It has been the day of days, for all sorts of reasons.

Lets get this straight. When you come to an area looking for something special that this area specialises in and you don't see it you begin to create all sorts of logical arguments as to how the holiday has been fantastic and the scenery awesome (which it has) but you can throw all that out the window when that something special does appear and you can admit to yourself that your holiday would have been the poorer without it.

So it was with us. On our morning boat trip, our last boat trip, we finally saw our first orangutan in the genuine wild. Perched on tree branch, looking more like tree than ape, we saw it. And then, wonder of wonders it turn out to be a mother with baby. Can't tell you how joyful we felt. Again no chance to break out into a dance as we were still on a boat, but it was brill. We also saw a monitor, a mangrove snake, a couple of impressive crocs and a real bunfight between a dominant male macaque and the whole female membership of his harem. The harem won hands down and drove him into the water. Women power with dirty great big teeth. All photographed by a boatload of tourists. Oh the shame of it all, and he did look remarkably embarrassed.

nd then we left Myne Resort, having changed our itinerary to take in another day in sandakan. It's worth mentioning that the service provided by the staff was probably the best we'd ever experienced.

We arrived in sandakan after a drive that once again reminded us that the most dangerous creature on any continent is the taxi driver, and the next most dangerous is other drivers. Do you close your eyes so you don't see what's happening, or keep them open so you're ready for it?

Our tour guide from myne, the garrulous Remy, met us and had arranged a couple of tours for us. They would provide us with the extremes of holiday travel.

First up he took us to the sandakan crocodile park. I cannot begin to tell you how horrible this was. It was to good holiday experiences as Julian Assange is to secrecy. It was so bad it transcended its own awfulness and became one of those memories you can bring out when everybody needs a good laugh. In fact, no great holiday is probably complete without one of these experiences. Let me provide you with a picture. Imagine a concrete frontage and tacky sign welcoming you. Then imagine one of those horrible old zoos with concrete cells for cages with sad looking animals in them. So not like how we'd ever want too see animals. And then there were the animals. Woo hoo - a goat. Look - pigeons - whoop-di-do. And the ostrich, god help me. He was the mangiest, baldest and oldest looking ostrich I've ever seen. And to cap it all off he only had one eye! Lordie lordie - a bald decrepit, one-eyed ostrich. We certainly hadn't thought we'd see one of those in Borneo!

Surely it couldn't get worse we thought, but we were so wrong. Having toured the blessedly limited number of animals we got to the amusement area, which was definitely a poor choice of name. It took horrid to a new level. There we could be photographed standing next to a stuffed crocodile with boxing gloves, or a crocodile towing a carriage, or even a crocodile driving a boat. Kate flatly refused but our guide was so enthusiastic that I found myself snapped with an array of sad, undignified stuffed crocodiles. To be honest, it wasn't hard to smile, the tricky part was not to laugh.

And then we came to the piece d' resistance - what the crocodile park was famous for - its death defying, terrifying crocodile show, featuring humans taking life-threatening risks with crocodiles!!! Or at least that's what it should have been but nobody told the crocodiles. They tried to confuse one small croc by dragging it through the water backwards so they could wear it on their head but the croc remained far too frisky so they gave that away. Then the reverse happened with the larger croc. They were going to get it out of the pool to lie on top of, but the croc wasn't having a bar of it. We watched three men unsuccessfully trying to convince it, before we gave up and left. The only real sense of tension had been the fact that since everything had cocked up there was a chance one of the people could actually have been eaten.

I should also mention that the crocodile farm not only offended on the visual front, they had taken the aural side to new levels as well. During our entire visit tinny 1970s soundtracks, including such classics as RaRaRasputin, blared out from even tinnier speakers. And when the crocodile wranglers came out they we accompanied by the soundtrack of Bridge Over the River Kwai, complete with gunshots. Considering the history of sandakan lord only knows what possessed them to think that was in good taste. Help me Rhonda.

Oh, and the place stunk too.

One final note on the croc farm. For some time we had been wondering if our chatty guide was in the habit of making things up. As we entered the farm he took us to see the dugong they had in a tank. Imagine our surprise when all we saw was a large fish. In fact it was the same species of fish we'd seen in the amazon last year, an arapaima. Are you sure this is a dugong we asked? Oh yes, it lives in the ocean and feeds on seagrass he assured us. We knew that the arapaima lived in fresh water and wouldn't know what to do with seagrass if it saw it. The dugong-fish episode didn't do our guide's cred any favours. We took a photo and confirmed it later with one we had on the iPad from our amazon trip. They were identical.

