Let sleeping lions lie.

There are many things that can make you sick in the jungle: malaria and dengue carrying mosquitoes; drinking tea-coloured river water the guide assures you is safe; getting too close to 4-day unshowered Irishman; having to eat catfish; listening to a self-absorbed French woman wittering on and on and on about her favourite subject, herself, and loudly proclaiming that the thing she likes the most about the jungle is how peaceful it all is. It will be considerably more peaceful - you think uncharitably - when you tie her hammock closed around her tonight and chuck her in the Amazon. French women flesh out conversation with padding words and phrases like "so", "then", "well", "i don't know", "frankly", "seriously", "enormously", "really", "truly", "it was…", "mad", "crazy", "serious", "funny". Two French women together can hold a conversation lasting several minutes using only padding words, never actually saying anything of any meaning. Padding gives the impression of someone who is uncomfortable with silences of longer than 4 seconds. It is exceptionally rare to meet one that pads in a language other than french, but Magalie can. And Magalie does. And Magalie just won't shut up. And Magalie's incessant chatter drowns out the ambient jungle noise.

She is travelling for 6 months you see, and she has a boyfriend in Barcelona and he wasn't ready to travel so she just left without him and she only has 2 more months left and even though she has had lot of opportunities and offers of sex she hasn't taken advantage of any of them because she has a boyfriend you know and she doesn't do that, but she could have, oh yes, but she didn't, and she's been to some of the places you've been but she had a much better time than you, and any places you've been she hasn't been are not important and she deliberately decided to avoid and she doesn't regret it, but you probably do regret ever mentioning it, and the places she's been that you are not going are frankly the best places in the world, and how old are you, but i'm not really interested in the answer, how old do you think she is. This is always a trick question, but having lived in France, i have the answer. If you want to sleep with any French woman over the age of 18, tell her she looks 24. If you want one to stop talking, tell her she looks 37.

There are also many things that can kill you in the jungle. Poison-arrow frogs, beloved of the indigenous tribes when they tried to fight off the invading Conquistadors. Hungry jaguars too. It helps though, as you lie awake half the night, gently swinging in your hammock, if your tour guide snores like the sound of two particularly vigorous mating jaguars. That, apparently, keeps all the other jaguars away. Hungry anacondas can also kill. As can hungry tarantulas. Luckily, Magalie leaves a day early, so she is no longer a threat.