Up well before the crack of dawn and a limited breakfast at 5am for our trip to Lake Sandoval. It was now I realised I hadn’t brought any spare shirts to change into! Ouch!

We had a short boat ride then a long 3km walk on a raised boardwalk to where canoes awaited us to take us onto Lake Sandoval. The canoes seemed to be rather world weary and oldhat but perhaps that was very right. They gave more of a sense of being Indiana Jones for a day than if the canoes had been modern tinted windowed clean chromed and prettily painted.

We were expected to assist the rowing but I passed a proffered oar on to a more capable fellow passenger. No jade otters to be seen despite the advertising. But we did see a lot - red howler monkeys foraging, caimans, anhingas, cormorants, tarantula webs, bats resting, varieties of macaws, turtles, ibises and other things I can’t remember! The sun was strong out on the water so I agreed with fellow passenger Richard that a shower was in order. Our guide commented on alluvial gold mining which is lucrative but damages the environment. People get addicted to that way of earning money.