Our guide Victor hovered above a hole in the middle of the jungle with a thin stick in his hand. He inserted the stick in a hole and slowly twisted it out.

Our group hovered above him in quiet anticipation, unsure of what he was showing us. And then we saw the biggest, blackest, hairiest spider I've ever seen without having a pane of glass in front of me. Urgh. A massive tarantula. We all stood dead still until he was back in his hole.

But the purpose of the trip was to fish. We were told there was no lunch unless we caught it. Yeah right, we knew this wasn't Survivor and there would be a buffet waiting for us.

We took a canoe to a beautiful spot by a river bank surrounded by caymans, butterflies and turtles soaking themselves on the tips of hot rocks.

Victor gave us fishing rods which were just sticks, really. They had a blob of something disgusting on the end. He wouldn't tell us what the bait was made of.

In five minutes our boat driver (a jungle native) had caught a small catfish but he threw it back and that was the extent of the day's catch.

The travellers caught sticks, the riverbank, trees, each other, but no fish. So we dived into the water to cool off from a hard day's trying to fish.

Next stop: Victor proves himself to be a bona fide medicine man. Find out about his leafy cure for impotency.

Check out more photos from my trip in my Flickr album.

Find out about Peru.

Read more of Kelly's blogs.