Advertisement
Published: October 1st 2007
Edit Blog Post
Bird
Evil evil evil Well the last three weeks have flown by but what a wonderful experience. I have been volunteering at Santa Martha Flor de la Amazonia an anmal rescue centre near puyo in the Oriente. It has been great. A great bunch of volunteers led by the inspiring Gloudina.
The centre is not large but has a wide variety of animals. There are about 10 capachin monkeys, all of which have a very distinct personality including Ninja the fiesty and intelligent young guy who is constantly tring to escape and often does, Sam who likes to protect you from the other monkeys in the cage by climbing all over you and Little Fucker who likes to steal the cleaning brush to clean his own cage - god forbid you be the one who has to take it back! Oh and lets not forget horny little Victor... enough said I think. The other animals included Johnny the woolly monkey, about six cheeky little free spider monkeys, a baby margay (big cat), a coati, kinkajous (nocturnal possum like creatures which make a noise like a gremlin), peccaries (horrible smelly creatures), tortises, and loads of birds including macaws, green parrots and parekeets (oh and a
Margay
Rescued from a circus as a baby. pava which is a type turkey). Oh and we also had a porcupine but it escaped ... more about that later.
Bacically our days started at 8am. We spent a couple of hours every morning feeding and cleaning the animals and their cages. Ahhhh, how I miss shoveling monkey poo! Then we would spend the rest of the day doing other jobs. Some days this work was around the centre eg fixing and building cages, building steps, platforms or other structures for the cages. This work was great - really satisfying to actually build something with my own two hands. I think being a builders daughter has served me well - dad you would be proud of my hammering skills!
On alternate days we did various other community work. To explain, the centre is located on land beloning to a large local family (8 kids). As part of the centres work they aim to teach the community about sustainable living (ie not cutting the rainforest down for income). Currently the volunteers are undertaking a large (and often painful) project of digging fish ponds. The comminuty has been given a grant and support to establish a fish farm. The
Good times
Chilling out around the fire idea is that the commiunity will sell the fish for income and thus establish a sustainable livelihood. Pretty cool really.
So digging fish ponds ... doesnt sound that bad does it? But when I tell you that they are located an hours trek into the jungle, we spend a good 2-3 ´solid hours digging 6 by 10 metre ponds in rocky muddy soil and then trek home again (uphill) its slightly less appealing. Especially hard when you have the company of someone from the local family like Marcela for example. Mother of 8 and digging three times more than all us put together! Fun though and really feels like youve done a hard days work and contributed to something useful.
While I say some of the work was hard, it was a very relaxed, chilled out place too. Our working hours were about 8 am to 10 am. Break for 30 mins. 10.30 am to 12.30 pm. Break for two and a half hours. 3 pm to 4.30 pm. Finish. And this was interupted quite frequently by buckets of rain which would come out of nowhere! Our free time was spent chilling out in hammocks next to an
Squirrel Monkey
Cheeky little thing. open fire listening to the sounds of the rainforest. Cant really complain can I!
Apart from Bird. Bird is an evil animal. He is one of the free birds at the centre (he cant fly). For some reason he hates all females and adores all males. He is constantly attacking us pecking at my feet (drew blood one time) and trapping us in the bathroom. One time Sinead was gone to the loo for half an hour and I wondered where she was... she had been held hostage by Bird the whole time! He was pacing outside the door. Sounds silly to be scared of a bird but he really is scary!
So the porcupine escaped. Yes not a good day for us... Gloudina had gone away for the week and left us in charge. We blame the squirrel monkeys - cheeky little things. I am sure one of them must have let porcupine out. Anyway we never found him. Hope he is ok. He was from around the area anyway and had been attacked so was just recuperating at the centre. Best of luck to ya porcupine!
We also had the chance while at the centre
The kids
At the school. (thanks to my hassling) to head over to the local school and teach english to the kids. The school has about 25 kids ranging in age from about 4 to 12. They were great and I had a really good time there. There were three of us who went over to the school for one hour every day and taught the kids some english. We were with the younger kids so it was hard to teach them. The really little ones were always distracted and the older ones a little bored. We managed to keep them all entertained though I think. We taught them english names for things like animals, colours and food which meant we could make it fun. There were loads of games involved. Very hard though to keep kids entertained for a whole hour especially when you speak very little Spanish! Luckily one of the girls spoke good Spanish so the rest of us kinda managed to muddle through. We only got to do it for about one and a half weeks though which was a bummer because I was just getting to know the kids when we left! Hopefully it will be carried on by future
volunteers.
The group of volunteers was great. We all took turns cooking dinner for everyone which was more fun than I had expected! I actually enjoyed cooking. All vegetarian so lots of pasta and rice dishes. Except on Friday which has now become the traditional evening for collecting live chickens and preparing them for dinner from scratch. Not something I was into but the end product tasted pretty good!
Other than all the hard work, I had a couple of good weekends out of the centre. The first weekend was a bit of a disaster as Sinead and I headed to Riobamba to catch the Devils Nose Railway ride. We got there too late and missed out on tickets. Ahhh well these things happen right. We did enjoy a night of excellent pizza and Lord of the Rings in english on TV! Good times.
Another weekend we made a trip to Tena. This was the weekend before my birthday so there were cocktails (rather bad ones mind you) and lots of dancing. The next day we also went for a full day of white water rafting which was wicked. I must have fallen out about 5 times.
Resting
On the way to fishponds resting on an oil pipe Great times.
Oh and I even got to catch up with Mel from Nelson again ... and made some rather spur of the moment plans with her. To explain, we are heading to Columbia tomorrow morning. Before you panick let me make three things clear (a) i am not going alone (b) we are flying straight to the carribean coast and (c) we are not planning to take any long distance buses. Yay! So should be fun I think. Looking forward to long white beaches and cocktails in the evenings!
And before I say goodbye to Ecuador for good , I would like to record a few of the things that made it special...
1) The buses. What can I say? Long bus rides on uncomfortable seats. Latino music blaring even in the middle of the night, violent movies on repeat, and lots and lots of food.
2) The Galapagos Islands. A truly inspiring place. Anyone considering whether it is worth the money - yes yes yes!
3) The bakeries. The best pastry goods I have ever tasted!
4) And of course Santa Marta. It will hold a special place in my heart. I encourage everyone considering a stint of volunteering to get there now!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.071s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 11; qc: 48; dbt: 0.0333s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb