Flor de la Amazonias

What a view
A rainy break time
Hola! Where to start? I have just spent the muddiest, most physically tiring week of my life :-) I left Puyo on Monday morning and headed into the jungle. It is a little weird driving into the jungle on a tarmaced road but the tarmac soon gives way to pot holed dirt tracks which seemed a little more fitting, and the buildings and population soon disappears and the scenery turns to mile upon mile of dense jungle, with mist and clouds just sitting in pockets between the hills, occasionally the clouds hang over the road and the air temperature drops quite suddenly and quite dramatically. An hour later and I am dropped off at my home for the next two weeks. The centre is placed at the top of a hill, all wooden buildings and enclosed by trees and shrubbery, however there are a few look out points were you can just stand and see for miles, rolls and rolls of mountains of jungle and in the very far distance a volcano. Almost as mezmerising as looking out to sea. At night you can pick out the odd light were small communities live but they are few and far between. The rescue centre currently does not have anywhere suitable to release it´s animals so the current residents have been at the centre for a little while but the intention is still to release them all back to the wild. The release is a problem as a license is required when dealing with wild animals and the local communities are allowed to protest on having animals released and locally that is what is happening. Luckily a new centre is just being set up deep in the Amazon where animals are more likely to be able to be released without fuss. The current animals include - monkeys (songo songo, woolly, squirrel and capichans), macaws, parrots, parrakeets, ocelot, kinkachoo, cotimundi and peccaries. The daily routine is to clean the animals cages and feed and water them. This is done in teams and some animals you enter their cage and others require coaxing into a holding cage as it is not suitable to enter the cage with them. After the feeding and cleaning it is time for jobs around the centre, this can be anything from mending cages, to building steps, to making monkey toys. Most require some kind of physical activity. I have made a mouse cage, made and poured concrete, done some brick laying, mended paths, sifted sand and carried lots of items from the road to the centre. All pretty darn exhausting. Breakfast and lunch are a free for all and dinner is prepared and cooked by two volunteers. There are 18 of us all together, so we only really need to cook once - which is quite good as it is very difficult to cook for 18 people (especially when all the decent ingredients run out!). The house rule is everything is vegetarian unless you buy your own meat, so my contribution was a spaghetti, come, lasagna, come pasta bake type affair. Not the best meal in the world but very edible, and after a hard days work as long as it is food then people are happy.