We were told to arrive at the bus station in La Paz a 10.30 on the 4th in order to get the 11am bus to Rurrenabaque, our base from which we would explore the jungle and pampas. Loading started at about 11.45, Bolivian luggage first, and the bus left at 12.45. Nothing unusual for Bolivia. For a 19 hour journey, what's another 2? Quite a lot, to us, potentially the difference between jungle or no jungle. Thanks to the usual speeding on the one car-wide mountain path which covers the entire journey, with its sheer drop on the left into a branch of the River Amazon, we made it with an hour to spare. Uncomfortable, without reclining chairs, bumpy almost all the way and lacking a loo, the bus was one of the most wonderful journeys I have ever taken. The mountain to which our dirt track was just about attached and the mountains we could see across the river were densely covered in trees, progressively so as we drew nearer to the rainforest. Occasionally we'd pass a tiny settlement of 1-6 huts, the four walls of each all slightly different lengths to each other, with ill-fitting improvised rooves made of sheets of corregated tin placed on top. Sometimes the settlements would be accompanied by a tiny area of near-vertical land on the mountainside which had been cleared for crop farming; other than this they were invariably several hours from any neighbouring signs of civilisation.

Every 3-4 hours we'd stop to use the loo. Facilities varied from ground space to actual rooms, the latter consisting of a row of holes in the ground without doors, over which locals and travellers would squat next to each other. This system had two great advantages over upright basins seen in cities which are generally without seats or paper or a flush (just a bucket of water) but otherwise resemble loos. The first is that the more rural and typically Bolivian experience naturally lent itself to one or two cultural discoveries, such as the fact that Bolivian women don't wear knickers. The second is that the less technology (who needs modern inventions like doors anyway), the more hygenic, as most things loo-related in Bolivia which one might otherwise find convenient to touch tend to be covered in s*** anyway.

We pulled into Rurrenabaque at 7am on the morning of the 5th, bleary eyed and semi-conscious, two requirements of a mental state in which to accept the offer of a man standing at the bus station asking us, "Do you want a ride in my tuc-tuc?". His tuc-tuc, pronounced "took-took", turned out to be a motorised three-wheeled buggy, open air and costing approximately 30p for a journey to the office of the tour agency with whom we'd booked five days in the jungle and the pampas. Here we left Matilda, my bag, and took Rodney (Clara's), Rod and Matt (juniors of the other two) to the river Beni, one of the hundreds of branches of the Amazon, for a three hour boat trip to our camp base in the jungle. It was a hot day but the wind on the river was icy. Knowing we were on our way into the Amazon Rainforest was immensely exciting.

Camp consisted of four huts: one for cooking and eating, with one stove two tables, one in which the staff lived (two men who'd lived in that part of the jungle all their life), another for us to sleep in and a final hut containing a genuine loo, naturally without a door or flush but with the luxury of a shower curtain which didn't go much of the way towards protecting modesty but was a gesture nonetheless.

The tour group included two ex St Catz students. We've found from all our tours that when you leave England to travel, the world only gets smaller. Our guide, Sandro, was utterly brilliant. Half-descended from a Tacana native, an indigenous group which has almost died out and beyond rescue, he had been born and raised in the jungle and was able to perfectly imitate the sounds of the animals and call them. His sight and hearing were sharper than anyone we've met with any other background and he was able to point out all kinds of wildlife that we'd have no hope of noticing alone, as well as explaining to us the incredible medicinal uses of the plants, ranging from diarrhea and headache relief to slowing the onset of cancer. One of these was a tree known as the "man tree" because numerous phallic roots shoot from the trunk towards the ground in a kind of wigwam shape in order to give the tree more stability.

On our first walk through the jungle Sandro told us not to talk so that we could fully take in the sights, smells and sounds. It's a very noisy place, and I recorded parts of our walks on a dictaphone: the crackles of branches and leaves as animals scuttle across the floor and clamber through trees, combined with the cocophony of birds' songs, make for the most extraordinarily entrancing soundscape. Visually too, the jungle is a tangled collage of infinite bizarre and beautiful shapes, dark at the floor and spectacularly bright at the canopy, with unpredictable shadows creating the appearance of a kind of amorphous fluidity to everything in between. On subesquent walks we'd stop from time to time so as not to make any disturbance such as noise from our feet as they crushed the layers of plants and fallen trees on the jungle floor, so that we could listen for animals. Sandro would call them and point up to the canopy to show us howler monkeys and parrots at the top of the tallest trees. On one occasion he told us to disperse and hide in the foliage away from the path while he went in search of wild boars. Ten minutes later a stampede of about fifty of them ran past us. Their smell is strong and distinctive, and suprisingly pleasant and game-like considering how close it was to the smell of Sandro, who, with the exception of the brown river, has no access to washing facilities.

On the evening that we arrived back in Rurre, we stayed in a cheap hotel (3 pounds a night) which had cold water, electricity sockets which sparked and no window panes to insulate the noise of traffic and clubs during the night. Sleeping in huts outdoors in the jungle, with no water, electricity or heating, surrounded by the natural sounds of the animals, had come to us so much more easily.