Waking up before sunrise to animal noises, working all day cleaning up poop and dodging the monkeys peeing on you from above, eating tasteless horrible food, covered in bug bites, mopping up toilet and rain water from the bedroom floor daily, and at night checking each other´s hair for lice while the girls seperated by paper thin walls in the room nextdoor have dance parties listening to horrible music... Ah, the life of being an ARCAS volunteer. At 5:30 am every morning we get to awaken to the noisy squawks of rescued scarlet red macaws. Occasionally we hear the loud hooting, howling and grunting of the Howler monkeys that sound like lions. We wake up at 7.00 and begin feeding animals; we are usually assigned to one or two cages but this week many volunteers have ... read more

Leaving Nicaragua, we got a bus to the Honduran border which was easy to cross. We had to walk to the other side of the border, crossing military men holding guns. There we waited for a mini-bus to take us to a bus station in Honduras where we could travel the PanAmerican Highway to the El Salvador border. We had to take rickshaws (looks like a red 3-wheeled golf cart) to our next destination where we were stopped a few times to have our passports checked. We arrived to Santa Rosa de Lima, El Salvador where we got small rooms with a bed and hammock. The following day we headed to Perquin, El Salvador where we had quickly learned that although many Nicaraguans try to scam you to pay more money than you are supposed to, ... read more

Aside from the intensely painful sunburn covering large portions of my body, the heat rash taking over both my legs and bum, the itchy bug bites occupying my legs and feet, and the diarrhea i’ve picked up along the way, i am really liking Central America. Currently we are in Matagalpa, Nicaragua for the next few days before heading to El Salvador via Honduras. We are planning to bypass Honduras due to the whole military over throw and all. Hopefully without incident... The landscape here is utterly amazing, forested hillsides, winding roads among small valleys and large patches of tropical trees. Prior to Matagalpa, we spent some time in Granada, Nicaragua, which is a very nice and interesting town. The road our hostel was on was a bustling market street. Rather dirty and polluted, yet full ... read more

Well, it only took 10 days, but Step got us kicked out of Rainsong! The day started out being a bit annoyed as usual. None of the other volunteers notice things wrong with animals or enclosures so it’s mostly up to me and Step to bring it to someone’s attention which usually gets ignored anyway. We had gotten a blind turtle so he was having a hard time finding food to eat and had no energy. For a few days Ben would force feed him by syringe but i just patiently waited with food near his mouth and eventually he ate. I suggested he be by himself but they said he was fine and 'he needs the company of the other two'. I am sure it stresses him out and prevents him from eating having ... read more

So for those of you keeping track, my freckle abundance has doubled due to the sun. It is still so hot and humid, even when it rains (which it does every few days as booming thunderstorms), we sweat or get wet from the rain and our clothes stay wet, never dry and start to smell sweet and damp. We were supposed to get our own rooms at a local’s guesthouse but no one is organized at Rainsong so we ended up having to stay at a hostel; we have to share a hut outside, which is fine, there is more room in the huts we share than in the rooms. And people stay up all night inside the hostel anyway so it’s better we are secluded. Most days we get up before 7 am, eat stodgy ... read more