After the horror of the croc farm we did go and see the sandakan war memorial, which we would have wandered around in deep contemplation, if our guide, Remy, wasn't chatting to us every step of the way. We had hit Remy overload.

But I must also give Remy his dues. After all, the croc farm was a truly memorable experience and if it hadn't been for Remy we would never have come to sandakan and missed out on what was to follow.

Our new digs were great and right on the border of the sepilok nature reserve. This was to have its own remarkable rewards. As we returned from our excursions what should we see in the jungle behind our chalet other than two wild orangutans! They were incredibly close and happily ignoring us while they ate. We were no longer orangutan repellents.

In fact, things just got better and better. We were picked up for a night walk in the sepilok reserve where we might just see some orangs and giant flying squirrels. This was arranged by Remy and we were the only ones on it. Things started brilliantly when we saw two orangs immediately after we had entered the reserve, but then it went so quiet that the tour guides were reduced to pointing out pretty uninspiring insects, including one stick insect that was so small and insignificant that it was more of a twig insect.

And then, like with the orangs, our luck changed. First we saw a baby python and then, high up in trees we spotted a giant flying squirrel. Woo hoo. I'd have been satisfied then but one of our guides said he was looking for a slow loris (which is a form of sloth like creature, rather than an intellectually challenged individual with an unfortunate Christian name). Oh why did he have to say that? Now the obsession was back again, with hardly a seconds respite. We continued our spotting scoring a pit viper along the way before we reached the buildings at the front of the reserve. There were were treated to two more orangs who had climbed up onto a verandah and had fallen asleep, hugging each other. In one day we had become orangutan magnets!!

Then just before we were at our car one of the tour guides suddenly ran towards a tree. Low and behold, there was a slow loris, in all its glory, and if that wasn't enough, there were three more giant flying squirrels on nearby branches. As the guide said a the end of the walk we were very lucky people. We had seen everything.

One last observation and this comes as we are about to check out from our resort. This morning I had wandered around the gardens of the resort, which borders the jungle. In that short period of time I saw a monitor lizard swimming, long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques (who proved to be real trouble a the resort, damaging lights, ripping up trees and one even took a swipe a Kate), a red leaf monkey, a kingfisher, a helmeted hornbill and squirrels. Add to that the creatures we saw yesterday and you realise that nature holds all the cards when it comes to spotting animals. I mean you do have to be in the right general area, but after that you just have to always keep your eyes open and who knows what, when, or where you'll see things.

Does this mean we didn't need to go to the kinabatangan river and the myne resort? Absolutely not. We had a wonderful time there and, curiously, by seeing all these animals just recently it took the seeing of them at the resort out of the picture and we could just appreciate everything else we had done there.

For a place that hadn't even been on our bucket list four weeks ago, Borneo had given us all we could have hoped for and more besides. And it's kind of cool to know that you're an orangutan magnet.

The penultimate day at the Myne resort and we had plenty of events planned, largely because our night cruise had be moved to the next day. This meant a cruise in the morning, a cruise in the afternoon, a night cruise and a night walk! Nearly enough to keep even me satisfied.

The morning cruise yielded more birds, but frustratingly still no sign of a wild orangutan. We were beginning to wonder if, just as we were hornbill magnets, we may be orangutan repellents.

Now we had a few hours spare in the middle of the day, and that was just irresistible for me. Yesterday I'd been on a forest walk, which was great but you're only supposed to do them accompanied by two resort staff. Presumably to protect you from snakes, rogue elephants and pig-tailed macaques. Well that was never going to apply. Since I'd been on the walk I'd been planning how to sneak back there on my own and figured out a pretty sneaky route. The afternoon would be perfect for it.

I did my runner, clambered to the top of the hill, carrying my trusty macaque whacking stick and was rewarded not just with a view, but also a chance encounter with a gibbon. The ape looked as surprised as I did and after giving each other a good solid stare, he turned tail, or rather didn't, as apes are noticeable bereft on the tail front. Our first freaky-arsed gibbon! (Though I believe the correct, less colourful name is Bornean gibbon).

That afternoon we went on another cruise, again seeing plenty of wildlife but again we were orangutan repellents. I pitied the poor people who shared our boat, except for one obnoxious gent who got exactly what he deserved.

