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The Arrival
We arrived at Parque Machia on a bus from Cochabamba. We were dropped off in the middle of a very heavy downpour and in the middle of nowhere. We walked up a trail to the entrance of Parque Machia and were directed to Inti Wara Yassi. We came through the back way, down a very slippery and uneven path and had actually done a full circle back to the main road. We were drenched by this time and did not have a good welcome from the other volunteers sat around the table. One girl had been savaged by an howler monkey that we had just walked past. She had massive bite wounds in her arm but this was not the only time we would see this monkeys tattoos. With all this anti-social behaviour, drenching rain and animal attacks we were considering taking the next bus back to Cochabamba. That was until Janet (Yanette) arrived and actually had a smile for the weary wet travellers. She was a French volunteer who was running the introduction tours. Her name was Yanette but Charlie decided that Janet was much more appropriate and so this is how it will be spelt throughout the entry.
On the 5pm tour around the park we were joined by the other arrivals of that day; a couple from Slovenia (Eva and Jarro) and an Isreali girl called Or but Janet called her simply “O”. We were walked past Quarantine, where monkeys are kept on strings and in cages, with a view to release them into the park. We were told not to touch the animals but Miel, a hideous white capuchin monkey, was on a string that extends outside Quaratine and loves to play with people. Or decided that playing with this monkey was more important than the tour and so we lost her within the first two minutes. This monkey playing behaviour continued into the Monkey Park where she couldn’t leave them alone. By this point the whole group was annoyed at her.
We were then excited as it came to job allocation time. Unfortunately almost everything was full. We wanted to work in the Spider Park or in the Clinic together but a big hairy Spaniard said “NO”. This word was accompanied by his favourite F word. We were the only ones in the group staying for a month, the others were only staying for 2 weeks. There was one Puma which needed a volunteer and it had to be someone staying with a month, so Lisa nervously agreed to look after Quirqui. She was promised that he was slow, arthritic and friendly and she also had the responsibility of looking after the raptors (birds of prey). Charlie decided to opt for Quarantine as did Eva. Jarro asked to help in construction and Or decided on the Monkey Park. Neither of us liked Andres and then Nena a lady in control of the Park came to talk to us but a dog was run over in the road and so she ran out hysterically. She never finished what she had to say.
Accommodation
It had got quite late and it was time for payment and sorting accommodation. Lisa and Charlie opted for “Luxury” accommodation but there was only one space so we went into a local hostal. This we were also told was luxury but we got a back room with lank net curtains and a whole wall green from damp. This was not the kind of room we wanted to dry out all of our wet clothing. We ended up staying here for two nights and then moved to Copacabana.
On the night we moved accommodations there was a power cut resulting in a frantic search for the torch and Charlie burning himself with a lighter as it vomited lit gas onto his hand. We walked to Copacabana by the wrong direction and entered through Bird Quarantine but managed to see many fire flies and an armadillo. A woman who looked much older than her years, and had no teeth, showed us to our room. There were two beds, one with a straw mattress and a small sponge mattress that was smaller than the bed. The other bed just had a sponge mattress. Clean sheets were brought but the room looked tired and dirty and the bathroom had definitely not been cleaned as there was still diarrhea on the underneath of the toilet seat.
Granja disappeared from Copacabana for over a week and was replaced by her son, Trans. Trans is called Trans for very obvious reasons he was a boy that dressed like a girl. After a week or two Granja reappeared with a lovely new set of teeth, which were worn for the morning washing and then abandoned. Granja also had a younger son who was called Staring Boy, again this is for very obvious reasons.
Copacabana had a kitchen which was used by other people to cook us dinners and by us to boil eggs in the morning. We started a bit of a trend for breakfast and certainly started to rival Raoul’s Café.
On first inspection the room wasn’t too bad but after a month we had suffered from clothing going mouldy from the very damp room, a leaking roof, blocked drains and old man winks small. We were ready to leave. But before we get to disappointed lets see what we actually did at the park; how Lisa coped with a very large cat? and how Charlie managed with the very sexually frustrated monkeys?
Charlies 1st job: Monkey Quarentine
Charlie opted for a job working in "Monkey Quarentine" since the other options didn't seem very appealing. The daily routine went a bit like this:
The day would start at 7.30am when we would wake up the monkeys, feed them "api" (a porridge type thing) and give them a banana, and let the ones that were allowed out of their cages on ropes. The first round of cleaning would then begin, with all the cages getting hosed out and the monkey blankets (yes, they had clean blankets every night to keep them warm!) were collected and washed.
