Manaus – you're in the jungle baby, and you're gonna diiiiiieee!!!

Along with Buenos Aires the real highlight of my trip so far. I'll start this off by saying AMAZING...no what what I write, or the photos I upload, I won't be able to capture what an incredible place it is, and what a mind blowing experience it was. But this is how it went down.

Alarm clock. 6.45 am. Bolted out of hammock, down the hall, past reception. Vomited in toilet. Slung pack on back, crawled into taxi. White, sickly and askew across the grey vinyl back seat, my last night in Rio had been a big one. I barely made the plane - thank God I did, but good it was not. Sitting there, contemplating whether or not I would have to use the sick bag before we had even left the ground, I noticed a panel tumble from the nearby emergency door and thump onto the carpet. 'Excuse me!' I cried over the din of Portuguese to an indifferent flight attendant. 'I think part of the Emergency door just fell off'.

Huffing at the inconvenience, she jammed the panel back in place and stretched two strips of sticky tape over it as the plane began hurtling down the runway. Takeoff can best be described as a convincing argument that man was never meant to fly. As we rose and dipped in a series of horrible shudders, the stench of an unknown (flammable?) fluid swept through the aircraft. Even the flight assistants turned ashen. That's when you know you're really in trouble. A few terrifying minutes later the plane stabilised and the colour returned to the attendants' cheeks, if not mine...

Manaus itself is, more or less, the junction of the 3 great rivers – the Solimoes/Amazonas, the Negro and the Madeira – which between them support the world's greatest surviving forest. More specifically, Manaus is the capital of Amazonas, a tropical forest state covering around one-and-a half million square kilometers...and arriving there is certainly an intense experience – 38 degrees, and unbelievable humidity, (a town a days travel down the river, called Leticia, is the worlds most humid place), I just can't describe it...

It certainly is an extraordinary place – a city in the midst of the jungle, consciously designed to show the mastery of man over nature. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, at the height of the rubber boom, architects were summoned from Europe to redesign the city, which rapidly acquired a western feel – broad Parisian-style avenues, interspersed with Italian piazzas centred around elaborate fountains. However, this heyday lasted barely thirty years, and by the turn of the century the rubber market was collapsing fast – so now Manaus is beaten up, but still beautiful. The docks for example – constant chaotic activity, like something out of an Indiana Jones film – set against beautiful old boats bobbing up and down.

I booked myself into a hostel, and then immediately onto a 3 day jungle tour. The following morning we walked through Manaus, to the docks and were picked up by a guide in a small speedboat. The first thing we saw was the 'meeting of the waters'. Some 10km downstream, where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimoes meet to form the Rio Amazonas. For several kilometers, where the rivers join, the waters continue to flow separately, the muddy yellow of the Solimoes contrasting sharply with the black of the Rio Negro, which is much warmer and more acidic. We moved ontowards a beautiful lodge, where the huge Lillie's grow – up to 2meters wide – but not before a couple of local guys approached our boat, and literally dropped a huge snake, and baby sloth into the boat. The baby sloth was definitely the more popular!

After this we were taken to the 'Green Lodge', our home for the next 3 days. Here we met Michael, our guide. A native with an English father, Michael was unbelievably knowledgeable about every animal and tree / medicine we came across – its as clear as day, seeing him launch himself into the amazon to swim after a snake he wanted to catch – completely fearless, he never got his head around the idea of skinny jeans though. That night we went piranha fishing, for dinner, using branches, a small amount of line and meat for bait - with only Michael and Laura – a French girl - catching anything. We returned to the lodge, in total darkness at 6pm. The lodge has no electricity at all, and we sat in darkness staring out into the amazon, and up at the most amazing sky I have ever seen. Millions of bright stars against a pitch black sky – no light pollution here. That night I slept in a hammock, yards away from a snake that would kill you in 24 hours if bitten. Michael claimed it the next morning, before bludgeoning it, and tossing it into the river.

The next two days involved more piranha fishing – I caught 4 in a couple of hours (check me out...), alligator hunting (Michael caught two babies in the darkness – blinding them with torch light), swimming in the amazon, trekking the jungle- discovering trees that provide the most important medicines, and famously rubber - visiting a native village and one of the most incredible things I have ever seen. This is where its impossible to describe, but...just amazing. At around 5.30pm, with the sun setting beautifully, we sat in our canoe as tens of thousands of swallows gathered in the sky above us, circling in huge groups – all returning from a days work / play. At exactly the same time they all plummeted to within inches of the Amazon and hurtled around us and into the forest to nest – the sound was like a waterfalls, and the birds hurtling around us was just extraordinary.

The plan from Manaus had been to sail 1000km into Peru – but as this was upstream it turned out to be not only long, 2 weeks on the Amazon, and expensive – so I was left with no option to fly (not cheap in expensive Brasil) to Lima, Peru, via Costa Rica...