We woke up to find our canoa gone, abducted while we slept by the river that also nearly got our tents. With the whole group crossing our fingers, Jhon and Andres swam downstream and found the canoa a couple of bends further down, lodged in the river-bank. Phew! After the heroic rescue, Andres and Angel headed back to the Hoarani camp to borrow some dry firewood. We were soon served a hot breakfast, better than most we´ve had on our trip so far.

In between doing other jungle-things, Andres and Angel were fishing, and caught several catfish that were to be our lunch. The rest of us canoed / hiked to a nearby lagoon to try our luck at Piranha fishing. Armed with homemade fishing rods and raw beef as bait we spent over an hour perched on a log in the middle of the lake, waiting... Whenever a hook got stuck, Jhon would dive in and dislodge them while various horror-movie scenarios played in the minds of Silje, Max and I. We all knew that the "school of piranhas eats person in 30 seconds" scenario is nothing but a big scare, but it was nice to get proof ;-) Although we could feel the fish happily nibble on the meat, none of us caught anything. After much waiting and a light snack of live ants (lemon taste, like a really sour candy) we returned to camp empty handed and hot as hell.

Though we´d rather be eating piranha, the fresh catfish was delicious. After a quick rest we packed up and travelled another couple of hours downriver to our next camp, this one on a hill above the river safely away from the water. It was not an established campground... The boys spent quite some time chopping wildly with their machetes to clear away shrubs, branches and lianas and to cut a path so we could have private jungle toilet facilities - a jungle john if you will. Our guide calls himself Jungle Jhon, and wasn´t too pleased with the implications of his name...

Setting up camp went a lot quicker this time, party because we had places to go... Intent on catching some piranhas, we set out on the river once again and cast our lines at a "guaranteed" fishing spot where two rivers merged. Nothing... I was starting to seriously doubt the existence of the piranha!

After another delicious dinner that included fish soup, we spent the evening playing cards and adding to our jungle jewellery collection. Jhon carved us each a dolphin out of palm nut, and made them into necklaces. I decided to try my hand at carving the next day if we could find another palm nut. Surely i can´t be that hard?? ;-)

The highlight of the evening came in form of a glowing insect, which Jhon caught as it flew through our camp. It was amazing to watch the extremely strong light coming out of the 3cm-long insect´s eyes, like two little flashlights, unlike anything I´ve seen before. The poor thing found itself the object of a lot of attention as we all curiously flocked around it and Max snapped numerous photos with his high-speed film / high-tech camera :-)

No scary insects to report :-)