A lunch of mixed fruits would then be prepared for the monkeys, before the volunteers took their lunch break. After lunch, more cleaning would commence, and all of the monkeys' lunch bowls would also have to be washed. Soon it would be monkey snack time, and of course any spare time was spent playing with the monkeys.
Dinner time was next - a mixture of raw vegetables. More api would follow, then soon enough it would be monkey bed time and you would have to put them back in their cages and give them their blankets.
There were two areas of the quarantine. One of them had the nicer monkeys that were allowed out on their cords (parole side) and the other had only caged monkeys (prison side). There were many characters on both sides of the divide. One of Charlie?s favourite monkeys was on prison side, but was unusually allowed out of his cage on a cord. Bernardo HATED all girls but loved Charlie and would run and jump on him. He would sit and eat on Charlie, and share his food with him. Bernardo also liked to pick Charlie?s nose and eat it and groom his head, which was a little nicer.
Some of the cages in quarantine contained two monkeys per cage. Quite often, they seemed to be the most inappropriate combinations possible. In one cage there was a huge brown capuchin and a tiny white capuchin. Everytime the white capuchin would tyry and eat, the big brown one would bite her hands and steal her food. Ha ha ha. In another cage was a very large capuchin (we named the Devil) who was kept with a very small monkey who had no hair except around the top of his head like a monk, so we called him Jesus.
There was also a cage with a really crazy monkey that would try and attack you if you approached it, for example with food or when you were covering his cage at night. One day he scratched Charlie?s face. So Charlie went and got the hose and taught the naughty monkey a lesson. When given its food, it had a tantrum, and threw it on the floor. All the other girls working in the quarantine would pick up the food and give it back to the money. Not Charlie - if food went on the floor, then that is where it stayed, i.e. out of reach. Very soon the monkey learned to not scratch Charlie, and by the end of the 2 weeks would lie with his back to the cage so Charlie could groom him.
There were some crazy monkeys that liked everyone but hated Charlie. These were unfortunately the monkeys allowed on a lead. One day one of the monkeys went crazy and attacked Charlie. Unfortunately, as it did so, it let out a piercing shriek that alerted all the other monkeys to attack as well. Charlie had to run the gauntlet to escape relatively unscathed.
Several of the (female) monkeys fell in love with Charlie. Although this sounds very sweet, it is actually repulsive. When a monkey falls in love, it wraps one arm around its chest and fingers itself with the other hand. All the time looking at you and grinning and woggling its head from side to side. They also throw things at you (stones, food, plastic cups) if you wont give them attention, and if you try to leave they will attack you viciously. The best thing is to stay away (unless you like fish fingers!)
There were two very cute baby capuchins in the quarantine. One of them was missing a tail. They were generally very nice and sat on your neck and did poos a lot.
After 14 days of cleaning up s*** and getting bitten by monkeys, Charlie decided it was time for a change. One frustrating thing about working in quarantine was that you weren't allowed to visit other parts of the aprk incasde you carried parasites there. Charlie thus decided to switch to construction.
Charlies 2nd job: Construction
Unlike in the quarantine, the constructors' days starts at around 9.30am and finished around 3pm. Also, constructors get to go to all areas of the park, i.e. visiting the spider monkeys, pumas, snakes and jungle cat trails. Charlie made a huge effort to be just like a builder in Britain - i.e. lazy. On Charlie's first day in construction he met his Bolivian workmate - Edwin! Our first job was to construct a shelter for the Spider Monkey park. From the word go it was a disaster. There were no tools and Edwin's idea of measuring wood accurately was to count strides alongside it. Never before has a circular saw been used so ineffectually. Even Charlie's limited construction knowledge thought Edwin would do well on Builders from Hell.
Soon Charlie's construction team increased. Shaun, from Australia, and Ohad, from Israel, joined the team. Both boys were very keen to work and often complained of not having anything to do. Charlie helped as best he could by not doing anything so there was more for the others to do. Fools!
