Saturday, November 27, 2010

Crazy Life

Thursday, November 4th was a very exciting time for everyone.  Jack Hannah, a zoologist from Columbus, Ohio and who has his own TV show called Into the Wild and who is the director of the Columbus Zoo (which just surpassed San Diego Zoo as the best zoo in the U.S.) came with his camera crew to film a show at Taricaya.  It was quite the experience :). I am starting to believe more and more in fate.  I wanted to do turtles that day, but Bridget, a staff member, put me on animal feeding instead because there weren`t really any turtle activities.  It couldn`t have worked out better.  The film crew wanted to film us preparing the food in the animal kitchen.  So as me, Bridget, Sam, and Sarah were chopping things up and preparing food the camera crew came up the stairs and started setting up.  They didn`t give us any direction so we just tried to act normal.  Earlier we were saying we should all chop really stupidly and do stupid things, but none of us ended up doing it haha.  The camera man would zoom in really close to the food we were chopping and then zoom in really close to our faces.  It took all my strength to not crack up laughing.  I think I made a really serious face that was kind of bug eyed instead hehe.  One of the volunteers tried to play it cool and toss a piece of apple into the scale and just knocked it over.  It was all very funny.  Then Jack Hannah`s wife and daughter came up and started helping us.  I didn`t know if I was supposed to interact with them or not on camera so I kind of just laughed when they said things.  After the camera people left we continued to prepare the food.  As I was animal feeding the parrots the male parrot attacked my head because his mate is pregnant.  So if you can imagine me trying to be quite because the camera crew was near and wacking away a bird and putting the feeding bowl on my head to protect myself... please do.  Jack Hannah wanted to film some of the baby turtles that had hatched being released so me and Laura went up to the lab to mark them.  We mark them by cutting a little triangular section on their shells.  When they grow up the turtles will still have that mark so we can identify when they were born.  Then Jack Hannah and his family came up and me and Laura were filmed telling him about the turtles and showing his family how to mark them.  It`s funny how they pose you doing things.  After Jack`s (yes, I can call him that after I introduced myself lol) family released the turtles and no one was by the boat, me and Laura were directed to pretend to be looking at them releasing turtles so they could get a shot.  Before Jack left he was telling us how he has been all around the world.  He said he`s filmed some 400 shows and that only about 20 have been about a single place.  He said he thought they definitely had enough footage of Taricaya for 1 show.  The show is supposed to air in January or February.  I can`t wait to see it.  It`s going to be hilarious! 

As everyone was waving goodbye to Jack`s boat, a giant grasshopper landed on me.  I didn`t want to freak out so I just stood there as it crawled up my arm and behind my neck to my other arm.  Finally, Stuart decided to get it off me.  Instead of just swiping it, he pushed it against my skin.  It has little hooks all on its legs so it did not feel good lol.  Then the grasshopper bit me!  I didn`t know they could bite but it actually pulled my skin with it until it let go.  It was such a weird sensation I got shiveries!

Friday, November 5th was Taricaya`s 9 year anniversary so we were going to release the turtles that were born in our beach.  We marked 547 of them that morning.  When we were marking them Heather found a turtle with 5 legs!  On the fifth leg it had 2 feet!  We called it the 5 legged freak haha in an endearing way of course.  After we had marked all the turtles we went to the turtle beach to check it out and make sure everything was okay.  It rained a little so there were muddy spots.  Zack, Simon, Heather, Amanda, and I just had to go mud slidding in the oh-so-perfect mud.  Then we pretended to be turtles and crawled into the water.  It was a lot of effort haha it`s hard being a turtle. 

Later that day we went to release the turtles.  It was a beautiful experience.  It was funny though because some turtles went the complete opposite way of the river.  We had to correct them.  So when a whole bunch of volunteers pretended to be turtles again, Heather and I were the confused turtles and just went around in circles.  I put a green bucket on my back as my shell.  I was wearing my last pair of clean clothes... but it was well worth getting them dirty and wet. 

That night was a huge BBQ to celebrate.  It was delicious!  There was Sangria, different meats, bread, guacamole, chips, and potatoe salad. 

