Headed out to Nicolas’s house this morning to meet up to go to the airport for our flight into the rainforest. We met up with Sergio (from the NGO) and Alejandro (filming for us) at the airport, we went to pay for our charter and discovered that although it was an internal flight, we still needed our passports… Which typicaly we’d left at Nicolas’s, we thought it’d be safer not to carry them round the rainforest if we didn’t have to LOL! So, in true Monty Python style, Simon, Nicolás and I got a cab back to his place and picked them up, span round and cabbed it back to the airport! Luckily, the nature of a charter dictates, that when 4 of the 5 passengers are delayed… so is the flight PHEW!

Anyway, we said our hellos and goodbyes to Sergio, he was on a later plane, so we’d catch up with him later. We headed out onto the tarmac, where we rounded a corner to see a teeny tiny plane – a 6 seater Cessna, (including the pilot!) I was getting really nervous/excited now as we were really about to head out into the rainforest itself. It all seemed so real and incredibly exciting… and hot! After another passport check at the plane by the airport guard/policeman? and his gorgeous German Shepherd we finally borded and were on our way.

We had an incredibly smooth flight all the way, I was expecting a lot more bumpiness, but it was really smooth – well, except for Alejandro! His chair hadn’t been bolted in right, so when the plane took off, he went shooting backwards, and it shot forwards on landing… confidence inspiring :) But he laughed it off… while filming, Si & he both had camcorders out for most of the trip… (promise to figure out how to put video clips on here when I get a chance)

Out of the city…

Over the mountains…

And cloud Forest

And then over the rainforest

And the rivers…

It was really beautifull, Alejandro and Nicolas pointed out all the rivers and the different regions until finally the ‘Broccolli’ below us began to look more like trees as we descended and made a really good landing on the strip in the centre of the town, with a few beeps of the horn to clear the way ;-)

As we turned round and tootled along to the Parking Place / Airport you could feel the heat and humidity enveloping you before we even got out of the plane.

Incredibly, after being awake and travelling for so long… we still woke up at 5am local time! I guess our body clocks are still on UK time, so it seemed more like 10am. So while we waited for Nicolás to come and pick us up, we had some breakfast & decided to do some jagua LOL. Anyway Nicolás and Clareta picked us up and we went out for a lovely lunch where we discussed our travel plans into the rainforest and our itinary for our time there. Nicolas was as tired as us, having landed even later than we did last night, so we enjoyed the rest of the day relaxing with Nicolas, Carleta and some friends… and surprise surprise.. I did some jagua tattoos ;-)

WOW! What an amazing flight we just had, I wish we had the camera out, the sky was amazing. There were columns of clouds like a 3d landscape that we were flying through at sunset, with the most amazing colours all around, it was like being inside a Michel Angelo painting! Wish we had managed to get a picture!!! We took this as a good sign, that our journey would be favourable, and beautiful :)

Alvaro kindly picked us up and took us to our hotel. We flew upstairs for well needed showers and a change of clothes before going out for a meal with Alvaro. Even though we really needed some sleep, and we had seen a bed…! We were really excited to be here at last, since first planning this trip back in Spring. So we went out to eat and get aquainted with Alvaro, had some deliscious local food, in a beautiful open air resaurant, which made a lovely change coming from a cold UK autumn in Manchester! Well, off to bed now for some well needed sleep…

Well we’ve just done a longhaul flight…. Swollen ankles et all. Still had no more sleep and to top it off, we have missed our connection due to the delays in Paris (from the queueing up for shoe xrays!) So here I am in the airport blogging via email via my phone, hoping it’ll get through to my site. Planning to blog from everywhere and then add the piccies when I get home. Hope we get some good pictures! Just managed to get hold of Alvaro who was wondering why we didn’t get off our scheduled flight, he sounded releived that we were ok just delayed. Poor guy, now has to wait even longer for us :( Anyway, we’ve discovered its pretty hard to get a cup of coffee in the departures part of this airport, so I’m dabbling with a can of Coke (memories of being hooked on Coca-Cola flashing up!) but, really need the caffeine and sugar right now! Simons happythough, there is a smoking lounge :), poor Si, he hasn’t had a cigarette in nearly 24 hours :(

Considering we’d only had around 2hrs sleep we were wideawake on the way to the airport! Our flight was due out at 6am, so we made it to Ringway (that’s Manchester Airport for none-locals) by 4am. Naively we thought we’d have time in the airport for those last minute essentials like…. an English/Spanish phrase book LOL. But ofcourse, with all the crazy security measures in place these days we only just made it to the plane on time. The first flight toook us to Paris where we changed planes, again a huge queue and then running all the way for our connection with our shoes in one hand and our permitted ‘tiny bags’ in the other – sheer madness with the whole shoe X-ray malarky LOL. One flight down… 3 to go…