Mother nature - 0 Woody and Tink - 1...

Most people are familiar with the riddle about the farmer who is on one side of the river, and needs to get himself, his hen, his bag of corn, and his fox over to the other side. Nobody ever questions why he has a fox with him in the first place - is it a pet? Has he kidnapped this fox and holds it for ransom so the other foxes will stop bothering his hens? Who knows.

Imagine that the hen in this case is Miss Woodward, the corn is a sack of wet clothes, and the fox is in actual fact a bag containing cameras, passports, wallet and plane tickets. And the river is a river. A big one... Where riddles meet reality, I love it.

The precursor to all this river-based malarky is two days living in a cabin in the middle of the rainforest - La Bolita. Just outside of Dos Brazos del Rio Tigre, the cabin is surrounded by a series of trails, some of which lead sneakily over the border into Corcovado National Park.

Myself and young Woody had arrived here after a rollercoaster boat ride from Golfito, over the Golfo Dulce into Puerto Jimenez, or Port Jim. We hopped on the collectivo bus to Dos Brazos and then hiked up to the cabin - through the aforementioned river - in the lashing rain. This rain would persist for the next 12 hours, and swell the river considerably...

The cabin living was great - it felt like real `into the wild´ stuff, cooking before darkness falls because there was no power, lighting candles, then searching our surroundings for wild animals. Particularly exciting for me were the two rather sizeable machetes in the kitchen... `I AM SAVAGE MAN, I CHOP TREES, I MAKE FIRE, I HAVE SOUP AND PASTA TWIRLS FOR MY TEA´.

Among our discoveries along the trails were parrots, poison dart frogs, big spiders, a wee snake and a couple of hari kari toucans - so called because of the red circle they have on their stomachs. Not to mention a giant bat that smacked Woods in the face as it flew by. As the rain drove down, our thoughts then turned to the growing river - potentially cutting us off from Dos Brazos and our eventual passage back to San Jose. While it was great to be completely on our own in the rainforest, the feeling of isolation would become much stronger if we were trapped there by the forces of nature...

Having walked the trails all day, we decided to head for the river and cross while there was a break in the weather. We arrived at the bottom of a very long trail, faced by the beast which was now waist deep and flowing fast. The choice here was to go all the way back up the trail and try and make a crossing elsewhere, or just batter in and hope for the best.

I always think that when you intend to `batter in´ somewhere, it pays to do it sensibly and responsibly. So, priorities being as they are, the camera, passports and tickets were transported slowly but surely over the flowing rapids. Then, upon the next journey the two of us held hands and waded across in a more or less diagonal fashion with the flow. Victory, and with it many a congratulatory smack on the ass...

The collectivo bus back to Port Jim was great fun. How many places on Earth can three pregnant women can sit side by side with a machete weilding, toothless 90-year old man and it seems completely natural. The collectivo may be the only one..

While we dried our sodden kit out back in Port Jim, we went strolling. Strolling straight into a mangrove filled with crocs, waiting for birds to land and then trying to munch them. We relaxed with a few travelling companions and a few beers before emerging for the 5am bus to San Jose; a ten hour journey. Next stop: Tortuguero, on the Caribbean coast, where the turtles lay their little egglingtons on the beach. Much love...