Amazon!

Did you know that mosquitos can bite you through your clothes? Arlene now has about 100 bites on her bum that confirms that they do. Welcome to the Amazon basin.

We spent a fabulous 3 days in a canoe cruising along one of the inky black rivers that feeds into the Amazon river, looking for, and finding lots of exotic amazonian wildlife. Our guide wasn´t the most ecologically sound guide...we came to that conclusion after he lassooed a 3metre long alligator and asked if we wanted to bring it on the boat...smoked a cobra snake out of its hiding place...and handed out bananas for us to feed to the cute lil yellow monkeys...but it made for good photos.

One morning was dedicated to hunting for snakes in the Pampas, which is the grasslands of the Amazon basin. We realised that the gumboots we were given to wear weren´t helpful enough when we found ourselves wading through waist-deep inky black water. The water was so dark, that we were wondering how we were supposed to know if we were inches away from snakes or alligators....the answer is that we probably were ;-)