In January 2026 I returned to Iquitos in the Peruvian Amazon. Upriver, in a channel near a confluence, the research boat - a former rubber boat - was moored. There I spent just under two weeks as a volunteer, assisting scientists take surveys - bats and birds, monkeys and squirrels, lizards and frogs, and the larger animals, the pink and grey river dolphins and the elusive caiman.
A trip under the aegis of Earthwatch, and my second time with Dr Richard Bodmer - but in 2026 a new location, a new (but historic) boat, new local scientists and new fellow volunteers,