Lot's happens everyday here. We don't tell you everything in our posts, here are a few mini-stories to fill in the gaps.
Igu Escaped
On the first day of our work in the jungle, I (Paul) was paired with Mia to learn the animal cleaning and feeding routine. Keep in mind that everything was new and we hadn't seen any enclosures until carrying buckets of food to the forest at 7 am. Our third stop were the Tayras - Emma and Igu. Mia, being a trusting soul, told me to take care of Igu, while she cleaned and fed Emma. No problem - I'd seen 2 done - almost expert status. 1. Close the gates to the feeding space with ropes to keep the animal out; 2. unlock the door and enter; 3. clean the old food and compost, wash the trays, dump the new food; 4. Exit and lock the door; 5 Open the access for the animal with the rope. All good.
A few cages later, we saw the vets running down the trail - "Igu escaped." they shouted as they sprinted past. Oh shit. It appears that "LOCK THE DOOR" was a key instruction that I didn't follow correctly. The good thing is that, while Igu is a curious little fellow, he was a pet for long enough that he had no desire to run off into jungle and just walked along the trail. He was easily corralled back to his home. It would have been very bad to have been fired on my first day!
New Routines
We have written about the importance of routines in the past. It’s so important here - very predictable and keeps everyone in the know. Daily- feeding/cleaning at 7, breakfast at 9, extra tasks/ tours till 12 when we cut fruit. 1pm is lunch. 2pm enrichments, 3:15 afternoon feeding. Done at 4. What’s not predictable is dinner. It’s a volunteer task and the suggested target is 6-8 pm, mostly we eat after 8, once or twice after 9. That’s hard to get used to!
Toe Tape and Rubber Boots
Staff, volunteers and most visitors wear rubber boots. It's absolutely necessary as the ground can be wet, there are puddles on the paths and often we are cleaning poo! Paul got "new" boots from Facebook marketplace before leaving Canada. They seemed to fit well at home. But, after a half-day of work, three blisters had formed. He found a new pair and taped up his toes and foot. After unclogging the Anaconda's drain pipe and soaking the inside of his newer boots, he is now using his third pair. Better take care of these, because there's no more size 11 wides around!
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| 2 Weeks of healing later... |
Wash your hands!
Simply put - we are dirty a lot of the time and even when we are clean, we don’t feel clean. We are in and out of animal enclosures all day long and they poop everywhere and a lot. Although we wear gloves most of the time hand washing is critical. We’ve been diligently washing 8 or 10 times a day, but not everyone does - and that’s probably why someone always seems to be sick.
Soccer Saturdays
Kaja, one of the volunteers has been organizing soccer games with the local staff on Saturdays. These are played on a mini field with a size 3 ball that is very hard and doesn’t bounce at all. The stakes are high- losers buy the beer. We should probably just say it’s a soccer game and the volunteers are buying the beer because we don't win!
Check out my nasty bruise I got while making a big save!
Wake Up Calls
We know that traveling the way we do will generally involve early wake ups due to noises in our surroundings. At Amazoonico there were three sources of noise:
1. Spider monkeys- who occasionally barked or fought around 5:30am!! Once a juvenile was throwing avocados from high up in a tree. Loud bangs could be heard as they landed on roofing metal.
2. Music - God only knows why the neighbours across the river had to blare the music at 5 am every day - sometimes even earlier. Weekend events meant that the music played all night.
3. Roosters- who started crowing as early as 2:30 am. All I can say is that if there wasn’t an 80 m wide river between us, we’d have been eating a lot more chicken!
Note: I am writing this section at 12:40 am in Quito. The dogs are fighting and barking - Quito has dogs, lots of them. I am not going out to scare them off.