The night cruise though, would pay rewards of a different kind. This was our one and only evening trip and it was brilliant, cruising up and down the river, spotting creatures by torchlight. We didn't score an orangutan, though this was so par for the course that we hardly even noticed. BUT we did see a civet cat. A beautiful creature, clambering among the tree branches. I would have done my civet cat happy dance if I'd had one prepared (and if we weren't on a boat).

Actually we did have the night walk, which was cool, though all it really produced was a couple of leeches. One amusing aspect to the walk - it is resort protocol for one staff member to walk at the front and one at the back of the group. I was second last but the staff member at the rear decided he wanted to chat to the tour guide so he wandered up front and stayed there the whole time. Now I was at the rear and though I'm prone to take my time searching for wildlife I must confess that finding yourself standing in a dark jungle with the others well ahead of you is a remarkably good cure for dawdling.

An awesome day, including a gibbon and a civet, but only tomorrow left to see an orangutan in the wild!

So it's been two full days since the last entry and we have spent this at the Myne Resort. Our program has been a mixture of cruises and walks. I don't think there's much point in giving a blow-by-blow description of exactly what we did. Better to mention the highlights.

First of all, there is the scenery. Whilst I'm pretty much here to spot animals I have to be honest and say that the real experience is cruising down a jungle river on dusk or in the early morning light, the only sound the hum of the motor and the foreign cries of birds and monkeys. This is plain awesome.

Of course, if there weren't animals I'd still be pretty miffed, no matter how much awesome scenery. Fortunately, we've seen plenty. Curiously,this seems to have turned into primate and hornbill bingo. Early on we saw orangutans, pig-tailed and long tailed macaques. We added to this silver langurs, proboscis monkeys and red leaf monkeys. As far as hornbills go, we've now seen 7 of the 8 species, including the rare helmeted hornbill. Now, like a kid collecting football cards I'm desperate to spot the missing hornbill - the wreathed hornbill. I honestly wasn't expecting to be this keen about hornbills. We also saw a couple of cool crocodiles and basking monitor lizards, along with a plethora of other birds and some cute squirrels. There was one squirrel in particular, the least Pygmy squirrel. As you can guess from the name it was tiny, but it moved like greased lightning. The little bugger looked like speedy Gonzales on red cordial. Oh, and I also got dive bombed by bats that were in a large hollow tree my guide took me into. That was pretty cool as well.

Our second trip back to Gomantong Caves is worth a mention. We went there on dusk to see the bats exiting, which they duly did. Apparently around 2 million leave the cave each night. Not a bad effort. Around the cave the hawks and eagles circle trying to catch a meal. This was cool in itself, but we got an added bonus, courtesy of our bingo game. Lo and behold, this was where we saw our one and only red leaf monkeys, followed shortly by a flock of bushy hornbills who turned up in a gregarious mob, landed on a branch and then bunched up like crows on a wire and made plenty of noise. To top it all off, as we were watching this the rare helmeted hornbill flew overhead. And we only went there to see the bats. We are, indeed, hornbill magnets!

Three more memories from the night. The first was driving home in the dark. On a pretty narrow and atrocious road we came across a herd of cows. They blocked the road and coming the other way was a police vehicle. Our driver said the best way to get around them was to stay quite but the police decided otherwise and proceeded to honk their horn and use their siren. It all had a slightly jumped-up-bureaucrat feel about it, and it was with great satisfaction that we watched the frightened cattle relieve their remarkably full bladders at the front of the police car. I guess the police could say they were keeping the piss.

Then there was the night cruise that wasn't. We got out on the river, had just spotted some wildlife when the heavens opened, just like they'd done in the amazon a year ago. I guess that's why they call them rain forests. Though this cut short our cruise it did leave one lasting memory. The glow of the resort lights on the water were transformed by the rain and the whole river took on a beautiful silver sheen. Never seen anything quite like it before.

And the final memory. Our chalet (a strange name for a building so far from snowfields but that's what they call it) is up a hill side. Walking back after the rains I came face-to-face with a herd of wild boar who were sheltering under a chalet down the hill from us. The only thing separating us was a piece of rope. I looked at them and they looked at me and we came to some sort of arrangement where I'd just walk nonchalantly by and both of us would pretend I didn't really exist. Worked a treated and as far as I could tell neither party wet themselves.

