Advertisement
Billy the cappuchin
I know you´re thinking that he looks cute... but he´s such a pain. Moments later he jumped on me and started pulling my hair. Hello everyone. It’s been a pretty quite week so not much news to report. Monday was a fairly normal day. I ended up going swamp wading twice, once to check the reptile traps (we found lots of little frogs and a massive toad, all of which I had to pick up and put into carrier bags, and also a couple of tarantulas), and once because I went on a walk with Daniel 2, and he seems to love walking through swamps. I think he’s hoping for lots of squealing so he can laugh at people, but I actually don’t mind walking through swamps.
Tuesday was much more exciting. I managed to avoid New Farm activities (which are generally coffee related) and was instead on lodge maintenance, which means feeding all the animals. The baby toucans are very sweet. Up until earlier this week they were living in the animal nursery which is basically just a room above the bar where we prepare the food and keep any new animals, so they hopped around our feet as we chopped up banana. After that we got on the boat for a day trip to lake Valencia, which is about 2 hours
down river. The journey there was long but relaxing. The lake is quite large and there is lots of wildlife there. We saw a few turtles, lots of birds of varying interest, and some capybara. For lunch we had cold chicken and rice wrapped up in a leaf, so no plates involved, and it was probably one of the nicest meals that I’ve had at Taricaya. (This may have something to do with the fact that our chef, connoisseur of green been goo and unidentifiable meet was on holiday until Thursday, so all the cooking has been done by Nando and Eugenio, and is generally a lot nicer). After lunch we went swimming off the side of the boat, which was nice and cooling until you dragged yourself out of the water to find that you had turned brown with mud. Then we started on the boat journey back. It was a nice day out and it’s always nice to have something to break up the routine.
On Wednesday I went into Puerto to renew my visa with a few others. Usually when a boat goes into Puerto you have to do some work at the other end, but
unfortunately for us all the work had been done by the people who came in on Monday, so we just had a relaxing day in Puerto, which involved lots of ice cream and lounging by the pool.
On Thursday I was once again put on lodge maintenance instead of New Farm activities. I think there must have been some kind of slip up in the scheduling for me to get so lucky twice in one week… but I certainly wasn’t complaining. It was rather an interesting morning. First of all we had to release Bethany the night monkey because the howler monkey needs to go into that cage and Bethany did not appreciate his presence. The aim was to get her out into the space between the two doors of the cage so that we could close the inner one and then just open the outer one and set her free. Unfortunately she is not the most sociable of monkeys, so coaxing her towards the door did not prove easy, especially when you add on the difficulty of the squirrel monkey, who always tries to escape into that space. I kept him occupied by allowing him to crawl all
over me. He’s very sweet. Eventually we managed to get Bethany out using the help of a butterfly net, so now she is just roaming around outside the monkey cage. The hope is that eventually she will meet up with some other night monkeys (we know that there is definitely a troupe in the vicinity) and go with them, but until then we are continuing to leave food out for her.
After that we put the baby howler monkey into the cage with the remaining squirrel and brown capuchin monkeys. He seems rather shy, and has yet to stray from the edge of the cage, but happy to have a lots more space. Hopefully he will soon adjust to his new surroundings. After that we cut some sticks from fallen trees and arranged them in interesting positions in the cage next to the turkeys so that the toucans would have something to climb on, and then we let the toucans free in the new cage. The turkeys reacted rather badly, but the turkeys seem to react badly to all forms of life… hence the reason that no one ever wants to go into their cage.
In the afternoon
I had bird obs on canopy, but we didn’t see anything terribly exciting. On Friday morning, myself and one of the other volunteers hade to put up all the tents to check that they are in working order, as next week we are taking a four day boat journey down into the Tambopata reserve, where we will be camping on the side of the river at night. The hope is that we will see lots of wildlife, and the eventual destination is a clay lick which is meant to attract masses of macaws. The waters of the river are meant to be so clear that you can see right to the bottom and drink straight from it, so we are all looking forwards to a relaxing week off.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.078s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 9; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0404s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Chungfu
non-member comment
Once again you have not failed to interest me with your blog. You are obviously having such great experiences out there. It's too amazing and cool. We miss having you around though...:( x