One day we were all lounging out front and Edwin poked his head round and told us we had a job to do in the park. Just then, a man selling ice creams wheeled his cart past honking his horn. Charlie shouted, "EDWIN, ICE CREAMS!", meaning he was just going to buy one. Edwin misinterpreted the caustic tones as an order, and rushed after the ice cream man and bought ice creams for the whole construction team. This caused much hilarity but was big Edwin's downfall, since he was treated as a slave for the rest of the time.
It didn't take long for Edwin's lazy Bolivian bones to realize that Charlie's idea of construction was much better. On one afternoon, Andres got all sweaty and hairy and tried to make us do loads of heavy lifting, even though it was really hot. By this time, there was only Charlie and a new Australian, Jeremy, on the construction team. Charlie and Jeremy waited for over an hour for Edwin to show up after lunch for us to start work. When he failed to show, Charlie suggested as a joke that he had gone fishing. We ran down to the river, and surprise surprise, there was Edwin fishing with a fire going that he was using to cook the fish on. At one point, Edwin?s net got caught so Charlie waded into the river (which was nice as the day was very hot) and helped him with the fishing. We eventually all waded back up to the monkey mirador to begin construction on the new cage, only to discover that 2 pieces were missing. So we were all sent home early. What a great last day!
Quirqui
Lisa had a very late start to the day at 9am so decided to get up at the same time as Charlie and go to read Quirqui’s file. He is a Mountain Puma rescued from Oruro Zoo in Bolivia and suffered mistreatment. He lived in a concrete cage, which was urinated into by the neighbouring lion and was fed cow intestines which didn’t have any nutritional value and didn’t contain bones to clean his teeth. As a result he has lost many teeth and the remaining ones are very yellow. He suffers from Arthritis and his front legs are bent from a lack of calcium in his diet which made his bones go soft and now they have hardened in a banana shape. Inti Wara Yassi managed to get him away from the Zoo and on arrival he couldn’t stand or walk. After plenty of care, medication and a diet change he could walk long distances, run and enjoy the beach. Unfortunately at present time he is kept off a leash as he does not walk very far (only round his house a few times) and certainly cannot jump.
All this information comforted Lisa as he sounded a lovely cat but Lisa has had a fear of Large Cats for a long time and so she was still a little nervous. She met the volunteer looking after him (Mark from Australia) at the Café and they walked up to his cage. Quirqui lives in a brick house with windows, curtains, two mattresses and five blankets. It was another rainy day and Mark warned Lisa that Quirqui doesn’t like the rain and so won’t go out of his house. Typically for Lisa it was an atypical day for Quirqui and the Puma had gone crazy. He was extremely big about 5ft long, with a very large head and paws. He kept attacking Mark and only tried to bite me on passing but he had an angry look that day and just kept on attacking. He even jumped a little to get past Mark’s wellies as he tried to defend himself sitting down. Unsurprisingly I stayed standing.
By the afternoon he had calmed down and Lisa even dared to stroke his head, although with extreme caution and ready to remove her hand and any slight twitch from the cat. The following days Mark and Lisa just chatted most the day and ran around outside with Quirqui. Another challenge hit Lisa when it came to feeding time.
Lisa has never chopped meat in her life and often has nausea attacks when going through meat markets. Suddenly she was confronted with giant steaks for Quirqui and even worse for the raptors. The birds ate a collection of chickens’ heads, feet, gizzards and other organs. Sometimes a whole chicken carcass was presented, which needed to be chopped. Luckily Lisa found a method using a kind of hammer and chisel affair but with a knife and a knife sharpener. This prevented her having to put her hands into the carcass and break the bones manually. She was squeamish at first but soon became ruthless with a fervor that even surprised herself.
A normal day involved running around in the morning with a toy on the end of a rope and encouraging Quirqui to walk or run. For a few hours he would be very lazy and then he was attached to a rope with 2 karabiners; 1 attached to his collar and one to a small stick in the ground. He was held here for an hour and a half whilst we had lunch. On our return he was released and a little bit more walking and running and then lazing around until dinner time. Working with Quirqui gave the volunteer the shortest day of all volunteers. The cat volunteers timetable is from 9am to 4:30pm but other cat people don’t get lunch.
On one day whilst Mark was still there, Lisa made and Ann noise whilst being chased by Quirqui. Mark suddenly asked Lisa if she had heard the roar from the jungle! He he, little did he know that the creature he had heard was ANN.
