. Beautiful beaches fronted by malls & Starbucks. A nice place but not really our scene so, being a bit behind schedule, we planned a quick escape. We managed to find cheap flights to Cuszco which would save us a day or two compared to the bus routes. This did mean we had to bid a fond farewell to our friends from down under, so we planned a nice civilised last meal. Needless to say this didn't happen & we spent the night consuming rum on the roof......shocking! We left them nursing hangovers in bed as we headed, once again for the airport.