When we were driving into Puerto on Saturday we hit a sandbar.  Everyone got jolted forward.  Heather, a couple other volunteers, and I jumped out of the boat (my jeans got soaked) and helped push the boat back to water.  It was really funny.  Also on the way to Puerto Heather and I made up this whole medieval story that included everyone on the boat.  We had princesses, princes, jesters, witches, love, evil plotting, and more!  hehe it was quite fun and people were wondering why we even started the tale... but then they remembered it was me and Heather and expected nothing less haha. 

There is a new favorite restaurant I have... El Hornito!! It is a pizza place.  Oh. My. God.  It is so good!  I got a hawaiian pizza and I almost died with delight from good food.  The restaurant also has mexican food that I am going to try tonight. 

As you can imagine, in the jungle there are many creepy crawlers waiting to surprise you.  So it is not uncommon to be getting ready for bed and hear a scream from a few bungalows down.  ¨What is it!?¨ we yell as we go running to the bungalow that is getting attacked by an unwanted visitor.  This happened to our neighbors one night and they screamed for Heather and I to go help them.  We rushed to their room to find a gecko crawling around.  The capturing of the gecko was a lot of us running around, screaming, and laughing.  Heather finally grabbed it behind the neck and threw it out the door.  The gecko was still on the deck though so one of our neighbors tried to get it in a bucket, but ended up just chopping off it`s tail!  The tail twitched insanely for about 10 minutes.  Heath grabbed the gecko and put him in the forest, but that didn´t keep him away!  About a week later, when our neighbors had moved out, Heather and I went in their room and saw the tailless gecko on the wall again.  He´s a persistant little fellow hehe

We recently got 3 new spider monkeys to rehabilitate.  One older one used to be a pet so it is super clingy.  The other two are 4 month old baby spider monkeys.  They were stripped away from their mothers too early so they are also clingy.  One day when I was feeding them it took me 10 minutes to get out of the cage because I had monkeys clinging all over me.  I one point I had two monkeys stacked on top of my left sholder.  Both of their faces were on my cheek.  It was super cool.  It broke my heart when I left because the older one just did not want to let go.  I wanted to take him to my room and keep him, but I sadly had to refrain. 

Some of the new volunteers don´t like Muneca, our yound howler monkey.  I love Muneca!  We were all in Nicol´s and Muneca´s cage and they were trying to get Nicol´s attention and would cringe when Muneca came because she was being a rascal.  She bites a little, but it doesn´t hurt too bad.  She was biting me, but then I took her tail and bit it to show I was dominant.  To my surprise it worked!  After that she was really clingy towards me and kept licking me hehehe it tickled.  She also kept trying to go down my t-shirt.  Finally, I opened my collar a little more for her and she just crawled right in.  She chilled in there a moment and then crawled out the bottom like I was giving birth to her.  I love that monkey:)

In the jungle, we get quite inventive for games and activities to entertain ourselves.  One night, when me and Heather got back from our second caiman hunt, we invented board running!  There was a piece of wood leaned up against the lounge´s roof at a slant.  We entertained ourselves for about 30 minutes by just running up this piece of wood.  It started out as who could get the most steps up the wood.  Then it was how high you could get.  Then we were really getting to be dare devils and slidding back down it while standing up and doing tricks.  It was great fun.

As Heather and I have both mentioned before... we miss and love food haha.  Heather and I attempted to make s´mores one night.  After dinner, we snuck away to our bungalow and prepared the feast.  We lit 4 candles in the middle of our room for the heat we needed to crisp our sugary mellow of marsh.  It was a weird blend of flavors, but it worked.  For some reason the marshmellows had a fruity aftertaste even though they were original flavored.  We were also using Peruvian vanilla crackers, Peruvian chocolate coins, and asain peanut butter haha.  It was a treat though and I would probably do it again on a special occasion. 

That same night, Heather and I had a very unwanted visitor in our room.  As we were getting ready for bed Heather saw a huge spider, slightly bigger than my palm, underneath one of the flaps of her towel.  It was like a baby tarantula, but with thinner legs.  It took us a half hour of getting mentally prepared and warmed with boots, pants, gloves, a broom, a dustpan, shoes, and our neighbor, Anna, to kill the monster.  Heath ended up killing it with my shoe as Anna and I watched in fear of it scurring if she missed.  Heath is the best. 

