By Hannah Thomas

Got up at 5.30am for a terrestrial transect, I was woken by Jack and James next door singing! Our Peruvian guides were Manuel and Franco, and Dot came with James and I. It was so beautiful, and just like I imagined rainforest to be before I came here – up until now it’s almost felt like a remote part of England, but with the hanging vines, tall towering trees and green canopy with light filtering through it felt just like a David Attenborough documentary, especially when we saw the group of 65+ squirrel monkeys. Also saw bats sheltering in a tree, and the cutest family of racoony-type things called coati. Overall our transect was really successful – we say an estimated 160+ monkeys in total, including capuchin, tamarin, red howler and woolly monkeys. We also saw a ‘jungle chicken' (!), small snake, two types of squirrel, tapir tracks, jaguar scratching posts and lots of birds. At one point Franco and Manuel cut a vine down, which contained about 5 litres of pure fresh drinking water! They were really enthusiastic, and enjoyed showing us the animals when they spotted them as well as all the most exotic trees and plants.

Manuel asked me today what England is like, and what kind of monkeys we have! It’s so hard to describe! I said we have no monkeys, less trees and more roads and people, though to be honest I’m not sure that paints much of a picture for him.

We’re back from the transect now, and Als and John are drinking too much coffee and playing Irish snap. I might go and join in – it sounds fun as I can hear them from downstairs!