(...Continued)

From Corrico, where we collapsed at the end of the trek, we took a 12 hour bus journey to Rurrenabaque down one of the worst roads in Bolivia. Surprisingly, this wasn't quite as bad as we'd all anticipated, maybe due to the absence of really bad reggeaton and Latin American pop playing for the entire duration of the journey. From Rurrenabaque, a really chilled little town in the Amazonian basin, we took a three day tour into the pampus - wetland savanah, lots of little rivers and grassland and not too much in the way of giant treets or impressive vegetation. There was quite a lot in the way of impressive wildlife though, which was really the whole point of doing the tour - on our boat trips out from camp we saw monekys, pink river dolphins, caimans (crocodiles), birds galore, and the very strange capibara, the world's largest rodent. On our first night we went out in the boat to look for caiman's eyes glowing red in the dark. We only saw a few, but I was quite content to simply look up at the stars and marvel at how vast the sky seemed to be. On the second day we went and swam with the river dolphins and fished for pirahna. One of them bit Dave on the finger. We also fed pringles to the caiman Pedro, who lives by the camp, and played a lot of cards.

The last day in the pampus was Becky's birthday, and so we went out for much drinking once we got back to Rurrenabaque. Paul and Nick spent most of the evening taking the complete piss out of me (due to one rather unfortunate card game in the pampus when admittedly I had acted a little bit stupider than usual - it was the humidity), which resulted in a lot of fruit and candlewax being thrown in defence across the bar. When this didn't work I went (at Emma's suggestion, I'd just like to point out) and spat vodka through my straw into Paul's face. Whoops. Paul was perhaps understandly too shocked to react, and just sat there laughing with alcohol dripping off his face. After the felt-tip pen was acquired a lot of people were written on as well - among other things Brendon got 'USA' tattoed on his forehead, Nick wrote 'Senile' on my arm and I wrote 'Bastard!' on his. Paul, Karen, Becky, Nick and I got chucked out of the bar at half two and I expended a lot of energy on the way back to our hostal trying to write 'Loser' on Paul's arm. This basically involved both of us standing in the middle of the street doing karatee-stylee things with our hands while balancing on one leg, after which I would run after him and he'd twist my arm, before it'd all start again until we finally reached the hostal and collapsed into the hammocks.

Quote from Taylor, who in the middle of the boiling heat in the pampus spent most of his time in a fleece jacket so he wouldn't be bitten by mosquitos: 'Fuck! Why didn't I bring my fleece pants! What are they doing back in La Paz!'

(Continued...)