Every Sunday we unload the boat for supplies.  So as we were finishing up unloading, somehow mud throwing got involved.  The girls were being attacked by the wrath of a frenchman!  Not really, we were just messing around, but it sounded better.  Anyways, all the girls were getting mud smeared on them by this one guy.  We of course retaliated.  When we were through we had to take tribal jungle pictures.  So armed with machettes and posing in the trees we took pictures of tribe hen house.  Then we decided to chase random people with the machettes.  Some people would actually get legitimate fear in their eyes as they saw 6 mud covered, machette clad, crazy women screaming and running towards them.  3 of us then decided to run through the kitchen filled with people.  We all got stared at as we ran from the front door of the kitchen to the back screaming and flailing our weapons.  Only one word can describe it... AWESOME.

Later I had forgotten something in the kitchen so was sprinting from my room to the kitchen.  Heather had just walked down the steps and one of our neighbors was sitting at the top one smoking.  As I got right below the kitchen to the wood planks, my foot got caught in the space between the planks so I lost my balance.  My other foot went in between the planks too and I rammed my stomach/whole body into the first step.  It must have looked hilarious, but our neighbor kept asking ¨Are you okay!?¨  I was too busy laughing  to answer and ended up upside down on a step I was laughing so hard.  I learned my lesson though... slow down before you reach the planks haha.

A new project we´ve been doing is setting up motion sensor cameras to spot wildlife.  I felt very scientific as Heather and I programmed the cameras to put them up.  I imagined myself doing something like that sometime in the future. 

As a break from Taricaya, we occasionally head to Amazon Planet for a breather.  A group of us headed their when it had just gotten dark.  We were walking in a line on the path and didn´t think anything of the walk we have made hundreds of times.  It was Simon in front, me, Jeremy, Heather, and Anna was last.  We are just walking along when I see this coiled snake raising his had and his moth open right by Simon´s leg and me heading straight for its open mouth with my next step!  I screamed and pushed everyone back.  We thought it was a posonous snake because the poisonous ones usually stand their ground, which this one definitely did.  And the crazy thing is that I wouldn´t have seen it if my mom hadn´t sent me a new head lamp in a package which I received a few days before!  We thought that the snake was a Bushmaster and were freaked out because that is an extremely poisonous and aggresive snake.  Simon was the only one on the other side of the snake and we couldn´t get him to our side because of the forest around us and the snake was too close to us.  Therefore, we sent Heather and Anna to got get Daniel.  The people that were left watched the snake carefully in case it moved.  We also made a lot of noise so nothing came and attacked us from the forest.  Nando ended up coming back with Anna and had brought with him a long green branch.  He had cut all the leafs off of it.  He told us to back up and with one big downward stroke of the branch the snake was dead.  We discovered the snake was actually a Ferdalance (The 3rd most poisonous snake in our area.  The 1st is the coral and the second is the Bushmaster.) and showed us its fangs.  They were as long as my finger nail.  If it had bitten us and injected all of its poison we would have died.  Nando also said that when people are walking the first person wakes up the snake (Simon), the second makes it angry(Me), and the third usually gets bitten (Jeremy!).  It flucuates a little so me, Jeremy, or even Heather might have gotten bitten.  And the only reason I saw the snake was because of my new headlamp... THANK YOU MOM!!!  Later, I saw a pic of someone´s leg that was bitten by a Ferdalance.  Their whole leg was black and grey and rotted away by the poison.  Considering the hospital is two hours away and it´s not that great of a hospital someone could have died. 

Here we are not only learning spanish, we are learning the different dialects of english speakers.  It is so funny to hear and say the differences between British english and American english.  They call their mom´s ¨mum¨ and spell it with a u too.  Heather and I were talking about q-tips and one guy thought we were talking about a cue from a pool table and putting it in our ears.  They call q-tips cotton swabs.  There are many  more but I can´t think of anymore at the moment.

Sending mail internationally is an interesting experience.  My mom sent one package on Oct. 30th which I got on November 12th.  She sent another package before on Oct. 14th and I didn´t receive it until November 14th.  The second package I got had Halloween masks for me and Heather, but since Halloween had passed, we couldn´t resist but to use them anyways.  We put them on and pretended to be birds outside.  We then ran through the kitchen full of people and decided to attack Zack because he had bread and we were birds haha.  We chased him over a table and around the outside of the kitchen.  Thank you Ria and Mom for the masks:)

I will write again after lunch!

No comments:

Post a Comment