It’s second year of university and, as is usually the case, I am up at 2am working. Only on this particular night, I am applying to internships as opposed to cracking on with problem sheets. Last Summer, I wasted two months doing literally nothing, to mum’s displease, then got a job in a warehouse in Crawley working 7am-4pm five days a week. This early start was accompanied by an even earlier commute on the 6am train, followed by a half an hour walk through Crawley’s industrial estate, with many perilous roundabout crossings along the way. This is until I found a coworker also living in Horsham who had a car. I did not love the warehouse. This Summer, I intend to do something different and ideally, with better pay. The ‘mathematics noticeboard’ is the ideal email chain to subscribe to in order to learn what is out there for a maths man such as myself. Throughout the night, I apply to about four or five Summer internships, from data analysis to Goldman Sachs. At 4am, as I am gearing up for bed, and about three glasses of red wine deep, I happen across an email advertising volunteering positions at a charity in the Amazon rainforest in July and August. This won’t solve my financial problems, but it will save me from wallowing in a state of self-pity at home all Summer, to mum’s joy I am sure. I fill out the form and head to bed.

A few days have passed and I have heard nothing from the banks. To be fair, I am aware that they’re quite busy preparing for the possible outcome that Britain may vote to leave the EU this Summer. Still, as if that’ll actually happen. It can’t be as important as reviewing my applications. Anyway, I check my emails and see a message inviting me to interview for the Amazon gig. It’s a fairly informal interview. There isn’t much skill required. I just need to prove myself not to be a volatile maniac and that I am someone who can be trusted with a jaguar. I tell myself before the interview that any animal mentioned that I have not heard of is probably a big cat. This works a treat and I learn was a puma is shortly after the chat, with the aid of a quick Google session. A few days later, I am told that I can participate and with the heavy encouragement of mum, who is showing a concerning lack of fear for her son, I accept. A week after this, Goldman Sachs does in fact offer me an interview, which I decline with the reason that I am going to the jungle instead. They do not get back to me after this.

It is now 23rd June 2016. I have explored the local charity shops, searching for clothes that can be battered and destroyed without any remorse. Mum has also led me into Boots, stocking me up on every over-the-counter drug imaginable, most of which treat ailments I have never heard of, should I not be able to visit a pharmacy over the next two months. Finally, I visit the Bureau de Change to trade my GBP into USD. This is quite terrible timing given that the Pound tanked today (Google the date), foreshadowing the next eight years of Conservative leadership. Then, just a couple of days later, I am off, embarking on over 24 hours worth of solid plane travel. This is when my nine year hatred of Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas airport begins.

In the early hours of a late June day, my plane lands in La Paz, Bolivia and I am greeted by my team leader for the weeks ahead, Karen, and my now good friend Sam. We hop in a taxi to the city (taxis are affordable in Bolivia) and Sam and I independently notice that in the Southern Hemisphere the moon is on its side, but don’t have the confidence to say anything in the new company we are in. We arrive at our hostel and rest up for the antics ahead.

What follows is the adventure of a lifetime. We are joined by our other team members: Hannah, Ellie, Charlie and Sampsa and spend two weeks in Parque Machia, building a home for Balu the bear and getting to know the wonderful founder of CIWY, Nena. We then enjoy a few days in Santa Cruz, unwinding and embracing civilisation again, before heading to charity’s second park, Ambue Ari. Here, I work with red howler monkeys in the morning and Ru the jaguar in the afternoon. We spend our Friday nights at the ‘pub’ – a hut several kilometres away from any animals run by the staff and serving up cheap wine, and our Saturdays hitchhiking into Ascensión de Guarayos and chilling by the laguna. The time to leave this wonderful place arrives too soon, but the antics that come next are equally memorable, as Sam and I, with our new team of Flo, Alice, Hoho and Matty, cycle down Death Road, whitewater raft in the Andes, kayak from island to island in Lake Titicaca and hike into Machu Picchu.

I return home on 27th August 2016 and land at Heathrow to be greeted by mum and Tony, with mum, having not seen me in two months, laying her infamous line, “God, you stink” and refusing to hug me until I have cleaned myself with wet wipes. In my defence, I have endured 29 hours in hot, cramped planes and even hotter airports. I take the train home (mum and Tony weren’t actually there to pick me up – they just happen to have a party they were going to nearby) and Rosie takes me out for dinner at our cheap and cheerful (and also slightly shit) local.

