The water masses of the Orinoco basin are often covered in a blanket of bright green.
Millions of water hyacinths colonise the pools, forming small floating forests.
Below the water, the hyacinths form an intricate network, a tangled aquatic maze.
Floating on the swollen shoot of its base leaves, the hyacinths spread out their roots
until they join with those of neighbouring plants,
to such an extent that they completely cover the surface of the pools,
preventing sunlight from penetrating into the water, or gases being exchanged.
This could be fatal for the aquatic fauna and flora.
But the plains also have a powerful army of hyacinth-eaters,
which clear the surface of the water as they incessantly graze.
Thousands of capybaras daily feed on the succulent leaves of the aquatic plants.
These powerful rodents, the largest in the world,
live an amphibious life between the warm clear banks
and this enormous vegetable soup where they find food,
protection and relief from the implacable sun.
To be able to dominate this aquatic world,
the capybaras have acquired important physiological adaptations over millions of years of evolution.
These are their weapons with which to conquer the water:
paws with webbed fingers to swim and dive, and eyes, ears and nostrils placed at the top of the head,
so they can receive all the information from the surface when they are submerged.
A great part of their success in colonising the plains is due to their social behaviour.
The capybaras are very gregarious animals.
The groups are normally composed of thirty individuals,
but can be of up to one hundred, so social links, which begin with the family from the moment they are born,
are vitally important, and must be constantly reinforced.
When it is time to reproduce, the capybaras go into the water.
On land they are more vulnerable so, when they are going to mate,
the male follows the female into a shallow pool
and, beneath the protection of the water, they copulate.
The heat, which becomes increasingly intense as the morning advances,
brings new dangers to the water.
An anaconda approaches the capybaras' pool.
It is an adult, over four metres in length,
and its life is now not as aquatic as it was during the early stages, when it fed on frogs and small fish.
But when the heat becomes unbearable out on the plain,
it returns to its former hunting grounds.
It knows it is now strong enough to catch larger prey,
and silently moves its powerful rings until it is submerged in the water.
The group of capybaras senses the danger.
The adults, who have seen the reptile arrive, keep a careful watch on it.
Only the head of the anaconda is above the water,
as it hopes to go unnoticed until one of the young comes close to its jaws.
But this time, it has been discovered.
The experienced parents raise the alarm, and the group swims off beneath the hyacinths.
Without the surprise factor, the giant anaconda will have no chance of catching them.
Meanwhile, on the banks, a group of turtles has silently witnessed this scene, the anaconda's frustration.
And now, they watch on as an exhausted morrocoy tortoise arrives.
Our heroine has reached the water, guided by the smell.
Here, along the bank, she finally sees animals she recognises.
Turtles sometimes go into the forest to lay their eggs,
and the tortoise has seen them before, close to her home.
But now, she is the intruder.
Though they are very close relatives, in the water the turtles have a great advantage.
She hesitates, raises her head, not daring to advance.
In the distance, she can see the treetops of her beloved jungle.
But in between lies a daunting challenge.
The width of the pool is almost an ocean for the little morrocoy,
and she can't swim as well as her cousins the turtles.
She has never crossed a pool.
In truth, in the jungle where she was born she has never had to swim at all,
so, very unwillingly, she decides to turn back and try to reach the jungle by going around the pool.
And now, out on the plain, the day is really heating up.