Hola mis amigos!

Well it's been an interesting week! I can't believe I've only just been here 2 weeks, it feels so much longer. It's all good though! I've been in Tena, Ecuador for a week, staying with a homestay family. They are lovely - so friendly and welcoming and the food is gorgeous!! (most of the time... we had something questionable last night but made up for today with pancakes and fruit for breakfast!!!) Bilma and Raul, the parents, have three daughters, Jessica and Patricia, 17 and 13, really nice girls (with great advice on good spots to go on a night out!) and Heather (!) who is 3 and full of beans. She can't sit still for 5 minutes, and LOVES the volunteers who come and stay. On my first day she was in my room helping me unpack which was very sweet. I have to say and I may have said this before that Ecuadorian kids and babies are the cutest most gorgeous I have ever seen!! The house is quite big and it's sort of like a mini farm - it has chickens wandering around and a cockerel from hell who hollers at random intervals in the night but usually around 3am and always seems right outside my door. They have two dogs, Ozo and Fu, who are gorgeous dogs, two cats, Pepe and Perla (Perla is simply too cute for words, still a kitten!) and a monkey, called Cheta!! I've fallen in love with monkeys since coming here. Cheta is a spider monkey, and she'll climb all over you, and she's so intelligent! You'd have to see it to believe it. Our rooms are really nice - they have enough room for 7 volunteers, each with their own room, and they're arranged in two rows facing each other across a courtyard/garden behind the main house where we go to eat. It's absolutely bloody boiling hot here, even when it rains, which it does quite a lot!! I'm getting used to it now though and doesn't matter how sweaty and covered in dust or mud you are you still get hooted at by the boys... Hannah, the girl I met by coincidence in the hostel, arrived on Saturday, it's great having her here to go out with and we get on like a house on fire. On Saturday night we hit the town, first going to a cocktail bar where I swear the cocktails were a glass of spirits with a token dash of coke. Of course being so obviously foreign we attract quite a lot of attention and before we knew it two Quichuan guys asked to join us. Quichuans are the indigenous people here. They were really nice guys to be fair and we had a good night out and went to one of the discotecas on the river where we danced salsa! The boys were getting a little too close for comfort though so we told them we'd be back in a minute and legged it. Tena's so small though I can see us bumping into them at some point....! On Sunday we weren't feeling that great but went to Misahualli and chilled out on the beach on the river and went on a little trip in a canoe.

My volunteer work is also going well. The park is on an island between the two rivers of Tena. It reminds me a bit of Jurassic Park, in that they've tried to create a mini jungle on the island. It's very popular for school trips and with families. It's so green and lush and the the trees are so tall. You can see that Tena is in the jungle as it is quite green especially as you go out further into the suburbs and on the horizon the jungle just seems to go on forever - it's vast! Anyway on the island, they have animals both in enclosures and free in the park. They have lots of birds, parrots and Toucans, (one of the toucans is loose in the park and will perch on your shoulder!) rodent type things, jungle cats (a jaguarundi and a tigrillo - the jaguarundi is really old and she has no teeth, so you can put your hand in the cage and she'll lick and gum chew your fingers, they call her Abuelita which means Little Granny!) they also have lots of warthogs - one of them is completely tame and loose in the park, her name is Sambita and she will nuzzle you quite insistently until you scratch her belly. They have a big Tapir which is just wandering around, you can pet him too... they have snakes also, 2 Boa Constrictors and an Anaconda - I met the guy who donated the Anaconda to the park they other day and he said next time she sheds her skin he'll take her out and let me hold her!! Apparently he used to just have her in his house as a pet, just loose, no cage... what a mentalist. When he moved out his family weren't too happy about having the snake left there so he donated her to the park.

So then, there are the monkeys. They are all so cute! They have squirrel monkeys, white bellied spider monkeys, some other really tiny monkeys, another more furry monkey and other types... I can't remember them all. SOme are in cages but some are free. I like the white bellied spider monkeys best. One of them is in a cage because he can be a bit aggressive, his name is Daniel. He makes the most hilarious noises and sticks his long tail and arms through the cage to grab hold of you, he loves people, but is just a bit too boisterous and excitable to be let out. There is one though that is loose in the park, and yesterday I was working clearing the paths for the visitors and I looked up to see him sitting up the path from me. He seemed scared and ran away anytime I went nearer to him. I just carried on and bit by bit he came closer and closer, and he was making the funniest faces, as if you was saying "Oh!" all the time, and shrugging his shoulders and looking at me with the biggest brown eyes... then all of a sudden, he came right up to me and latched himself onto my leg. He just hugged it. I have to say I was quite alarmed as I'd heard that one of this type of monkey had bitten an American volunteer a few weeks ago (it was the American's fault tho) so I didn't want to aggravate it, so I just stood there with this monkey hugging my leg. I didn't really know how to get it off so I started walking, and he was still holding on for dear life to my leg. Eventually after I got nearer to the main bit of the park he got off and went away, but when I went back to work there he was again... so I asked the other people in the park about it and they said he's fine, wouldn't bite unless I was violent with him and tried to pull him off. So today I was back in the same bit of the park and he comes running up to me with his arms in the air running on his back legs, it was so funny. Pretty much straight away he latches himself onto my leg, really hugging it, giving me little squeezes now and then, and this time I stroked him a bit and scratched his head, then carried on working, with the monkey on my leg. To get him off I just have to start walking and he's get off... but he'll soon get back on again. It was very amusing and something I will never forget!!

So it looks like I'm writing another essay, I could write loads more but I'll stop there. Oh one thing I must mention is that when I was making artesan jewellery on the platform by the bridge (they're doing a course there and Eva, who works on the door doing the tickets, asked me to join in) the boys had been out to get food for the animals and came back with a Quichuan delicacy. So I went with Eva to try it. Turns out that it was a pile of bees on a big leaf, which had been roasted - you're supposed to chew them, spit them out, then have a bit of yuca. I took one look and thought "yeah right as if I'll ever put a bee in my mouth on purpose" but then again I am here to try new things, so after about ten minutes of trying to put one in my mouth and chickening out at the last minute, and I actually did chew it and it was actually quite nice!! It was quite sweet, and fairly enjoyable apart from when I remembered I was eating a bee. I had two and that was enough. My workpals of course found it hilarious that I found it such an ordeal. These bees apparently only come out 2 or 3 times a year, they fly out in big swarms at 5am and the Quichuan people catch them and roast them. They're a real treat apparently!!! I think I'll stick to chocolate for that!!

Right I'm stopping there. Hope all well with you all, please write with your news, I love reading your emails! I'll be uploading photos onto Facebook soon so take a look.

Lots of Love

Caroline xxx