Thanks to everyone who have been writing me encouraging comments. I´ve had to be discouraged about so far, and the first official “day” was an incredible disappointment.

First, it´s stinking hot here. If you think it´s hot and humid in Cairns, that´s nothing compared to Iquitos. It´s been 35C in the day, and 80% humidty. Being inside at all leaves you extremely sweaty, and outside you need to keep out of the sun, or risk being frito.

Some of you might have heard about about my luggage fiasco already from Kaj. This will be my 5th day without luggage, and while it´d be great to go and buy new things, it´s actually not that easy. I can find Tshirts without any problems, because any street hawker sells them. They have souvenir crap all over them, but I can live with that. I can buy socks here too. But everything else is impossible. Coral is a size 10 and she´s having problems! She couldn´t find a bra big enough to fit her, so I´m certainly having issues.

So, wearing the same bra for 5 days that gets entirely saturated with sweat is about as disgusting an experience as they come. Coupled with it taking FOREVER to dry, due to no dryers, and overactive humity, and you have a very discouraged Nicky. My pants are getting a bit whiffy too - they´re quite thick so I haven´t bothered. With this kind of humdity it´s a bad idea to wear them wet.

I´m going into the jungle tomorrow, and although I was considering staying in Iquitos until my luggage arrived I´ve decided that would mean I miss out on one the great experiences I´m looking forward too. Drying any of my clothes in the jungle is going to be a much greater drama than here, so I´m very worried.

I had also prepared to go into the jungle with no electricity by stocking up on camera batteries and memory cards. I have just one battery in my camera, and it might last two cards.

I only have one more day´s worth of malaria tablets with me too, the rest are packed in my luggage. I´ll need to buy a different type of malaria tab, the only one that is sold here, and it has lesser protection and nasty side effects like runny poo, nausea and yeast infections. Ick. Not looking forward to any of those. And the protection for malaria is nowhere near as good. *sigh* I´m getting sad thinking about all this again.

Today we went to La Isla de Maños and I was able to play with monkeys. Well, they sort of play with you. Wesaw 6 different types of monkeys, and they´re like kittens constantly playing and being rather mischievious. Amazingly intelligent critters, and really interactive. They use you like a tree to jump to places too.

The trip to Monkey Island was a 2h boat ride on an amazingly dodgy boat, but it floated and the driver waited for us without issue, so that was awesome.

After that we headed to an animal orphanage which was sad and exciting. Lots of theanimals had a sad story of how they got to the orphanage, and one monkey there was a trained pickpocket. We had to leave all of our belongings in a monkey proof house, and empty our pockets. We saw a jaguar, tapir, sloths and lots of butterflies and monkeys. A few macaws and parakeets, but not too much action on the close-up bird front yet.

The day really lifted my spirits, which had just about died, and I really hope my luggage comes in on the first plane to Iquitos tomorrow.

Special thanks goes to Kaj who rescued Coral´s luggage from Australia - and a savage complaint goes to Lan´s South American staff who are useless.