After our 6 hour journey we arrived back to Jatun Sacha where we were welcomed by a rather junglefied Alex!!! We met two of bobbyś friends on the way (Nick and Selene) who were on their way to visit Bobby as a suprise - they were really nice peps and they ended up satying here until tuesday!!

We started back to work on monday - can´t really say that we have been doing that much work this week, not because we haven`t wanted to but becasue it has rained heavily most days!! Still can`t quite believe we are here at Jatun Sacha, in the Amazon, in Ecuador!!! It`s completly different to anywhere we have been before and it`s so different from other parts of Ecuador let along England!!! We have cold showers, power failures regularly and when we do have power it`s so weak that candles are more effective, very basic food ( although it is quite yummy but I think I might say that about anything!!!) and maybe a little surprisingly it`s sooo noisey. All that and we love it and we are actually really lucky to have the provisions that we do here. Many of the indigenous people live so simplistically. We have never seen such resourseful living - everything has a use! Makes me feel bad about how unresourseful we are at home.

On tuesday we went for a tour of the forest (each week a small group of volunteers go into the forest with a guide to ensure that nobody had been tampering or cutting trees down illegally within the reserve). It was really good fun and we got to see some beautiful butterflies, poison dart frogs and my highlight was the monkeys - they were so cute!!! Since then we have also seen two snakes and a gheko - in the toilets on site!!!!

Two of our days (including today) have been spent helping out in the kitchen - think these have been our hardest days yet. Felt like we were on the show where poor girls and rich girls swap lives - everything is so manual ( not that work on the farm or in the botanical garden isn`t manual but you kind of already expect them to be). Actually I haven´t said anything about what goes on here - well there are two main projects, the organic farm which aims to show locals how to farm in a sustainable maner and looks to provide another source of income for the rerserve if they can manage to produce enough to sell and the Botanical garden which homes some of the rarest and most indangered species of plants in the Amazon. Our job is to help maintain both whilst helping out with other community activities(we get to go into local communities and teach Englist to children) and the general running of the reserve.

We haven`t been out of the reserve very much as yet - there are lot of things to still see here. There is a tower 30 meters high that looks out over the tree canopy which we visited with Alex last week. It is made of metal and has a small ladder (perhaps 30 cm wide) that leads up to the very small round platform at the top. Was scary to climb and rather tiring but the views were amazing!!!

Nic and I went to visit a small town nearby Jatun Sacha last saturday called Mishualli. It was a very cute town and it had monkeys that roamed around the centre square freely - in and out of shops , across the road, was so strange!!!

We have have some time of next week and have planned to visit two more towns situated slighlly south of Tena. It`s all very exciting!!!

Hope all is well at home.

Lot`s of love as always xxx