As we bounced down Coca's dirt runway after 20 of the most tense minutes of my life, excitement and trepidation crept into my bones and made me shiver. I had just flown out of dusty Quito, over a pristine chain of smoking Andean volcanoes and down into the vast green Amazon to where the adventure would really begin.

It might have been David Attenborough, more recently Ray Mears, or even those wildlife books I used to buy at the gift shop in Colchester Zoo, but I’d wanted to experience the Amazon for as long as I could remember. I’d had an armful of vaccinations, was sleeping fitfully on the Lariam and all my clothes smelled of permethrin: I was ready to go!

I met a guide outside the airport, ready with the bus to take us the three-hour trip to the river entrance of the Yasuni Rainforest Reserve. After that, it was a day by canoe to the remote community of Bameno, where our Huaorani hosts were expecting us, ready to chuckle at the pink, bug-smeared 'cowode' (‘cannibals’) who came to bring diesel and entertain their children.

The Huaorani are a community just ‘discovered’ 50 years ago. Their ancestral lands are under continual serious threat from aggressive oil exploration and illegal logging, and they have a long history of killing any petrolero or missionary who enters their territory. In a few short years, members of the community have learned Spanish and mobilised a campaign of protest that tourism helps to support. It’s a tough decision for the proud and independent Huaorani, and they are nervous of the trappings of contact with foreign cowode (alcoholism, avarice, reliance on technology for transport and hunting). It’s a privilege to be their guest, and not one to be treated lightly. As such, I was surprised to be greeted by the warmest smiles I’d seen in Ecuador.

On arrival, the first stop was Chief QuemPeri’s place. The dark interior under its grass roof slowly revealed a basket of dried snack marmosets and small birds, a pet pig and the chief’s numerous grandchildren peering from dark corners. The chief, dressed only from the waist UP, gave me a big hug, handed me a blowgun and took me straight out to fire darts at a banana tree. I hit the big red banana flower first time, and started to relax…

That first night, with our hammocks and nets secure in the trees and – I prayed – snake-free, we gritted our teeth and ate endangered species (just ignore the maggots on the underside of the tapir meat; they probably keep it clean). We laughed at each other’s anecdotes translated between Huaorani and Spanish by our Ecuadorian guide Miguel, or otherwise expressed in grimaces, eye-rolls and laughter, and went to bed newly confident that we’d live till morning...

Before setting off downriver for some serious wildlife viewing, I dropped into the local school at the request of its 17-year-old teacher. The shy and charming class of 4-14 year olds performed a series of giggling, wriggling Huaorani songs and dances and beamed with pride at the applause from Miguel and me. Then came the good news. Those songs weren’t for free! Twenty expectant little faces circled me and waited for me to burst into song.

Now, my singing’s so bad I won’t even risk pub karaoke, and my mind was blank as to what ‘folk song’ I might actually know the words to, but there was no escape. In a flash of inspiration, I launched into the best cockney-accented ‘Any Old Iron’ my grandmother taught me, eliciting squeals of delight for the total unpronounceable mania of the song. I was a hit!

I was the one beaming as my twenty little fans waved me off downriver and into the unknown.

Look out for the continuation of this Amazon adventure, ‘Tarantulas in My Wellies’, coming soon!