The days passed well with Quirqui but Lisa did get scratched once when she went to stroke under his chin. This was the only attack she would suffer! Mark left after about 4 days and so the rest of the time Lisa was alone with Quirqui. After another week or so he started to Meeow when Lisa opened his door in the morning and when she returned after lunch. By the end of the month he trusted her and would walk past her without even trying for an opportunistic bite even if she was sat lower than him. He still liked to attack visitors if the got too close.
ANN
One day an Ann arrived and told Lisa that she was too take over as volunteer with Quirqui when Lisa left but was in the aviary until then. This meant that Ann saw Lisa every day. Ann was a typical ANN. She was a large middle aged lady with a very unbecoming hair-do and a comical accent. She told Lisa that she was an active Lady (no evidence for this sweeping statement) and would have preferred to have worked with one of the more active cats. This was thrown into dispute, when on a warm afternoon Quirqui’s things needed putting away for the night. Ann stated that she was too tired to help after 1.5 hours of lunch followed by 1.5 hours of sitting down. She had a very interesting idea of active!
Ann dressed in a very unbecoming, eclectic style and one that is particularly seen in the Ann species. Her saggy baggy top covered lolloping (apparently reduced) breasts and her bottom was covered in trousers that were far too tight for her ample being (minge-huggers). They had a cord that was pulled tight around the waist and gave the effect that Ann had a giant scar running down her giant stomach.
Ann also had an interesting way with Quirqui and tried to convince Lisa and one of the Bolivian volunteers that Q liked to be brushed. At which point she grabbed the pink broom and dragged it along his back, to which he growled and tried to attack Ann. He he. Q didn’t like it at all!
Ann's Egg
One day Ann asked Charlie to boil her an egg as she didn't know how. ANN! It then turned out she didnt have time to eat her egg, so she asked Charlie to put it in the fridge for her in a cup until later in the day. Later on, Ann went to get the egg but is was gone! She was very sad about this. The next day however at breakfast, the egg had reappeared! Ann asked Charlie if it was cooked and he reassured her that it was. Ann sat down feeling very happy wither her egg. She plunged her jammy fingers into it, only to realise that is was raw. Ha ha! Someone had stolen the egg and replaced it with a raw one. We all had to stifle our sniggers around the table. Ann yabbered on about this incident for days. It still remains one of our favourites.
Ann had an unfortunate case of flatulism, possibly caused by the egg diet, and on no account made any attempt to cover up this fatal flaw. The barrier was pushed too far when Quirqui joined in!
Meat Tolerance Pushed Too Far
Speedy, one of the raptors (a Cara Cara), was due to be released but the staff needed to know if he could kill a live animal and eat it. This lovely job fell to Lisa. A chick was taken from the Boa house, it had survived about two weeks with the snakes, and put into the cage with Speedy. At first there was a lot of fluttering around but eventually Speedy grabbed the chick in its talons and went straight for its eyes. Then the skull was broken like an egg shell in his massive beak and dark red blood was spilled onto the sandy floor. The chick appeared to be dead but as Speedy began to pluck the chick and break its wings off the chick moved more violently and purposefully than would be expected by muscle twitch. This was quite disturbing as Lisa had to wait until the chick was completely plucked before speedy went for the head and finally dispatched the chick. Lisa continued watching to make sure he ate the bird but felt like she was watching a horror film. It was completely disgusting but she was transfixed. Speed finally opened the body and hit the stomach, at which point all the seed the chick had consumed spilled out onto the floor.
Jungle Wildlife
Whilst sitting on the edge of the jungle Lisa saw many wild animals. Some of the most beautiful were the butterflies. There were many different species but all of them had such beautiful colours. There was one huge butterfly that had a wingspan of about 4/5 inches and was a brilliant blue and yellow colour. Lisa watched it fluttering around but was horrified when it landed on one of Quirqui’s old bones and stuck out its proboscis to feed. Nothing is quite as it seems in the Jungle.
An agouti (a large rat looking thing) was often seen in the area and Quirqui often tried to get it but was held back by the nasty volunteer.
One day an anteater was brought to Quirqui’s area but Q showed too much interest and so it was taken away again.
A large animal was glimpsed running across Q’s path but all Lisa saw was a retreating tail that looked particularly fox or puma like.
On the annoying side of jungle wildlife there were blood sucking flies that were much worse than mosquitoes. You can’t feel them when they land but they leave a red dot and the bite itches much worse than a mosquito bite. This is why Lisa wore the long-sleeved pink shirt for a whole month as other people got bitten all over their arms.
