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Published: March 18th 2007
Well everything has gone nicely to plan and I am now in the rainforest! After spending last weekend stressing and not knowing what an earth was going to be doing, I finally got my plans sorted and booked a flight on Wednesday. Last Saturday was very sad as everyone from the group got on planes at various points in the day and flew off to Lima. When everyone had gone, I shed a few tears, which were almost cured by lunch in Jack´s, a western cafe in Cusco. I spent most of the weekend with Alice, one of the last remaining volunteers. When she left on Monday, and the other remaining volunteers went off to do the Inca trail, I felt a little bereft, but Hannah, the regional manager for Madventurer, very kindly offered to have me to stay in the flat for a few days whilst I got myself sorted. I spent the next few days on the phone to TAPA, the company I´m now with, sorting things out, and exploring Cusco for the last time. I wish I could say I filled my days with cultural activities... I did try, but I never seemed to have the right kind of ticket, and there was no point in buying a tourist ticket for a few days... Instead I did some shopping (necessities only, promise!) and went to a pub quiz, which is self improving, I´ll have you know.
Thursday was a bit of a rush to get everything sorted. Confusion at the post office (you need your passport to post stuff... no actually you don´t... no actually we need to look inside the box... no actually we don´t give a damn, we´re just trying to wind you up...) meant that I hardly got anything sorted at all.
I was up bright and early on Friday morning to catch my 11.30 flight. I was rather sad on the way to the airport to think about the fact that what seemed like a life time, but was in fact only five weeks previously, I was taking the journey in the opposite direction.
I arrived at the airport and met a nice Irish man who helped me with all my stuff (I have gained a large extra bag since arriving in Cusco...) before boarding my thirty minute flight to Puerto Maldonado! I have to confess I cried like a baby as we took off over the mountains and I said goodbye to Cusco and Umanes for the last time. It really was an amazing place. After a while I realised that I had used my last tissue that morning to clear sun cream up off the floor, and it would probably be a good idea to stop... I´m glad I had a window seat. Soon the scenery turned from mountains to jungle, and sadness turned into excitement.
We touched down and I made my way into the room that was the airport... Thank god my bag turned up without a hitch this time. My initial thoughts were... "it´s hot". I went outside to discover that there was no one there to meet me, other than a lot of over enthusiastic taxi drivers. A few flustered phone calls later to no avail, I promised a taxi driver (reccommended by a security guard) that if there was no one there in 20 minutes I would get him to take me to the TAPA office, which he assured me he knew the exact location of. Just as I was about to fulfill my promise, a truck drew up and all the taxi drivers started yelling "Taricaya!", which is the name of the lodge that the TAPA project works at. I was greeted by Fernando, half of the partnership who set up the project, who informed me that he thought I was arriving by bus. He asked me if I was on the verge of tears, and I assured him that it hadn´t been that bad.
We arrived at Brombus/ the "hotel" (we are the only ones staying there) that is home to Fernando and his family, and I walked through to meet the four volunteers who had come with Fernando to help him with an errand. The first thing that I saw was a swimming pool! I nearly collapsed in suprise at the luxury. I spent a few minutes chatting to them before our food, Chinese takeaway (!) arrived, and then we all sat down to eat. After food, we set off in the van to the port where we would take the boat to Taricaya. And yay, I got my first experience of a tropical rain storm.
The boat had a roof and plastic sides to keep the worst of the rain off but I still got rather wet... was also a little concerned by the fact that apparently the engine had broken that morning, and the person who turned up to mend it apparently brought nothing but a screw driver and a spanner... the other volunteers weren´t convinced.
Unfortunately the visibility meant that I couldn´t see much of the rainforest on the journey. Suffice to say it is very green, and there are lots of trees.
The journey to the lodge took about an hour and a half. We arrived and Juliana, one of the volunteers, showed me to the room that I would be sharing with her. It is comparitively luxurious; there are only two of us, there is room to unpack at least half a rucksack, and apparently the rats are yet to invade. After that we went to a talk on ants given by Stuart, the other half of the partnership that set up the lodge. The initial impression that you get of Stuart is that he is a Cockney geeser, but he is in fact an Oxbridge graduate in biology. He really knows his ants. Did you know that ants communicate by chemical signals, and that an ant carrying a leaf 5 metres is the equivalent of a human carrying a piano across Texas? If you did, then you spend far too much time reading about ants.
Post ant talk, Juliana took me on a tour of the animal cages for the release programme. There are lots of birds - paraqueets, parrots and macaws amongst others, and two types of monkey - spider monkeys, including two babies, and another type that I don´t know the name of. There is also a taipir, and a baby jaguar, who I think is called Rachel (named after one of the staff members - I´m not quite sure what this says about the staff member.) After unpacking some of my stuff (it took a while - it turns out the logistics of putting up a mosquito net are suprisingly complicated) we went for supper, pasta with some form of meet, which was suprisingly edible. The only slight concern is the water - it comes straight from the creek and is usually brown. Most people have accepted it and moved on, but a few people lug back bottles from Puerto Maldonado every week to keep them going instead.
The next day, the whole group (I think it´s about 20 people) headed back to Puerto Maldonado on the boats. I´m sure that this will soon become as exciting as heading back to Cusco used to be from Umanes, despite the lack of ammenities in Puerto Maldonado. After spending a few hours at Brombus, we all went to a barbeque at Eugenio´s house(Eugenio is a Peruvian staff member at Taricaya - I´m still not entirely sure what he does) to celebrate his birthday, which was on Sunday. We had chicken and sauce, and it´s the kind of thing that I would usually be a little bit wary of eating for fear of getting food poisoning, but the people here seem to be unbothered by all those sorts of things. At any rate it was tasty, and I have no symptoms yet...
That afternoon I went to the market with Juliana. There are no tourists in Puerto, and the market is very much designed for Peruvians - no souvenirs to be found. I did, however, manage to pick up a pair of wellies and some flip flops, so all is not lost. I will still be able to shop in Puerto Maldonado. We then went for cake and ice cream in a cafe, and my opinion of the place was definitely improving... that evening all the girls cooked a meal and stayed in with a bottle of wine for supper. It all felt very civilised. Afterwards we went out to a club, where Eugenio strutted his stuff. I think that he had probably been drinking since quite early that morning... it certainly showed. It is strange going from Cusco, where everything is so tourist orientated, to here, where we are the only gringos. There is certainly going to be a lot to get used to in the rainforest, not least the rats, the monkeys coming into your room, and the mosquito bites.
So next week will be my first week of work in the rainforest, although I seem to have come at a very opportune moment, as on Monday we are going to visit a lake, and will be spending the night. This is what I have gathered about the kind of things that I will be doing over the next three and a bit months: three mornings a week, you have to get up at 5:30 am to monitor what kind of birds you see. This is going to be interesting... other duties include preparing food for the animals, cleaning animal cages, macheteeing (don´t know how that should be spelt) weeds, and loading boats. So it should be pretty varied.
Until next weekend! xxx
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In the jungle, the mighty jungle...
Those poor ants, i couldn't lug a piano anywhere, let alone across Texas!!!! It's hard to imagine you in the rainforest - how does it feel to have fulfilled a life long dream? Lots of love and luck for the next stages, Seed Bead xxxxxx