Yesterday was remarkable. Long and exhausting but so so rewarding. We began early in Kota Kinabalu, feeling fairly ragged-arsed as we hadn't slept much because we needed to rise at 4.30. Things went to plan though and we caught the flight to sandakan, arriving at around 8 a.m. Where we were picked up by our new tour guide Remy.

Remy took us to the sepilok orangutans sanctuary, which was plain awesome. We saw three orangutans and then two families of macaque monkeys turned up - one lot were long-tailed macaques and the other pig-tailed macaques. The names pretty much tell you how you can tell them apart. It was primate central and the macaques literally wandered through spectators. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that no amount of superlatives can do justice to, so let's just leave it at awesome. We also saw a pretty cool viper too.

Little did we know that the awesomeness would continue almost unrelentlessly., with the exception of a 2 hour car trip through palm oil plantations. At the end of this drive, with Kate and I drifting in and out of sleep (the scenery did get monotonous - like driving through wheat fields), we arrived at the Gomantong Caves. Most people probably wouldn't know these by name but they are famous. They featured on a David Attenborough episode and they are better known as the birds nest caves. Locals come here, climb ridiculously long ladder and collect the nests for soup. The good news is they do this sustainably. The walk into the cave was breathtaking in its beauty. Throw in thousands of birds and nest and thousands of bats and it becomes something else again. To add to the weirdness, the floor of the cave (which you don't have to walk on thank heavens) is covered with cockroaches, spiders and this weird-arse multi-legged critter.

On the way back our guide figured we liked seeing animals so he took us off the beaten track, making our own way through the forest. This was just about as challenging as you could imagine but we did come across a family of pig-tailed macaques. This was cool up until the point the guide indicated they were getting a bit excited and might just attack us. OK. Hasty retreat time, which wasn't necessarily that easy stuck in the middle of the jungle. Still it was brilliant and we made the day of some locals who watched us stagger out of the bush at the other end.

And then we got to our accommodation - the Myne resort. By now it was about 2:30pm and we hadn't eaten since about 5:00am. we were hungry but certainly didn't expect to be sat down to a three course Malay lunch the minute we arrived! We finished our late lunch and were then told that afternoon tea was at 3:30pm. We'd barely put our bags down before we were popped on a river cruise. Talk about squeezing plenty in!!

he area is truly picturesque and cruising the river in the late afternoon was just wonderful. We saw more macaques, some langur monkeys, but the highlight had to be the proboscis monkeys. They travel in large groups of which there are two types; one being the harem group, made up of females with one dominant male, and the other being the bachelor group, made up of young males that roam the forest. These are really colourful creatures and the way they leapt from branch to branch was amazing to see. We also saw a couple of big monitor lizards.

To cap the night off, as we were sitting in the covered area eating dinner a pack of wild boar came out of the woods and we were able to feed them. You know you are in a totally different place when walking back to your room you get dive bombed by small bats chasing insects whilst wild boar are crashing through the bush around you.

It's hard to remember a fuller and richer day. We crashed into bed.

Day 1
Yesterday was the dedicated traveller day. From 8 in the morning until 1.30 at night (which was actually 3.30 if you took into account the time zones) we were either in flight, on the road or wandering around an airport. For 19.5 hours! The flight with Air Asia X was better than we expected. We had booked inflight entertainment which came in the form of a Samsung tablet preloaded with movies. A novel experience especially when the battery started running low just as the end of the movie was approaching. Did the butler do it? We'll never know for sure.

We landed in Kuala Lumpur ahead of schedule but when you're aiming for a connecting flight all this buys you is more time at the airport. Still better than missing a connecting flight. Around 7 hours, an outrageously quick trip through customs (ie there was no one there to check anything) and a taxi ride later we were airborne again to Kota Kinabalu. Before we had taken off though Kate realised we might have an accommodate challenge. She noted that we were booked in at our KK motel for Monday and Tuesday night and though we were arriving on the Monday morning (early at 1.30 am) were we actually covered for Sunday night? Turns out not, though at least the travel company we had booked through did have somebody waiting to collect us. Mind you, you do have to wonder why nobody noticed that though we were getting collected we didn't actually have a roof over our heads. Of course, we were just as guilty of this, though the final booking details hadn't been provided to us until 24 hours before we were flying out.

The good news is that the motel (Novotel) had a spare room so we didn't have to sleep in the foyer.

