Lago Mamori

This is bush medicine. According to our guide, Claire has sensitive (read English) skin and been bitten by a fire ant that had turned into a blister.  The ant bite makes your skin go suddenly really warm like someone had put deep heat on you. By heating the Corama leaf and sticking it to the skin for several hours it enabled the milk inside the leaf to soak up the infection.

Preparing camp on the shores of Lago Mamori, Jason decided to try and get rid of the sarcastic nickname 'Jungle Boy'.

After complaining about gathering fire wood with 'the chicks' he insisted on being let lose with a machete. A skinny but very high tree was selected by our guide to be used to support the roof of our shelter. After all the excitement and the Kodak moments, Jason had a lapse in concentration. This lead to the tree being felled where one of the guides was crouching on the ground (far left hand side of the photo). The guide just managed to scamper to safety. Jason was once again called 'Jungle Boy' .

In order to redeem himself Jason swam with the guides in Lago Mamori where during the previous day we had seen alligators and caught Piranhas. The photo will not be published as some other party, not to be named, couldn't get the camera to work.

Our camp involved hamocks and mossy nets being strung between three trees. Our guides made a table and stove from nearby wood and the fire was lit without paper.

This frog sat about 1 metre away from our camp site all night, along with the rest of the noisy jungle. So, even if wasn't for the thunder, lightning and torrential rain this noisy bastard would have prevented us from sleeping.

The guides had to get up several times in the evening to fix the tree shelter due to sheer weight of water on the roof.

Morning face after an evening of noisy animals, thunder, lightning, rain and bug bites.  The lack of sleep was enhanced by the guides stories the night before of deaths in the jungle due to thunder and lightning.

The broken mossy nets and toilet trip in the middle of the night lead to 30 bites for Claire which now itch like mad.

Jason has no bites and can't understand all the fuss.

The next morning we took a walk into the jungle to see wildlife and learn about the bush.   We tasted wild Amazonian fruit and saw trees such as the one in the photos which the Indians still use today. The milk that we tasted from this Amapa tree trunk is medicine that helps Asthma and other respiratory problems.

This is one of our guides from Brazil holding a brazil nut shell.  You you get 20 brazil nuts in each shell.

This is Claire attempting to adopt by force the children of an indigenous family.

Jason can sleep through thunder, lightning, torrential rain, and animals but is constantly woken by the sound of that body clock!

The average family size on the river is 8 kids so I am sure someone here is keen to breed.

Andiroa nuts and a typical canoe at an indigenous homestead.

We also saw how the dietry staple the Manioc was processed and prepared.

This is the Cupua Cu fruit that you pull pieces of from the centre of the fruit.  It has a banana like texture that tastes of seven different flavours as you eat it.  It is quite weird, tasting banana then pineapple then grapefruit then apple in one mouthfull

At the bottom of the photo, you can see Rafael our guide.  We hooked up with the others on the parts of the trip where we were staying overnight. On the left two English girls from Croydon, who were very happy all of the time, and far right a French guy who kept wearing tight speedos that didn't cover much, and kept flapping his assets in Claire's face.

The others are locals who drove the boats caught alligators, cooked our food and built the camp.