A night of what Katie called hell, we woke up with over twenty mosquito bites each on our bodies! Even with our mosquito repellent on, it must have worn off overnight but it all adds to the experience and thankfully it didn’t affect us too much. Paranoid that we would have now caught malaria, we knew we wouldn’t have felt any affects of malaria for at least seven days. It would be anxious seven day wait to see if we were going to die or not, but decided to just put it to the back of our minds in the meantime!

We started off the day with a 6 hour hike through the jungle where Fabio told us all about the wildlife, the different plants/trees and how the local people live and survive with what’s around them. We learned about the surrounding nature nearby and all the medicinal plants and trees which are still used today by the natives. We even got to see some Iguanas whilst exploring through the rainforest.

By the end of the hike, we headed back to the accommodation for a late lunch before setting off again on another boat trip. This time the boat trip was similar to our morning hike, but this time we learned about the different animals and insects of the Amazon jungle. Whilst weaving through the mangrove, we managed to see lots of different wildlife such as monkeys, caiman, iguanas, exotic birds, sloths etc, all in their natural habitat and it was just a surreal experience. We would also randomly hear and see iguanas falling from the tree tops into the water around us and then trying to hide, thinking we were hunting them. Katie definitely jumped a few times with the ones landing closer to the boat!

It had started to get dark again by this point, so we went to see the beautiful sunset again before having a second go at finding some caiman.

This time we (okay Fabio) were more successful at finding and catching a caiman for us all to see this time. Fabio managed to catch it by shining the torch at the caiman’s eyes to temporarily blind and stun them from moving. He was then able to grab it with his bare hands in the pitch black (whilst trying not to lose a hand in the process) and bring it on to the boat for us to see up close. Craig took a turn at holding it as it struggled to escape, whilst Katie was shaking trying to take a quick photo. Again, for anyone concerned reading this, the caiman was let free back in to the water after five minutes or so and it even gave us a wee wave as it swam away to say “thanks for a good time guys”.

As we got back it was dinner time where we had more fresh fish and food and some drinks with the rest of the group and also one of the local dogs on the island who Craig grew fond of. The dogs were there to deter any caiman or other species trying to settle on the island!

After dinner, Fabio also managed to catch a baby caiman next to our accommodation in the back yard, to surprise and show Katie who was too scared to hold the bigger one. This time Katie was brave enough to hold it, whilst also shiteing herself, but it didn’t last long before the caiman moved slightly and she asked Fabio to take it back off her and let it free, as you can tell by the look on her face!

That night before we went to sleep, we decided to put on a few extra layers of clothes (even though it was roasting hot), in the hopes we wouldn’t get bitten by anything else and also limit our chances of catching malaria!