By Jack Pitts

Woke up at 5.30am (really!) for a shower. Bejesus it was cold! The ordeal was over in 10 minutes – too long for some! “you take ages in the shower!” I heard from a distant corner of the boat. Noticed that my clothes wash bag is getting a tad full – hopefully there’ll be a chance to do some washing later?!

9.25am
Just returned from an hour long jungle trek, which included a handy exercise in compass reading and pacing. My pacing of 15 paces over 25 metres seemed to suit my pretty lengthy legs! The exercise involved using our pacings to walk 25m along a bearing and attaching a marker to the nearest tree (not difficult in the jungle!). A second party would then use their pacings to find the marker. The biggest ants I have ever seen, along with macaws, insects of numerous varieties and the dense jungle foliage/vegetation were particular highlights.

12.15pm
Just had a science briefing. Had a chat with ‘Outdoors Andy’ who was enthusiastic to hear about my plan to map our expedition rate as part of my small project.

12.30pm
The Lobo arrived (our other boat - it’s been catching us up since we were speedboated out to our boat yesterday)! With the Lobo came the group kit and the members of Wild and Caiman fires. A quick tour of each others’ boats later and the Lobo was all set to push us up river (as our boat has no engine!) to our final location. A small matter of 2 days travel.

4-5pm
Just had a comms talk, which included the use of a Garmin eTrex GPS - an old uni friend! Later on we went through UHF radio and VHF radio, walkie talkies and the EPIRB emergency beacon.

7-10pm
PARTY! Britney and Aaron played guitar, everyone sang and WE HAD HOT CHOCOLATE! Nice :)