I guess I should say that a fairly likely source for the booking problem is the way the whole process was contracted and sub-contracted out. We booked through flightcentre, who used their Borneo Agent, Adventure World, to book through Malaysian Trails, who subcontracted that out to Exotic Borneo. Classic Chinese whispers material.

Still, a bed was found and everybody was very helpful. So ended our first night in KK. A handful of hours later, our first day awaited us.

Day 2
So now it looked like we may have booked too many nights in KK and I was on the cusp of trying to juggle flights, accommodation and transfers to sandakan because our itinerary indicated that somewhere along the way our visit to the sepilok orangutan sanctuary had dropped off the radar. This would be classic me. Change everything to try and squeeze something else in.

The good news is that when we did speak to our tour guides later it turned out the sepilok sanctuary was on our itinerary, though not actually written on the one from flightcentre. So now we could relax and enjoy KK, having even more time than we had thought we might.

Because we arrived so late at night we didn't know where we were and it felt like we were out in the boondocks. I asked at reception where the nearest shopping centre was and the the women who was serving me actually laughed. It turns out that our hotel is right at the front of the 1Borneo hypermall, presumably just about the biggest shopping centre on all of Borneo! We just hadn't happen to notice that in the dark and in the wee hours.

Anyway, we shopped there and then caught a free bus into the city and did even more shopping there. Well worth the experience and the bus trip was an eye opener too. The challenges of how some people live!

It can be quite entertaining reading business names that just don't come across well in English. My favourite so far was the Yung Fat Scrap Yard. At last a solution to childhood obesity - just stick it on the scrap heap.

This evening we booked into a cultural tour. It involved visiting a village that had preserved the traditions and bulildings of the 5 different people's that originally settled in Borneo. Though this had the potential to appear quite plastic and fake it was all done so well and at the staff involved seemed to simply enjoy participating so much that it totally delivered. We jumped on traditional trampolines (lol - I jumped highest, though I seemed to be the only one who listened to what they told us to do), wore traditional garb, blew blow darts (I even managed to hit the target first dart) and Kate got an awesome henna tattoo.

Just brilliant.

That's it.  Brazilian airlines are officially mad.  We were informed recently via email from our travel agent that our direct flight from Menaus to Salvador had to go through Brazilia.  No not Brazilia!!!!! The lat time we flew into Brazilia we were bumped to a later flight because we'd miss our connecting flight only to discover, too late, that the plane we were on was the connecting flight.  Images came to mind of Monty Python's Travelogue, run as a prelude to the Holy Grail at the cinemas.  "and now we have more f*cking Brazilia."

And the airlines have not disappointed.  Our initial flight out of Manaus was over an hour late in departing, which meant our connection in Brazilia to Salvador would be tight.  This was an issue for many people on the plane.  Finally, we arrived at Brazilia, only to discover we would have to be bussed to the terminal, making the connection even tighter.  We all piled onto the bus and then had a ridiculously short ride to the terminal.  A quick glance at the board showed us that are connecting flight to Salavador was in the "Last Call" stage, so we scurried to the gate indicated, fortunately nearby.

Minutes later we were clambering on board another bus.  There followed a ridiculously short bus trip and then, to our growing suspicion, we were dropped of t a plane that looked surprisingly like the one we had just got off.  Sure enough, the plane staff that greeted us were the same ones that had said goodbye to us 5 minutes ago!!  That's right we had been madly rushed off the plane only to be madly rushed back on to the same plane!  Auuughhhh.  We were the connecting flight!!!! The final element of madness - we were seated next to a lady who had also been through the same rig morale with her husband.  In the insane plane change her husband had been seated 4 rows back and proceeded to spend the entire trip next to two noisy children.

Ah Brazilia airport, a must for all international travellers.

On the plus side our travelling companion, Marion, was great company and had an interesting occupation - singing for the Welsh National Opera.

And so, onto Salvador.  We took a full day tour, again with an English speaking guide, and it was really the only way to go if you have little time and only the most rudimentary use of the language.  Salvador would probably be one of the more challenging venues unaccompanied as it is the one city where people do accost you to buy tourist items.  Having a guide made it much easier to negotiate,though after a while you did learn to chill out and just say Ola and No Obrigato with a smile.

