Into the Rainforest (part two)

After doing our work, we went to Wales this Friday and the boys ran through the forest in the rain and we visited Ferdy's slice of heaven on earth: Hay on Wye, home to over 25 bookshops.

We also managed to do our postponed (due to illness) rainforest visit over half term.

This was a special place. I doubt we'll ever visit the actual rainforest because a) at the rate it's being destroyed, there will be nothing left by the time we are let out again and b) I'm not sure how I feel about visiting places which are better off without humans. So at the moment, this is the best we're going to get.

Some of the birds and lizards were roaming around the space: we spotted lots of ducks, an asian water dragon and even the two-toed sloth, Cinnamon, who was languishing above us in the canopy. Other animals were in cages and tanks. None of us had ever seen an armadillo, and Ferdy's favourite amphibious fish, mudskippers were also exciting to spot. Ferdy and Gil are the perfect combination of wildlife companions: Gil has exceedingly sharp eyes and can find things neither of us have even noticed, and Ferdy has infinite knowledge about the most unusual creatures. Apparently Mum is also pretty useful as the bag carrier...

We learnt about how mudskippers can survive simultaneously on land and sea and about the poor green iguana who is actually red because he was rescued from the pet trade who often selectively breed animals and create different colour morphs. And Gil overcame his fear of snakes by meeting an Emerald tree boa and a Carpet python. Snakes are now his second favourite animal (after pandas).

We also learnt how we wouldn't really be able to cope in the rainforest for more than an hour as it was very hot and sticky and grumpy-making especially when we couldn't find the caiman (who cleverly manage to hide from the nosy public), so we were quite happy to return to the car and listen to Katherine Rundell's thrilling story about children who had to survive for a lot more than 60 minutes in the Amazon rainforest.