Fun Fun Fun in the Amazonnnnnn

Hellloooooo Worlddd!!!!  Once again... I am going to run out of time and not be able to type the massive amount of stories I have! For example, today Heather, Laura (another crazy American girl from Ohio who is absolutely awesome), and I ran away from a police officer.  It was very innocent... you see, about 15 of us were in the back of a loading truck to load and unload sawdust.  Apparently you are not supposed to have people in the back of these trucks... especially suspicious looking gringos and gringas!  We didn`t even get caught on the road. We got caught at a gas station while filling our containers full of gas for Taricaya.  I didn´t even know that Gigo, a staff member, was talking to a police officer with Zack until one of the other volunteers said something.  I was busy playing Big Booty and Um pa pa with Laura and Heather hehe.  It wasn´t until we were directed to get out of the truck by the police officer that I really started thinking we might be in trouble.  Then he started asking for passports.  As a safety measure, so it doesn´t get stolen, a lot of people didn´t bring their passports. Therefore, Yannik, a German volunteer, turned to us and said ¨lets go quickly, he is asking for ID¨.  And that was the cue for us to book it!  So we start walking away quickly and I started to get into a Tuk Tuk with Zack when Heather and Laura reminded me we needed to get peanut bubber (peabnub bubber for those who have seen baman and piderman) and the store was really close.  We then ran across the busy street and a little out of sight.  Heather was wearing two shirts and took the outer one off to disguise herself haha.  I mentioned we should all change clothes as a joke.  There is a tower where you can overlook Puerto in the middle of a roundabout that me and Heath have always wanted to go up and that happened to be right by us, and the perfect hiding spot. We then crossed the busy roundabout to get into the tower.  As we walked up the stairs (calorie burner let me tell you) we observed the police officer still talking to Gigo and the other volunteers leaving to get out of sight.  Everyone was safe and fine, but it was truly an interesting experience to run away from a police officer.  I of course would never to such a thing in the states;)

One of the hardest activities I´ve experienced here is carrying wood.  Okay, yes that sounds simple, but the wood was extraordinarily heavy and we had to carry it 2 km out into the forest.  Me and Heather would carry 2 to 3 wood planks between us at a time on our shoulders.  My spine still feels a little crunched from it.  I might be a tad bit shorter hehe.  My big bro will enjoy that;)

I have done lots of different tasks, but have done some tasks over and over.  I am not sick of a single one of them yet.  I still love trail clearing ( machette power!) and gathering fruits.  We go to different farms that we are on good terms with around the Madre de Dios and get different fruits that we need for different animals.  I like getting the papaya.  You have to have a huge stick about 2 or 3 times my height to knock the papaya off the tree and then your partner catches the fruit before it smashes to smitherins (sp?) on the ground.  It is like a game :)  I also cut down some more leaves for the tapirs and I didn´t have an allergic reaction like I did the first time! woohoo!

One of my new nicknames around Taricaya is Tortuga.  It means turtle.  It started when I fell asleep on the boat and I woke up and looked up all weirdly and tired and then laid back down.  Gigo made fun of me for it and so I started calling him Tortuga and then he started calling me Tortuga.  Everytime we see each other we yell Tortuga.  Even some of the other volunteers started doing it hehe.  I still haven´t found anything to get back at Gigo for turning us blue... I tried to stick him with a pineapple top (they are extrememly spikey down here, they hurt a lot when you get stuck by one) last night and he saw it coming so it ended in me chasing him and throwing it at him (bad idea) and him coming after me and getting me back haha.  If anyone has any good ideas please let me know:)

Another activity I had the pleasure of doing was setting up butterfly traps.  Gigo studies butterflys and has an enclosure full of them at Taricaya.  Butterflys only fly up so we set food at the bottom of this tubular netting.  When the butterfly comes and eats food, it flys up into the trap for us to get.  We set up 15 of these traps one morning.  In order to get the rope around a branch (some are very high you can imagine) we had to tie the rope around a stick and try to throw it over the branch.  While we were setting up a trap, Sally (an awesome volunteer from Australia) and I heard what sounded like a growl behing us.  My heart instantly beat faster and I turned around to see nothing but forest.  That was until I saw the humming bird about three feet from us that was making the loud noise haha.  I was definitely in fight or flight mode, but was still able to admire the hummingbird´s beauty. 

Another fun activity is going and analyzing mushrooms with Zack.  Zack is a volunteer, but is leading a mushroom study here.  We tend to have a lot of extra time when we do mushrooms though so also do things that are important... like building a basketball hoop (heckkkkkk ya!!!!!)

An adventure I have not mentioned yet is floating down the river.  It has come to be one of my favorite things to do.  Rachel and Lucy (British girls that are fantastic) had the brilliant idea to get Dan (a staff member who has since left Taricaya and we all miss dearly) to drive the boat up to New Farm and let us float down the river with life jackets (bouyancy aids as Lucy calls them) back to Taricaya.  We were quite the site:) There was about 20 floating orange bodies.  Ben stayed on the boat and took a whole bunch of pictures of us.  There was a lot of Titanic references.  ¨I will never let go Jack¨ was said by, I swear, every single person haha.  It was over far too quickly. 

Whenever there is a celebration at Taricaya (birthdays or someone important leaving) it usually involves a cake.  Many different cakes have been made that are interesting and delicious haha.  Me, Heather, David, and the cooks Reyna and Sheyla made a coffee and lime cake that was decorated with chocolate, lime, and corn flakes.  It was good even though it was a surprising combination hehe.  The most recent ones were vanilla and apple (awesome) and vanilla and oreo (awesome, awesome!).  Of course all of them are covered in, as Rachel put it, ¨copius amounts of chocolate sauce¨.  It´s sinfully delicious because the chocolate sauce is warm and delightful. 

What I have not mentioned yet, and that is a necessity to mention, are the Taricaya Olympics!!!!! On Gigo´s birthday it was extraordinarily hot so all activities in the afternoon were canceled for the Taricaya Olympics.  They included runnign with an egg, 3 legged race, egg toss, wheel barrel race, and perhaps the most fun... TUG OF WAR!!!  Everyone was split up into teams and, of course, getting super competitive hehe.  My team name was named Team South America!!! in a weird tough sounding voice ;)  In the running with the egg race my team dropped the egg (oops).  In the 3 legged race my team did fairly well but it hurt really bad (tough string in the jungle).  The sack race was hilarious because people were falling everywhere, I barely managed to stay up.  Me and Lucy got really far apart on the egg toss, until it broke on me and got all over my shorts.  In the wheel barrel race, Yves was supposed to hold my feet but my legs were too sweaty and slippery so I landed on my face a couple of times haha.  The tug of war was EPIC.  My team lost to Yessi´s team, but Dan needed a sub for a girl so recruited me to his team, Dan´s team ended up getting second.  I was slightly honored:) We watched the next match with Yessi´s team and it was absolutely hilarious.  Yessi is 5ft. with about 100 pounds or less on her.  She was at the front of her team yelling ¨they are nothing!! C´mon guys pull, they are nothing!¨and then would get dragged either way by the rope because she weighs so little.  She also bit the rope as she was pulling it sometimes.  It was hard for anyone not to yell while in the tug of war.  I yelled a lot lol.  I also got this massive rope burn across my arm.  It still hasn´t healed and I am afraid it´s going to leave a nasty scar.  We also had a staff vs. volunteers tug of war.  The volunteers won but we didn´t know that we had one extra person.  I´d rather have just won fair and square. 

Sadly, once again, I have to go catch my boat.  I love you all and hope you enjoy reading this.