Salvador is incredible. The historic centre is probably the most impressive we saw outside of Ouro Preto.  As a added bonus we got to see the steps of a church that featured prominently and one of the great Brazilian films - Keeper of Promises.  This was unexpected and surprisingly moving.  In the afternoon our tour took a more confronting turn as we ventured into the parts of Salvador that aren't on normal tours.  We got to see all sides of the Salvador that Salvadorians are familiar with.  It was both sobering and quite beautiful.  We simply do not realise how lucky we are in Australia, though there is plenty we could learn from Brazilians on tolerance and what is really important in life.

Ate mais tarde.

The next stage of our journey was to an Eco lodge on the Rio Negro, but first we were to spend a night in Manaus, the port our cruise had returned us to. Our entry into Manaus had one amusing moment. We disembarked from the cruise at a hotel foyer, and sat waiting for our luggage, with some friends we had made of the cruise. We waited and waited. Eventually Adam (new friend) and I went to find out what they delay was about. It turned out the luggage had been loaded on to a truck but the vehicle had to pass through one security barrier and the guard on the gate had gone to lunch and taken the key with him. So, there was the truck, stuck. In the end we simply took our own bags back to the hotel. This was further and took longer than if we had simply taken them straight off the boat ourselves, as we'd originally offered to do.

Manaus is a largely uninspiring city so we won't dwell on it for any length of time, other than to note what a strange amalgam of buildings and living conditions it was. In Australia we tend to have differences from suburb to suburb but in Manaus you could go from high walled, barb-wired, security-guarded properties to derelict buildings in a block. Similarly, apartment buildings were being erected, right next to tower blocks that appeared abandoned and about to fall down. And everywhere buildings were covered in different stages of mold, a condition of living in a hot and humid climate.

The next morning we made the trip across a 3.5 km bridge (only opened 7 months ago, prior to this is was ferries only) and heading into the wilderness to the Anavilhanas Lodge.

The lodge is fantastic, melding comfort with nature. We could easily have spent more time here, but, in typical fashion, we packed in plenty. We had an awesome guide, Krishna, who came from native and Guyanan Indian (actually India Indian) heritage. One of a family of 17, he was fascinating in his own right, but what he knew about the forest just blew us away.

Our first excursion with him was a full-on Amazon experience. We headed off on a jungle walk, where he introduced us to some jungle survival tips. Plants to drink from, what ants you can use for natural insect repellant etc. This was going swimmingly, until he looked up at the sky and said 'Uh oh'. Uh oh, is not something you like to hear an experienced indigenous tour guide saying. He followed this up with another phrase guaranteed to generate some concern. 'Dark sky now, this is not good. There's a storm coming.'

Of course he was right. The clouds were scudding across the sky and the trees were bending before a wind that had come out of nowhere. And still the good news kept on coming from Krishna. 'We must keep moving,' he said. 'It's not safe in the jungle - tree branches can fall.' This was readily and disturbingly easily confirmed when he pointed to all the fallen timber and, perhaps a tad melodramatically, a branch fell to the ground nearby.

Needless to say we followed hot on Krishna footsteps and made good time, but all to no avail. The storm caught us and the rain simply fell out of the sky in sheets. I do not recall ever having been more drenched. In the end we were laughing, especially as we had to finish with a boat trip across a waterway that had been so whipped up by the storm that it felt like we were out a sea, and we couldn't see more than a few metres ahead of us, courtesy of the torrential rain.

That was our welcome to this part of the world, and despite being drenched to the skin it was a pretty impressive way to start. That night we headed out on another boat trip, animal spotting. We were able to add a four-eyed opossum (cruel name, probably got him bullied at school) and a tree boa.

The next day featured a morning fishing trip (unsuccessful but fun) and then one of the highlights of the trip, a visit to a place where the pink dolphins came to shore for feeding. This was amazing. I got close enough to pat one. The pink dolphins are the strangest looking creatures, pink, long-beaked, with prominent foreheads, but seriously intelligent and friendly. It was quite brilliant. On the way home we added an iguana to the list of creatures seen.

That night we snuck ourselves onto another boat cruise and had a great trip. We saw a different kind of possum, a new snake ( garden boa) and a porcupine. The weather was wild at times but beautiful and the moon rose over the river as we returned.

The final leg of our Amazon encounter was an early morning boat trip to watch the sun rise.

