6.30pm, Friday June 12, forest camp ....freshly showered

We arrived at camp about a half an hour ago. I went immediately to shower in hopes of relieving my mango-swollen eyes. So far it is just my eyes that are affected. The camp is a tin-roofed, concrete platform with plastic tablecloth-covered tables and 19 hammocks with mosquito nets accompanied by wooden bench-tables set perpendicularly. The toilet and shower facilities are in a separate building.

I have come from a beautiful day on the Carrao and Churum rivers, boating to see Angel Falls. It was a long boat ride, 80 kms - fourish hours - with rainforest on both banks.

It rained last night so the river was very high. As we boated through the landscape of forest and tepui, (there are 700kms of tepui) I counted 14 waterfalls streaming down the faces of one tepui in the distance. Along the river there is pink sand. I noticed small-needled orange cone-like flowers on trees in the forest, as well as pink and white acacias in flower, and a bush with tiny red two-petalled flowers. May is orchid season.

Today I have travelled with a lovely group of people: a 44-year-oldTrinidadian financial services manager and his smiley Venezuelan wife; two male students from Barcelona, one Venezuelan and studying economics, the other studying journalism; the Venezuelan student's mother; and two other older women, one with her son, who carries big bags of cashews. I think the students are a couple. One of the boys, the darker, broader, shorter one, is very cute and giggly. English is the national language of Trinidad, so throughout the day I talked to the tall Trinidadian husband. At first it seemed as if the group wasn't going to talk much to me, but after my initial conversations with the Trinidadian who prefers speaking English, and as my eye began to look worse and worse, and as we were sharing a meal together, the others began opening up. The sparkly young wife and the two boys shared stories and the older women, who didn't speak much English, talked about me.

We were served lunch on the boat: two cheese and tomato sandwiches, cookies, two hard candies. It was difficult to keep my garbage from blowing into the river. Dinner at camp was yellow rice, omelette, coleslaw and pineapple. The coleslaw made by these cooks is very mayonaissey, rich and delicious.

The happy Venezuelan group was celebrating the birthday of one the older women, so they brought cake and whiskey to the camp, which they generously shared with me. I could only drink the whiskey when poured into coffee.