Dear Friends,

As always, I hope this letter finds you well. Another month gone, meaning I’ve been here nine months now! But the end is near, my replacement has arrived and is in training. I go on Holiday to Cusco in five days, to see Machu Picchu, for two weeks and then I only have a month left before my travels begin.

As my leaving date approaches, and my replacement has arrived, I have already done some things for the last time. Such as the dolphin trip and visiting the Maloca Kukama tribe. My last dolphin trip was beautiful. Up before sunrise, but we saw so many grey and Endangered pink dolphins. The pink ones were jumping in front of and swimming alongside the boat, with the grey ones playing, jumping and twisting right out the water! It was a perfect way to say goodbye to the Amazon river.

My last trip to the tribe was unexpectedly emotional. It hit me about half way through that I’d never see them again. The chief did a little speech, thanking me and saying they were going to miss me, I welled up, then everyone hugged me. It was so sweet, I was gifted two bracelets, one by the chief, and a little girl asked me to choose a necklace from her family’s stall and she blessed it for me so I would have safe travels. The group I was escorting all got their hair braided and we were all offered grilled “maduro”, which is a delicious sweet plantain. They’re such a wonderful family, and I will miss visiting them a lot.

Something I discovered at the tribe is “love fruit”, a smooth yellow and green fruit that has a bit of a non-descript flavour but the juice is incredibly sticky. It’s called love fruit (fruta de amor) because if you and your partner ate it and then kissed, your lips would stick together.

While on the topic of fruit, I made my own camu camu juice last week! You may remember me mentioning camu camu before, as it’s delicious, full of vitamin C and only available in the Amazon, growing on the edge of the river with its seeds spread by cat fish. Well, I was showing my replacement around Belen Market (the wildlife trade hotspot) and decided to finally buy some fresh camu camu fruit to try. The small red fruits are similar looking to grapes, with a pale inside with big seeds in the middle. They’re incredibly sour if eaten “raw” but it’s very easy to make into juice. I simply took the seeds out and blended the fruit with some sugar and water and voilà… The signature pink coloured juice (which comes from the skin colour).

Apart from making my own juice, I haven’t really been up to much outside of work as I’ve just been too tired. However, I did organise a “pub quiz” last Sunday for the staff.

Of course, there always has to be a story about driving in Iquitos. It was my replacement’s turn to drive for the first time in the city, and understandably nerves and stress played quite a big part. I gave as many tips as I could and tried to remain calm as a passenger. But it took me back to my first to my first time driving in the city and how exhausting it was for the first few months, trying to watch vehicles, the million tuk tuks, people, dogs, traffic lights, potholes and all other manners of surprises that Iquitos can throw at you. Obviously, after a while it becomes like second nature and now I feel like a local, especially when I caught a mosquito in my right hand while steering with my left (I felt like a ninja). But this months funny driving anecdote starts four months ago, when one of the cars windscreen wipers stopped working. Typical, when driving an hour to the city to get it fixed, it chucks it down with rain, so I had to keep stopping to wipe the windscreen manually and at one point visibility was so bad I just had to stop and wait. Well a month later, they break again… Fast forward three months and the car is finally ready to pick up from the garage. I say ready… But I got to the garage to pick it up after three months of it being there and them being aware I was collecting it that day, and it still didn’t have any windscreen wipers! So the mechanic quickly attaches some and me and the two new volunteers I collected go on our merry way back to the center. It starts raining and about 40 minutes into the journey, only 3km out of the city, the windscreen wipers start playing up and getting caught in each other and then stop working completely, and while attempting to fiddle with them, one falls off… I decide the safest thing to do is drive the 40 minutes back to the garage rather than the 50 minute journey to the center in the pouring rain. So I’m back to stopping the car every 5 minutes to manually wipe the windscreen so I can see where I’m going and to avoid running over a fire juggler in the middle of the road… Until I have the genius idea of sticking my arm out the car window with the broken wiper and manually wiping the windscreen as I drive… It was like something out of a sitcom, and nobody in Iquitos even batted an eyelid, because shit like that is just normal here 😂

Moving smoothly on from windscreen wipers and rain, it’s now supposedly the start of dry season. However, it hasn’t stopped raining for weeks and we actually had a cold spell (24C) where we were all huddled up in hoodies and using double blankets at night! The cold showers were not pleasant. But I thought this would be a good chance to show you the difference in the water level of the Amazon from when I arrived in September (peak dry season) to now.

Lastly, I have some news for my return. I will be back in the UK 17th September 2024 and I have just accepted a job back with the National Trust, in Cornwall! So from the end of September I will be moving down to work at Lizard point and Penrose as the new Visitor Experience Officer until October 2025. It’s a 4 day a week post, which after being here, I think I need… Ease myself back into normal society. I’m looking forward to being on the coast and having a more chilled out year to come. I am also looking forward to starting my Connect with Nature @rewildyoursenses business back up, running nature mindfulness sessions on my extra day off a week. I still may be at the furthest point away from you all in the UK, but at least I’ll be in the same country! Untill my next letter, where I will be telling you all about my two weeks in Cusco and Manu national park where I’m hoping to see lots of wildlife!

As always, I miss you all.

Lots of love,

Joss xxx