That night the local tribe was going to perform a ceremony that would involve singing and some sort of dancing, and Adam Baines and I were invited go along. The tribe held hands and formed itself into two circles, one inside the other, both facing inwards.

One circle moved to the left and the other moved in the opposite direction and at the same time started moaning. This singing or sort of moaning continued as the circles moved slowly in opposite directions. I started the tape, the moaning continued, the bullfrogs joined in, the jungle added its chorus, the circles turned.

Adam and I stood there bemused, as the minutes went by, with nothing more happening other than the continuous circling and moaning. I joined the tribe, held hands and moaned with everybody else, circled with everyone else and, I think just like everyone else, wondered what the hell was going to happen next.

I was beginning to think that this whole ceremony was being put on for our benefit, as a sort of show for these strangers from the outside world. I stepped out of the circle and stood back with Adam whilst continuing to watch this ritual. Adam asked me what the ceremony had done for me. I replied that I had always dreamt about holding hands with strangers, walking in circles, moaning out loud under the stars in the Amazon rainforest! Adam tried everything to stifle his laughter.

We both concluded that this show was being put on for our benefit and, deciding to call it a night, thanked our hosts and walked back to our hut, leaving the tribe still moaning under the full moon. As we reached our hut the moaning stopped and we smiled at each other as we went in, but the last laugh was to be on us. We slipped into our sleeping bags being careful not to let any mosquitoes under our nets and I fell gently asleep after such a busy day.

I awoke to my shoulder being shaken by one of my moaning friends who said it was Party Time, and that this hut was the party hut. We were to sleep in the next hut with others that did not want to dance the night away. I looked at Adam stumbling about when he was woken as I had been. We grabbed our belongings in our arms, everything falling out of everywhere, and moved huts in pitch darkness.

We staggered to the next hut, which was totally full off about fourteen hammocks, mostly containing a couple, to find the only place we could sleep was under someone’s hammock. The music started, not the moaning of a couple of hours before but the loud music called Forro, which was coming from a ghetto blaster running off a car battery and which was overlaid by the noise of dancing feet.

The Forro, a corruption of the English ‘For All’ came from the North East of Brazil,. As the British who built the railway there sometimes had parties for which the invitations were ‘For All’. It was now my turn to feel like moaning as the music blasted into the night from all of twenty yards away.

The Indian in the hammock above Adam started to do the horizontal samba with his woman and the swaying and groaning made me see the funny side of life. Or would have, if the mosquitoes hadn’t been eating me alive and something I’d rather not know about slithered over me. A hellish night, to end a near perfect day.

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