There remains only one further observation to be made, pertaining to the difference between individuals and tour groups. We had met some wonderful American travellers. Dana and Adam on the clipper cruise, Art at the lodge. But while we were at the lodge a tour group of Americans descended, and it truly did feel like an invasion. En masse all the stereotypes bubbled to the surface. Perhaps it's only the loud people you notice in a group and they all seemed to be talking about the share market dropping 200 points, litigation, the use of leases to diversify their fund and there was the occasional yee har. Our own American, Art, seemed to blend into the woodwork (having made his own wry observation on American tourists) and Kate and I tried to be inconspicuous. During their very brief stay, even shorter than ours, some of them arranged to fly out rather than taking the three hour bus trip back. As one person observed, loudly and in front of Lodge workers on probably fairly ordinary salaries (we've been told the average Brazilian salary is around $100/week), it was only going to cost him $1,200 to fly, which was less than the cost of attending one Lakers match. Lording, lordie, lordie, such sensitivity.

There was an amusing moment when one of the group couldn't find his table. The Lodge used a system where your room had an animal on its door and on the key ring and you sat wherever a wooden model of the animal was set up. Ours was a monkey. At dinner one gentleman was clearly lost and I offered to help him. He held up his key and said 'I can't find the beaver. I'm not good at animals.' i told him, in friendly fashion, that was an agouti and showed him where I thought his seat was. He certainly wasn't that good at animals, not only did he have no idea about the Brazilian animals, he didn't know his own. His 'beaver' didn't even have a tail, surely the one feature that would have to be mandatory in calling an animal a beaver.

Having said all of that, he was a nice enough fellow, as were many of the people in the tour group (there were clearly some tossers as well). Curious how groups tend to bring out other less appealing stereotypes.

We survived the drive from Ouro Preto th next morning, though it was just as terrifying as before. More so really, because much of I took place in the fog. By the time we arrived at the airport Kate was feeling unwell and was off her food for some time.

Nonetheless we made it. A word on Brazilian airports. You never really know what is going to happen with you flights. Our flights back to Sydney had to be dramatically changed because they had cancelled one of our flights. We've had numerous miner flight changes (at least four that I can think of) as well as being put onto a later flight that we didn't need to have taken. You also need to keep an eye on the gate you flight is leaving from. We almost missed a flight out of Brazilia because they boarded it from a different gate from the one they announced. This time the problem lay with the fact that a whole series of flights were running late and they started changing the gates around. This meant that nobody in the airport seemed sure if they were getting on the right flight as the wording about the gates seemed to change regularly. I can't tell how wonderful the experience is to be sitting in an airport, not speaking the language, watching flights drop into and out of existence, not certain which gate to take, comfortable in the knowledge that if you get it wrong you could find yourself on a flight to the opposite end of a very large country. In the end, with some concern that we may be getting on to a plane to god knows where, we managed to make it to Manaus, launching point for our Amazon leg.

We saw little of the city itself as we were whisked off to our first Amazon adventure, a three day river cruise. The boat we were on, the Amazon Clipper, was fantastic. It looked like an old paddle wheel steamer, without the paddle, a d had a wonderful crew. By good luck the boat, which was designed to take 20 people, only had 8 on board, so we had plenty of room to move, though not necessarily in the cabins, where swinging a mouse would have been out of the question.

We had brilliant weather the whole time, which extended to full moons on both nights, on a cloudless sky. Our rout took us up the rio sollimoines, which is the Brazilian name for the amazon before it joins with the Rio Negro.

This would prove to be the part of our holidays here we would take a ridiculous number of photos. It was just gunning scenery. That night we went on a small motorised boat trip into the jungle waterways, getting to handle a wild caiman along the way.

The next day we went out on early on a morning trip in the same small boat. Again the light was fantastic and we saw a ridiculous umber of sloths, doing what they do best - nothing. We also saw the first of our pink river dolphins.

Later that morning we went for a jungle walk. Now our guide informed us of how dangerous walking through the jungle was and to progress slowly and follow the guides instructions. This we did, but it all sounded a little Hollywood and melodramatic, until we got attacked by a swarm of bees, followed minutes later when we had to detour around a deadly snake, a bushmaster, curled up on the path, almost invisible in the leaf litter. We didn't st s foot out of place after that.

After lunch we were encouraged to take a swim in the river. The staff assured us that it would be ok. Sue, there were piranha around but as long as you didn't start bleeding you'd be fine. And, of course, we we told, the stories about the fish attacking people are exaggerated. At this point I might add that our guide at Iguassu had told us some horror stories of the piranha. You could tell that everybody felt the same way, but in the end three of us went in, though, by sheer coincidence, no doubt, none of us swam more than spitting distance from the boat and only spent a few minutes in the warm water.

