Rainforest - Day Six

The morning of the last day arrived. I’d arranged with Marlene to go back to the canopy platform to see dawn so I had yet another ridiculously early morning. As we walked up the stairs it got lighter and lighter. It really made you realise how much light is blocked by the trees – on the forest floor we needed torches yet just 10 metres up they were superfluous. It’d difficult to take photos that do justice to the height of the tree but this one, looking down from the top, is probably the best I got.


We had breakfast then went on the boat for the final time.


We got to the landing strip and the plane was on time.

We took off and flew over the forest, back the way we came. We could see the river and road we’d spent two and a half days travelling down. In under an hour we undid all the travelling and arrived back in Cusco.

The plane was unpressurised and although the captain said he might drop the oxygen masks, they never materialised. The air was so thin and I found myself gasping at times. By the time we reached Cusco I’d already got altitude sickness and spent most of the afternoon in bed at my hostel.

I’d had an amazing time in the rainforest. I didn’t want to leave and before I’d left I was already planning to return – I’m going to go back for my 30th birthday!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sexism vs cultural imperialism

Image
As I was getting ready for bed last night a friend shared a tweet that immediately caught my attention. https://twitter.com/sbattrawden/status/1143465003409915905 The tweet was of a paper that has just been published online, titled "Does physician gender have a significant impact on first-pass success rate of emergency endotracheal intubation?" and showed the abstract which began, It is unknown whether female physicians can perform equivalently to male physicians with respect to emergency procedures. Understandably, this got the backs up of a lot of people, myself included. Who on earth thinks that's a valid question to be researching in this day and age? Are we really still having to battle assumptions of female inferiority when it comes to things like this? Who on earth gave this ethics approval, let alone got it though peer review? I then took a deep breath and asked myself why a respected journal, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine , would publish
Read more

The remarkable tree lobster

Image
I can’t remember the first time I heard about the Lord Howe Island stick insect, and I can’t say my interest has been much more than in passing. They would pique my interest when I saw them in the news, only to fade back into the vast and ever growing pile of ‘oh, interesting’. Then, at the beginning of November, I actually got to come face to face with one of these creatures and it was so incredible I decided to find out more. This is what I’ve learned… Lord Howe Island stick insects are - I’m sure you’ll be surprised to learn - found on Lord Howe Island. This is a small crescent-shaped island in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. I didn’t realise until researching this piece that the island is actually inhabited. It has a population of 382 people according to the 2011 census . The Lord Howe Island stick insect ( Dryococelus australis ), or LHISI as it’s known to friends, was first described by Xavier Montrouzier in 1855 from specimens collected by the HMS Hera
Read more

Gutting the DSA with dodgy statistics

A couple of days ago the Rt Hon. David Willetts MP (Minister for Universities and Science) announced his changes to the Disabled Students’ Allowance. The DSA is a grant given to disabled students to help cover costs that arise as a direct result of their disability. It's an excellent scheme and for many it can, and has, make the difference between success and failure. These 'changes', more accurately termed 'cuts', are far-reaching and devastating. 
Read more