After leaving Banos at 7am we were on the bus for about an hour when we were woken, again, by a loud bang. This time the driver did stop as smoke filled the bus! We all jumped out to find that the back tyre had burst and was now on fire! The driver pulled out a poxy little fire extinguisher which stopped the fire for all of 2 seconds. Me and Sean went into Water Action Stations and preceeded to pour as much water as we could get our hands on onto the flaming tyre, this managed to save the day until the fire brigade arrived 5mins later! We hoped onto another bus which took us to Tena. After a mad dash aorund Tena in which we got money, wine and a bit more street food, we had to push our way on to a very crowded bus on which we were meant to have reserved seats. I was hanging on by one hand by the door, which was open, Hannah was being grinded up and down by a lovely Ecuadorian boy who didnt seem to understand five digs in the ribs! Eventually the bus thinned out and we got seats for the final part of the journey. We arrived at Puerto Rio Barantilla, where a canoe took us the rest of the way to Liana Lodge.

At this point Tash was becoming very concerned as she had planned most of this, but all was amazing thanks to our roomies. The lodge is set on the river with no electricity, just canlde light, which was beautiful. Included was 3 fab meals a day, and all of the tours. After about an hour of being there and sat out with a cerveca we saw our firts monkey, which eventually came up to about 5m away and started throwing sticks at us! We chose on the first day to hike upto a view point in the jungle, where we saw the vast array of insects and wildlife in the jungle. From the viewpoint your could see down over all of the jungle, and unfortunately the newly built airport nearby. At this point we need to thank Anka & Marcel, who we met at the lodge, and Anka became our unofficial translator. In the afternoon we went raft building, which ended with the girls sunbathing whilst the boys built the raft (with a little/a lot of help from our guide Ceasar). We then rafted back to the lodge in glorious sunshine. We went for a little dip in the not so clear water of the river and played on the rope swing before we chilled out in the hammocks little did we know Tash and Hannah where being eaten alive (hannah got bored of counting after 200 bites).

The next day we visited the ´Amazoonico` which has been set up to try and take in animals that have been kept as pets and hopefully release them back into the wild, sadly this cant always be done. Some of the birds we saw had had their muscles clipped so that they could no longer fly. After the tour we travelled back down the river to the lodge on tyres, as the current is strong enough to carry you without needing any effort. In the afternoon we visited a local village on an island across the river where we saw how they lived and tried some local alcohol. We also had a go at blow dart hunting, although it was only on a wooden owl, needless to say I was the only one to hit it! We then went up river and searched for gold and tried out fishing. Unfortunately we arent amazingly rich as we only found a few flakes (but Hannah got very excited about this) and we also didnt catch any fish.

As it was our last night and Macel´s birthday drinks were flowing, with a few party games thrown in there, jenga (Hannah is still the undefeated champion but tryin to translate champion into Spanish she kept calling herself a mushroom!), human pyramid building, and 2 very strange games from Germany; one being a penguin dance and we´ve still not worked out the other as we didnt fancy putting our head in someone elses crotch.

The monkeys came very close to our cabin and even onto the balcony which we thought would be the closest, however the following morning we woke up with one curled up at the end of our bed like a cat! Yes a wild monkey! After we slowly got up and crept out of the room the monkey moved up the bed into the warm patch, how cheecky!

Very sad our love affair with the Americans had to come to an end at this point, but we will definitely be visiting Phillie for a famous cheesestake and to see the Cleveland Browns x x