What I'm actually doing

On my very first day after arriving at the camp I quickly realised that a couple of trips to the gym wouldn't have gone amiss in advance. Basically at that point I still wasn't 100% sure as to exactly what my job would entail. It turns out that the relatively simple answer to this was mapping the geology of the area looking for mineral deposits called 'massive sulphides' (MS). I won't bore you with the details but the process is effectively:

- Walk up every river/creek etc mapping outcrops and looking for boulders of MS.
- Once you've mapped a river look for where the MS stopped appearing and head straight up hill.

- Then dig/look around for outcrops to see if you can find the MS in situ.
- If you find it and there's a lot of it with a high % of metal inside then mine it and sell the metal for cash.

- Invest cash in new top quality central defender for Norwich City.

The creeks themselves look similar to this. In front of me in this pic are two guys with knives (to clear a path) and a bloke who was bored and thought he could act as translator. Seeing as he couldn't speak English this was a somewhat unproductive task for him. I also never quite caught his name, if I had to bet on it I would say it was something like Hassaniegaz but he probably could've just been coughing.

On the same trip I had to climb up and down this waterfall. It's about 5/6m high so the technique used was mostly pulling on vines going up and arse based going down.

Thankfully though there are always plenty of trees to grab hold of should you slip:

Most of them come fully equipped with spikes though.

Finally this is our primary outcrop:

Needless to say I have not been up the woodwork structure, especially since that drop off to the side is almost vertical and is about 100ft+ down. The man 2nd to the front could be our next head of exploration. I was all for this (after a whole day talking about sport) until the subject moved to global warming etc. We both agreed that the overpopulation of the planet is a primary factor however his solution of removing all of the middle east was mildly concerning... I actually thought he was joking so laughed at how inappropriate he was being, sadly however this was met with a still very serious face. I stopped talking to him soon after.

Work stats:

Wooden structures designed to be walked on which broke when I walked on them - 3

Hours slept on rice bag bed - average of less than 3 hours per night

Bites from mosquitoes on right leg alone - 30 ish

Bee stings - 4

Hammers lost while falling over rocks - 1

Meals of rice eaten while bread and jam were briefly available - 0

Tracks up and down hills which have been demolished by my attempts to use them - all bar 3

Random fact:

If you're in the jungle and have clothes drying don't leave them hanging out of the rain presuming that they might get a bit drier. They will in fact end up totally drenched.