Leaving Ambue Ari left me with an itch that I couldn’t quite scratch. The one month that I had spent there just didn’t feel like enough. I missed my monkey pals. Ru and I had really started to bond (his mood had improved drastically once he came off of his diet in the last week). The volunteers in the park were an amazing team and I loved getting to know all of these people from all across the world. I knew that I had to go back. I had two years of degree to complete and then I’d take a year off before starting whatever came next. This plan was more or less playing out well until February 2019, when I was offered a PhD starting in the April. With the search for a PhD having thus far been a struggle, and with the delusional idea of wanting a career in academia keeping me company, I accepted my four year sentence (pardon me, I mean position).

I am a believer that the universe will guide you. Things may not work out as you had planned, but sometimes our lack of knowledge of what is around the corner means that our ideal plan is in fact terrible for us. I only need to look back at my previous trip, arriving in Bay of Islands with a dodgy bicycle and being rescued by Bex and the family, to remember that an initially non-ideal situation can in fact be the best thing for us. In this instance, I avoided two days of cycling in the pouring rain and made some amazing friends and memories instead. Also, starting the tour two days later meant getting the ferry from Pouto Point and having the chance to meet Sherree, Markus, Ash, Andy, Paora and more. In the instance of my non-existent Amazon trip, it meant being present for the passing of my dear grandfather and being able to speak at his funeral. It also meant that when my mum received her diagnosis in September 2019, I was able to come home the next day and was in month five of my PhD, as opposed to week one. I don’t think I could have handled all of that at once. It is possible that this is all a sequence of coincidences and that things simply happen with no reason at all, but this little outlook I have on life does not make excuses for the terrible things that happen. Rather, it provides some comfort that when the terrible things do happen, the universe is there to hold your hand instead of pushing you deeper into the inferno. Maintaining this potentially very incorrect mentality has the advantage of keeping my chin up.

So now nearly nine years have passed since I visited Bolivia. I was 20 then and I am 29 now. My skin is more haggard and my ability to get by on four hours of sleep has wasted away, but my hairline seems to have remained the same and the uptake of regular exercise since the age of 21 means that I am now able to run approximately 30 times as far without stopping (the bar was, to be fair, very low). For whatever reason, this is the time at which I am coming back. With such an epic adventure right before this trip, I haven’t given it that much thought. It’s just sort of happening.

It’s 5th March. Today is my birthday. I wake up at my brother Joe and his fiancé Carla’s flat and we head into Horsham and have brunch with my sister Rosie. We then repeat the routine of nine years ago, visiting Boots and the charity shops. I then have a lovely meal out with the family and head to Tony’s. Having flown in from New Zealand only six days ago and being on the move ever since, my luggage has ended up dotted around from place to place, with my post sent back to the UK to lighten up my bike load being at Auntie Fiona and Uncle Mark’s, my sleeping bag and bits being with Tony, my newly packed items being in Joe and Carla’s car and to top it all off, two postal parcels for me to bring to the charity (there is no postal service in the jungle) being at Tony’s village shop and the other in his greenhouse. I spend my evening packing all of this into bags ready for the plane before finally hitting the hay.

The next morning, Tony kindly drops me off at Gatwick and I am able to have a farewell coffee with my brother Tom, who has just flown in from Dublin. I go to check my bags in and learn that the hold door on the plane I am boarding is broken. I did not know that this could happen. I am informed that my luggage will be put on a later flight and that I am to speak to someone at Madrid airport upon arrival. I am given no indication of who to actually talk to. Following a sufficiently painless flight, albeit with smoke streaming from the right-hand wing upon landing, I then struggle to find the correct person at the airport and use a good hour of my time arranging for my bags to simply not leave terminal 4 and be collected before my long haul flight tomorrow. I then catch the bus to the hotel and enjoy a nice evening meal. The next day, with heavy rain forecast, I opt for staying at the hotel and getting work done on my laptop (I’ve been into Madrid enough times before). This lasts for a few hours before my laptop runs out of battery (I left my EU plug adapter in my hold luggage and that could be anywhere by now). Following a very fancy three course lunch for 25 euro, I then make for the airport and spend over an hour sourcing my bag. I won’t name and shame the airline that caused all of this kerfuffle (it was Iberia), but I sure as heck won’t be flying with them again.

