Dave picked us up from our hotel at 8am on Sunday morning and took us back to the office so that we could store our big backpacks. We met our guide Edson and from there we drove for about 20 minutes to a place where we had to get onto a speed boat. While we were crossing the river we stopped to see the meeting of the waters, this is where the Amazon river meets the Rio Negra. It was really impressive to see as there is a distinct line between the two rivers. Edson explained that it is all to do with speed, density and temperature...We carried on in the speed boat for a while until we came to a little town where we had to get in a car. It was about a hours drive in the car before we reached another river in the jungle from where we had to get on another boat. This boat was a small wooden canoe with a small motor! It took about 40 minutes to reach the lodge but on the way we saw loads of birds, caimon, pink river dolpions and jumping fish that occasionally ended up in the boat!

We arrived at the lodge at about 11am where we were shown our room-it was very similar to the Pantanal-good old hammocks again! About half an hour later we had lunch which was quite nice, there were no rice and beans! To my dissapointment we had to entertain ourselves for the afternoon, until 3pm anyway. I think it is just too hot to do anything other than sit around. At 3.30pm , Edson took us back out onto the river where we stopped to do some pirahna fishing. The piranhas are different here to those in the Pantanal, we fished from the boat and put them back in once we had caught them, rather than deep frying them! I think i managed to catch about three, Neil caught more. Sarah caught a few too but then gave up when she decided it was a blood sport! On the way back to the lodge we saw the sunset and a few more pink river dolpins. When we arrived back at the lodge there was no electricity in our room. There were a few candles but that didn´t seem to make a lot of difference. Edson was really apologetic and asked us if we wouldn´t mind moving to a cabin....so we ended up with a private, en-suite cabin with a fan instead of hammocks!

After breakfast the next morning we went off into the jungle with Edson and the boat driver for a 3 hour walk. We were told lots about medicinal plants which was really interesting. We saw some huge ants, lizards and a snake and then the biggest spider any of us have ever seen! Edson found it highly amusing when he poked a stick down the hole and made the spider come out. I didn´t like it! We also had some little braclets made for us from the bark of a tree.

After lunch back at the lodge we had about an hour to spare before we had to set off back to Manaus. We really would have liked to have spent longer in the jungle, some girls we had met were spending a night out there, but we just don´t have the time. Two days was definately not enough!