While Charlotte Uhlenbroek loves the adventure, she is also glad to be back in “civilization”, at least for the moment.

She’s just finished filming a TV series called Jungle——a 19-week job that involved her exploring the dense jungles of the Congo, the Amazon and Borneo. She says that it was fascinating, but daunting as well. So what was her most challenging experience? “Definitely climbing an 80-metre-high tree in Borneo, when I’m scared of heights! I had to keep going up and up, when a voice inside me was saying, ‘Down! Down!’ I kept thinking the ropes were going to break and send me down below.”

And “down below” was where the bugs were——clinging, stinging, sucking beasts. Apart from the usual mosquitoes, in the Amazon rainforest she was troubled by sand-fly bites. “I’ve had some horrible bites but these really are the itchiest (痒的) bites I’ve ever had. At one stage, I counted 70 bites on one arm,” she says. “Just as annoying were the sweat bees in the Congo. They try to drink the sweat on your face and even the tears from your eyes. The most disgusting thing, though, was try to pull the leches (水蛭) off your skin. The more I pulled, the more they stretched and the tighter their jaws clung to my leg. I kept shouting, ‘Get them off!’ and the film crew kept saying, “Just one minute... this makes a really good shot!”

Back in London, what has she been enjoying since her return to “civilization”? “I’ve been having lots of nice, long showers,” she says. “In the Congo, the possibility of using up our water supplies was always a worrying thought. And I find that when I’ve been in hot, uncomfortable conditions for a while, the things I look forward to more than anything else are being with my family and enjoying my favourite meal.”

I was checking out at the supermarket counter on Wednesday night, ready to pay for my bananas, when all of a sudden, fear came upon me. My wallet was gone. And I could only have left it one place: the G9 bus, from which I had gotten off minutes earlier and which was now speeding to some stops. The moment of realizing it was gone was followed by mental math. How much time and money would it cost to replace the credit cards, the driver’s license, the expensive lipstick ($55!).

Two hours after I was back at my house, I heard a knock on the door. My husband answered while I sat in the dining room on the phone with a credit card company. “Does Jennifer live here?” I heard someone say. In her hand was my wallet, without a penny missing. She left before I could offer my gratitude to her.

After I posted the story, I heard from her boyfriend, who identified the good citizen as Erin Ball, a 26-year-old girl working for a trade organization.

Once I figured out her, I called to thank her. She said she spotted my wallet and thought that it’s more dangerous to go to a stranger’s house than leaving the wallet with the driver, but she still decided to take the chance. “If I were in that situation, I would want someone to try to find me,” she said. Ball doesn’t find her actions particularly excellent. She added, “It’s not hard to do small things for people. ”

After Ball found my wallet, she decided to post a picture of my driver’s license online before going to my house, trying to see if anyone knew me. No sooner had she left my doorstep than I got emails from two neighbors who recognized my face, both offering to help me find my missing property.

Ball found my house on a bitterly cold night for which I was extremely grateful. Looking back, I’m not surprised someone had wanted to help a stranger. A warm current of honesty and harmony is running through this town.