Little Nic and the Army of Baby Tarantulas

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Deep in the Amazon Rain Forrest,over 100 miles from any form of civilization and even further than that from a decent coffee (Peru seems to export everything it has) we intrepid explorers donned the sun cream (see, sensible) and ventured where no man has gone before. Well, not quite, but we did make it pretty far into one of the few truly wild bits left in the world. Having shunned the idea of a sanitised ´Jungle lodge´ where about a close as you come to roughing it is realising the pool isn´t cleaned every day we wanted to see just how much we could see in its natural habitat.

The only problem with most creatures natural habitats is that they are bloody miles away! Having spent the best part of a day driving to the last town, taking a boat to the last village we finally boarded a canoe and headed for ´some huts´ - our guide was the strong silent type. Each handed a paddle and shown where the bowl to bail out the canoe was we set off, all of 50m before we had to pick up our cook for the week and of course a few kids that needed lifts further up river. We never found out where they lived, however, as like most people here they just seemed to melt into the surrounding jungle without a sound.

Our camp wasn´t actually that bad and after excursions into the rain forests of Lao we kind of knew what we were getting ourselves into. There´s only one small difference. In the Amazon, everything is alive!

Absolutely everything.

Another variation we later learned between the jungle camps and the living, breathing, biting atmosphere we had landed ourselves in is that the more humans interfere with the environment the more wildlife dies. Sure this sounds obvious, but we tend to think of it in abstract terms - jungle disappears, less monkeys, polar ice caps melt, less polar bears. People forget the worms. In the Amazon no-one forgets the worms because there as big as snakes. Yes hands up those who ran like a girl from the toilet yelping (in not a very manly way) at what turned out to be a foot long worm. And it´s not just the worms either, no its the spiders, ants, cockroaches, flys, mossies (damn those mossies) and all the other bugs and beasties that flourish away from intensive human touch. The atmosphere radiates life here and nowhere is it more obvious than in the dazzling spectacle provided every morning by the dozens of resident species of butterflies. Simply hundreds descend from everywhere shinning their spectacular colours in the deep rich morning sun. A sight that (almost)makes up for the fact that at every turn the rest of the jungle is trying to eat you.

In this kill or be lunch world even the trees are at it. Where else do you have trees covered in bards that secret poison in touched. Trees that attack other trees for goodness sake, slowly encircling them and devouring them from within. This place is nasty enough, but when the flora i getting in on the act you know it´s time to get out of there.

But the sheer majesty of the place is undeniable and only added to by the few people that are nuts enough to call it home. They are incredible guardians of the forest and protect it in a way that should make the rest of us feel pretty guilty about the way we treat our own homes. Here are a people that also understand the danger of the place they live and how carefully each animal must be treated. The coral snake we found can be looked at, but not touched. However, the hoards of baby tarantulas that had just hatched can be scooped up by the handful and passed around the group for a closer look. How many people can say they´ve handled dozens of tarantulas and felt perfectly safe. Amazing place.

p.s. Actually neither can we

p.p.s If Mrs Rowling is ever to write an eighth Harry Potter book and happens to read this blog (not sure which one is less likely) she is most welcome to use this title. We´d read it.

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