Heather and I had the great opportunity to go on an eco walk with Stuart. Stuart, I think I have mentioned, owns half of Taricaya. The eco walk was fascinating. I hope in the future I know as much about a subject as Stuart does about the rain forest. There is so much I learned that it would be impossible to write it all down. I´ll list a few things I learned : 1. the soil is not very good in the rain forest. There is rock underneath that does not give stability to roots and such. This causes trees to fall over which is key to why the rain forest is so diverse. If trees fall over, no species of plant can dominate. 2. There are parasitic plants that take over trees and surround them until the inner tree dies. We saw a strangler vine that was taking over a palm tree. The palm tree was barely alive. 3. There is a tree called a walking tree that moves a cm per year until it reaches a spot where it receives enough sunlight. 4. some trees have hallow roots (butris roots) to spread their weight over the ground so they don`t have to penetrate the ground and hit the rock.
Do you know the song that goes ¨I want to know have you ever seen the rain, coming down on a sunny day¨? It´s a great song and now I have seen the rain come down on a sunny day:) We were bird watching when suddenly it started raining... which was confusing because the sun was shining bright. It was a beautiful sight.
I can now say I have had food poisoning in Peru haha. It was not the best experience, but you learn from everything. I tried ceviche, raw fish cooked by acid, for the first time and it was quite delicious. However, I will not have it again as that night I clearly had food poisoning. Heather was my savior though and she took care of me.
The conservationist in me is getting stronger and stronger with her wanting to help the world. Even when I cut down plants to clear forest to build a new animal enclosure I get this feeling of guilt for cutting down plants that take CO2 out of the atmosphere. I hope this conservationist side of me becomes more knowledgeable about the earth and helping it.
Btw beetroot is an absolutely amazing color of dark purple. It amazes me that these natural things have such powerful colors.
Last weekend only 7 girls stayed at Taricaya while the other volunteers went into town. It was SO fun. We wanted to go fishing and so Gigo gave us all reels and took us on the Titanic (the smallest boat we have) to a creek across the river. Gigo is the best boat driver here. There was so many trees and debris in the creek and he avoided everything. Going down the creek reminded everyone of a ride out of a theme prak. We expected fake dinosaurs or fake sharks to pop out at any moment. When Gigo couldn´t go up the creek anymore, we stopped and got our spots to go fishing. There were quite a lot of us to fish in the same spot so we tried to spread ourselves out on the bank. I tried fishing on the boat with a few people, but my line kept getting sucked under the boat. So I decided to venture upstream where no one else was. It looked like an easy take... that was until the mud. Suddenly, I was knee deep in mud that sucked my legs in its grasp. When I decided enough was enough and I needed to turn around... It was an impossible task hehe. My chocos were getting stuck in the mud and I wasn´t about to leave my 100 dollar pair of sandals in the greedy mud. At one point Heath looked over and started laughing because all she could see was my torso. I saw a stick by me and knew all that needed to happen was for some air to reach my foot so I tried using it and got my foot out, but my beloved choco was still trapped in the mud. I then tried to use the stick to hook my choco and lift it out of the mud. The stick broke. So not only were my legs covered with mud, but also my arms because of digging for my sandals. Heath kept looking over and laughing hehe. And then Rachel decided to come and help me. When we got my shoes out we both covered ourselves in mud hehe. Rachel floated down the creek a little ways and pretended to be a mud monster. No one was catching fish so we all got a little preoccupied by the mud. Then we decided to have a mud fight. IT WAS TERRIFIC! WE chucked mud at each other until everyone was covered. We did it for such a long time that the Titanic was covered with mud, too. As we went back to Taricaya, the only clean part of our bodies was our teeth. Then Gigo let us out of the boat a little ways up the river so we could float down to Taricaya and rinse off in the river. I had so much mud in my hair I looked like a statue. It took the river and 2 shampoo rinses in the shower to get all the mud out of my hair hehe. Totally worth it though:)
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