After leaving the main channel of the Amazon on Friday we are now six days into the long crossing. Our guides for this part of the journey are called Wilson and Walde; they are both about five feet tall and are from the local Ticuna tribe. They can walk through the thick jungle without using a machete as fast as you could walk down the street outside your house.

The reason we have come away from the river was that the floods were slow to walk through. Now, however, we have the opposite problem: normally we fill our water bottles from streams and then drink whilst we are walking. Today we only passed one puddle at about 11 am and then nothing until the almost dry creek that we have camped at. From here we have to carry more water so that we can continue safely. As we have no more water bottles we will have to fill our waterproof camera bags with water - after taking the cameras out!

Each of the four of us will carry at least three litres of water. We have no idea where the next water is because the map we are using is designed for aeroplane navigation by pilots. Clearly planes have no need to know where the little streams are.

We are aiming for a community called Porto Seguro. It wasn’t marked on our map but we found it on somebody else’s map and so we drew it on our map in pencil.  Then we found the same village on another person’s map, so we drew that on our map too. Amazingly, and slightly worryingly, the points are thirty kilometres apart – we don’t know which is correct!

So we are heading through the Amazon with no idea of when the next stream will come, water in our camera bags (deliberately for once!), looking for a small community that could be anywhere within an area the size of central London.

Today we saw some capuchin monkeys in the trees above us mixed in with some squirrel monkeys. Usually you only see one type at once but these two troops were completely mixed together and not scared of us at all!

For more about Ed and his Amazon adventure, visit www.walkingtheamazon.com.