Day 357: Sarah's biggest fan

We were up late again this morning and eventually made our way upriver to the Jungle Inn for breakfast. After several days of eating almost exclusively at Sam's we thought it was time for a change. The staff were incredibly welcoming and friendly. One of them, who told us his name was Alde, took a real shine to the girls (and, most definitely, to Sarah in particular). He started out by making a baby squirrel out of a tea towel and then bet the girls he could solve the Rubik's cube that was sitting around the restaurant. He won, of course, so the girls had to sing for him (he said to Sarah, 'Oh, you're better than Taylor Swift'). Later, he showed Sarah some tricks using toothpicks. As she struggled to make them work, he said: 'Close your eyes, focus on it, think of my face.' At one point he also told her to 'come back when you're 17'.

After breakfast we all walked back to the bungalow, where the girls did a bit of school work. After a late lunch back at the Jungle Inn, we all went down to the river for a swim. At one point, I was standing on one of the large, rounded river rocks when my grip suddenly gave way and my feet slid down. The big toenail on my left foot caught on an adjacent rock and was torn upwards, flipping back a couple of millimetres in. I looked down with dread and saw the end of the nail standing up at right angles from the rest of it, blood already starting to seep out of the exposed nail bed. I quickly flipped the nail back down and then went away and sat on a large rock to ride out the waves of pain coming from my poor damaged toe. 

We went back to the Jungle Inn one more time for dinner (the food is definitely better there) and then returned to the bungalow, where the others tried to get to sleep, accompanied by some loud live rawk music coming from a nearby restaurant. Later, after Kate had gone to sleep, I heard a noise over near the bookshelf in the corner of the room. When I went over, I spotted a rat on the floor. It spotted me and ran behind the bookshelf, where it then sat for some time quivering and staring up at me each time I went back to check on it. I resolved not to tell Kate about it.