Blood everywhere.. Never have I had so much blood on my hands and never have I felt so unashamed.

Before I continue with the story of how I was guilty of having blood on my hands, to start from the beginning would make the most sense.

Speeding upstream against the fast flow of the Tambopata River that, like most rivers in South America, connected up to the Amazon River. Cruising up to the Tambopata EcoLodge where there was only power between the hours of 5pm-10pm, on the river bank was a capybara, the worlds largest rodent that is about the same size as an adult pig. As the sun was going to bed and the moon became ready to play, my blood pressure level increased tenfold.

Would like to comment on the fact that the bloke who thought it would be a fantastic idea to do a night walk is a goose. As we set out on this death wish, I saw a tarantula that was no smaller than the size of my hand (with my fingers stretched out), two poisonous dart frogs that will send you to heaven or hell from one touch (we were already in hell so I guess from there you could only go up), hundreds of other spiders and creepy crawlies landing on you as well as approximately fifty mosquitoes all in desperation to inject you with malaria.

After that night walk I was ready to hit the hay when I found a number of surprises waiting for me at the entrance to my bungalow; keep in mind I hate surprises. Firstly, a toad on the front steps which was an easy one to bypass. I just made sure I didn’t touch it in case it could also kill from one interaction. Then I saw a gecko frantically running around the place which I didn’t have much of a problem with. But the thing I had the biggest problem with, I think was what was making the gecko run around so frantically. Not on the outside, but inside the mozzy proof netting in my bungalow lay a black snake waiting for something of which I was unsure. After telling one of the staff what I was dealing with, he chose to use the inappropriate word to describe my situation as ‘lucky’. He was not willing to help and from the lack of fear from his reaction I was forced to leave it as I wasn’t planning on removing it.

Waking up alive, as apposed to waking up dead, I put on a pair of wellies and started a 10km return hike to a lake. On the way I saw a few birds, loads more mozzies, a monkey, baby tarantula and jaguar footprints.

On the lake I found myself in a situation of ‘who sank the boat’ having bailed out rainwater from the oldest, crappiest wooden canoe I have ever seen. Sitting inside making our way around the oxbow lake, there was only about one centimetre from the edge of the canoe and the face of the water. At the opposite end of the lake out guide excitedly says ‘oh my god how didn’t you guys see that’ to which our immediate response was ‘what?’ To my disbelief, our crappy canoe that was slowly taking in water was on top of a seven metre long anaconda.. After looking at its body and the girth of that thing, I noticed that it’s head was half a metre away from my body, staring directly into my eyes. I only presumed that with the power of those things, if that guy pounced, he would have covered the half metre before I could even blink. Can’t explain how relieved I was to be paddling slowly away from that beast. Our guide Julius (pronounced hool-io) said he had never seen one that close in the entirety of his life.

It was at this point I got blood all over my hands. These insects and mozzy’s that kept buzzing around were bugging me (no pun intended) so much all it took was the mistake of a simple clap of the air to kill some of gods creatures and for me to have more blood on my hands than I could have ever imagined. I didn’t want to wash it off in the lake as I didn’t want to attract any of the piranhas swimming underneath.

One of the only things I remember learning in science at school was from a video we watched on parasites. I remember quite distinctly, most likely because it worried me so much, that there is a parasite in the Amazon that swims up your stream of urine if weeing into the water and crawls into your old fella and digs it’s hooks in only to be removed surgically. After a few days in the Amazon, I have the strongest bladder muscles.

Protip (but more like an amateur tip or in this case South American Struggler tip): fellas, do not in any circumstances spray insect repellant on your vine as the burning sensation is like no other. I learnt that the hard way, having to wee in the company of around fifty or so mozzy’s. The positive out of that situation at least is that I know when it’s time to create a kid, I will have killed off all sperm that had the DNA of a mosquito.

My stay in the Amazon Jungle was short lived but that was okay. The animals and creatures I saw were some that few people get to see who stay in the jungle for weeks. It should however be pointed out that Guns N’ Roses, ‘Welcome to the Jungle’, song lyrics ‘welcome to the jungle, we’ve got fun and games’ is false.

On a side note, since I arrived in Peru about two weeks ago, I haven’t once seen a Peruvian flute band. I thought about it long and hard and realised why. It’s because they’re all in shopping malls in Westernised countries the sneaky buggers. The Peruvians kicked them out and dispersed them everywhere else so they wouldn’t have to deal with the racquet.