My next flight is with Boliviana de Aviación (or Bolivian Aviation). I booked it in September. The fee was £300, of which two thirds is airport tax. I am hoping that those in business class have heavily subsidised the ticket price, else, I am not sure how this thing will stay in the air. We board an hour and a half after the scheduled time and gather inside the cramped vessel. The aeroplane sits for some time as I watch our hold luggage being slowly loaded on board. The flight safety video plays and is probably the only thing worth watching on the entertainment system. We then endure a shaky take off and I am offered chicken or beef for dinner. There is no option to request a vegetarian meal in advance with Bolivian Aviation, so I enjoy my meal of tepid water. Bolivian Aviation does not offer wine, nor any alcohol with dinner. It is either water or one of several different colour Fantas. I say colour and not flavour because they definitely all taste the same – miscellaneous chemical flavour.

I kill ten out of the twelve remaining hours by drifting in and out of consciousness and do not appreciate the rude awakening as I am presented with another in-flight meal opportunity. On this occasion, I take the hit and simply avoid the sausage within my foil tray. We land in Santa Cruz at about 5am and disembark the aircraft. The conveyer belt for our luggage is tiny and instead of all standing back and waiting for our bags to appear, everyone opts for herding densely around it so that it cannot be seen from behind the crowd. Not enjoying this logic, I decide to leisurely brush my teeth in the bathroom and treat myself to a morning poo. I then return and triumphantly collect my bag, having not made an arse of myself. I am greeted by the taxi driver and we ride to the hotel. I really am now back in Bolivia; there is a very enthusiastic man beside me chatting away in Spanish as I nod and smile along; I ride along a very bumpy highway in a car that is quite possibly no longer road worthy; and perhaps most importantly, the moon is on her side.

I have opted to spend three nights in Santa Cruz. I am pretty jet lagged from New Zealand and my body is recovering from the cycling still. I want to arrive at the park well-rested. I use this time to get some admin done. This starts with getting a Bolivian SIM card for my phone, buying some condiments for the food at the park and finally, heading to the bank to exchange my USD for Bolivianos. The man in the bank says I’ll get a better exchange rate by heading to a Casa de Cambio in the city centre. I am surprised to learn that Uber is operating here and take a ride into the city centre. I enjoy this driver’s confidence as we trudge along the road with his hands in his lap, rather than on the wheel. He drops me off and I manage to get an exchange rate one and a half times better than that indicated on Google. This makes me nervous that I have just claimed fake money. I then get another Uber back to the hotel. This one boasts a driver who keeps his hands on the steering wheel, but is plagued by a lack of seatbelts. I suppose the odds of a crash are only slightly higher than at home. I then enjoy an evening meal out accompanied by smooth jazz covers of popular artists ranging from ABBA to Harry Styles.

It is interesting being in Bolivia again. I can have a meal out in a nice restaurant with dessert and a cocktail for less than a tenner, but a packet of Pringles in a supermarket is roughly £6. As a country, it does not have a reputation for high crime rates, but it is good to exercise caution and something Karen said to us last time that stuck with me is that if you dress like you’re not well-off, you are less likely to encounter trouble. Consequently, I navigate the streets finding that everyone is dressed better than myself. All the locals that I have encountered have been highly hospitable and friendly, but I am very grateful to have learned some Spanish before arriving. On a continent that is 60% Spanish speaking, with only one small country having English as the official language, I should have expected this.

So tomorrow is the big day. In the morning, I am being picked up and driven six hours into the Amazon rainforest. This time, it really will be the rainforest. My previous trip started in June – the peak of dry season. Consequently, we spent several days across the month clearing fire trails and on one occasion, putting out the blaze itself. I will also never forget the night in which we came back to the park to find a massive bushmaster lingering by the communal tap, on account of it being the only water for miles. The temperature now is hotter, the humidity is higher and I am conscious that the paths I shall walk each day may in fact be swamps. I have already been bitten by several mosquitos and am very conscious of just how much worse this is going to get. Mosquitos like me a lot. The hotel I am staying in boasts superb air conditioning. This is a luxury that won’t last, nor is the electricity, WiFi, warm shower and flushing toilet.

I am slightly apprehensive about tomorrow. The animals I have worked with in the past have since passed away or been semi-released. This means that this time, I will be making new feline friends. Furthermore, I can’t imagine that there will be a single fellow volunteer from with when I first visited, but I have been speaking to the team leader on WhatsApp and have had a snoop around on the website and everyone looks very friendly. I can imagine that with it being wet season this time, the number of volunteers will be smaller and the forest will present an entirely different atmosphere. This certainly isn’t going to be a repeat of my last trip by any means at all, but if the soul of the place that I felt all those years ago lives on, then I know that I am in for an amazing time.