It was to prove a remarkably full day and in the late afternoon we headed out to catch piranha. This was a heap of fun, though hardly sting endorsement for swimming in these waters. We went home with plenty of fish.

The next morning, the last on our cruise, featured a wonderful early morning boat trip to see a water lily lake, as well as dropping in on a floating market, where we also got to see some of the huge fish that live on the Amazon, swimming around in a large tank.

On the way back to port we went to the meeting of the two rivers - the Samoias and the Negro. This is a remarkable sight. The Semoias is muddy, fast flowing and runs at 22 degrees C. The Negro is clear, though dark tea coloured, slower and is up around 28 degrees C. as a consequence, when they meet they don't merge for many kilometres. This creates a bizarre visible boundary on the river. On the left, it is muddy brown, on the right, quite black. This was the start of the Amazon River.

Every trip has one of those days. They start out no different from any other day and then they transform into something far less pleasant. We refer to these as a Glenorchy day, courtesy of a challenging day our family had in New Zealand many years ago.

Perhaps the mad ornithologist experience from the night before could have been some kind of warning, but Glenorchy days always take you by surprise.

We were picked up at the pousada at 7.30 am, for an 11.30 flight. Two hours drive later we had reached the airport, as planned, but then things started to unravel. We were catching a flight from Campo Grande to Brasilia and then a connecting flight to Belo Horizonte. Now, our first flight was delayed by around 20 minutes, and this meant that the timeframe between the connecting flight was too tight. So, the airline put us on to a two hour later flight out of Belo Horizonte. Oh well, better than missing the connection.

So, at around 12 noon we took off and arrived at Brazilia around 2.30. Now, as we were disembarking the pilot announced that those going on to Belo Horizonte could remain on the plane. What? A few other passengers also looked bemused. As we entered the airport we could see a queue of people waiting to get on to our plane. The sign above the gate said the destination was Belo Horizonte. What !!! The plane we had left Campe Grande on WAS the connecting flight. It didn't matter how late our first flight had been it could never miss the connection. But it was all too late. Our seats had been sold and our luggage booked onto the next flight, so we got to experience the joys of Brazilia airport for two unexpected hours. A number of other people were in the same boat, which made it a little easier to bear. Misery does love company.

Finally we got on board and arrived at Belo Horizonte at 8 p.m. More than 12 hours of travelling, but it hadn't finished yet. We were met at their airport by our guide, Jose and the driver. We found out we had a two hour drive ahead of us, which was bad enough, but it was the nature of the drive that would really take the breath away.

Despite his mild exterior our driver was a maniac and I struggle to recall a more hair raising car trip. Speed limits were ignored, as we're yellow lines. We weaved in and out of traffic, all done in darkness. Kate held my hand tightly for most of the trip and we practiced a fair amount of rapid, shallow breathing. The drive actually became quite surreal, with the most absurd moment occurring when we had to brake to a halt on a busy city street for a family of capybara to cross the road. That's right - capybara. The animals we had scoured the Pantanal for, seen in numbers in the middle of the city. Kind of ironic.

Somehow or other we survived and arrived at Ouro Preto at 10 pm. But the day held one more twist for us. Ouro Preto may be best known for its amazing historic buildings but what we didn't know was that it is also a student town. We had arrived in the city on Saturday night, and it was party time. The streets were crawling with intoxicated students and the one night we really would have appreciated some quiet (we'd been travelling for 15 hours) was not to be. Our accommodation was in a wonderful historic hotel, that had no soundproofing at all. It felt like the party was going off in our backyard, accompanied by loud bursts of music and people roaring around on motorbikes with noisy motors. This went on until around 6 am.

The final twist of the knife - the next morning was Sunday, and the church bells began ringing loudly from 7.30. Fortunately, we'd been woken up even early by a bird tapping on our window chasing insects. Glenorchy had arrived with a vengeance. 

All I can say is that, despite the less than joyful trip, it was actually worth it. Ouro Preto is a remarkable city. A unesco world heritage site, the city is an incredibly well preserved example of 19th century architecture. The streets are outrageously cobbled, steep and narrow. The churches have that classically overembellished interiors and the whole town just exudes vitality. I should be on everybody's tour destinations in brazil. We were fortunate to have an excellent guide who took us on a six hour walking tour.

Now all we had to do was survive the car trip back.