Whilst picking grass to make Q vomit Lisa found a very slow tortoise and noticed that there was a huge gouge out of his shell. The tortoise was carried down to the vets. The young trainee vet cleaned out the wound with water and a toothbrush with considerable pain to the tortoise as it tried to scamper away. The wound went deep into its flesh. Apparently it was an attack from an animal but the vet didn’t enlighten Lisa anymore. The wound was sprayed silver and he was then put into quarantine. There were many tortoises that would wander through the jungle near Q and often got attacked but when he tried to bite the shell he only succeeded in slobbering all over them. Lisa found a small one which he enjoyed to play with and turned it over to sniff at it until she took it away again for its own safety.
Food
In the park, there was a vegetarian caf?much to Lisa's delight) that served only the volunteers. The caf?as run on a tab system, where you wrote down what you had and at the end of the week the total you owed was calculated. By the end of the second week, we both felt that we were being overcharged. From then on, we made a list of what we had eaten so when it came to pay day we could challenge Raul, the kulak caf?anager. The day finally came around, and Charlie was charged 6 times the amount he should have been. This was questioned, and Raul sheepishly rectified the situation, but not before we told everyone what had happened, leading Raul to have the busiest morning ever, recalculating everyone's caf?abs. He he.
In retaliation for Raul?s robbery, we decided to open our own caf?n the kitchen at Copacabana. It proved very popular, and led to many funny incidents, such as "Ann's Egg" (see the Ann section). However, Edwin did steal the gas bottle one morning, so we couldn't have a second cup of coffee. He was punished later. In the evenings there were many restaurants to choose to eat at in the town. However, we found one called Jazmins that did really nice pizza so we went there nearly every night. It became a standing joke that people would ask us where we were going for dinner. Jazmins was run by a surly, roly poly 12 year old waitress that rarely delivered the food with a smile, even though we were there nearly every night. Nevertheless, we enjoyed laughing at her girth. One day she stood in a doorway, and all we could see were her rolls of fat poking out of the shadows.
Protest!
One day Charlie had to take part in, along with some other people, a march in the town as part of the Villa Tunari day celebrations. We all had matching shirts to wear and had hideous banners to parade around with. All the town officials were there are we were applauded as we marched down the parade of people. Charlie and Shaun had the biggest banner, and we were, needless to say, suitably embarrassed.
Animal Attacks
At Copacabana there were 2 dogs. One was very large with big swinging teats and a protruding vagina that dripped period blood on the kitchen floor one day. The other was smaller and liked to bark a lot. One day, Charlie and Lisa were leaving for the day to go to the park and they came across the little dog. Charlie decided to give it a good morning greeting, and clapped and skipped towards it. Normally dogs run away at this behaviour. Not this one! It started barking and tried to bite Charlie, who ran away, leaving Lisa undefended. Sensing this change, the dog turned on her and bit her wellies and then tried to attack her bag. Needless to say we both ran away screaming.
Another time, we had all arrived home in a group after dinner. Sarah went off to her room on the other side of the garden so Charlie shouted "goodnight Sarah!" This was too much for the dog to cope with, and it went crazy. It barked and barked and tried to bite us. Charlie managed to run and hide in the kitchen, but Lisa was stranded. Charlie then ran out with a witches broom to scare it away, to little effect. Eventually Lisa managed to race into the kitchen, but only after throwing her favourite packet of biscuits into the garden to distract the dog. Unfortuantely for us, there was a small audience of people in the kitchen watching the hilarious antics.
It wasn't just us that suffered from animal attacks. An Israeli girl joined on the same day as us and went off to work in the monkey park. We were all told to wait a week before bringing cameras to the park. She brought hers the very next day. An alpha male stole it from her, she chased after it and then she was attacked! Yes! It bit her ear and she needed lots of stitches. Ha ha ha. We hated her so this made us very pleased.
Rachel, a girl working in monkey quarantine with Charlie, was attacked by Talia, the howler monkey, who hates females. Charlie and Rachel were just standing chatting, when suddenly a big flash of fur rushed past Charlie, and clamped down onto Rachel's leg. Talia had broken off her lead in her eagerness to taste flesh. Two huge puncture marks were made in Rachel's leg. Although she received treatment at the clinic at the park, it got infected and the two holes merged together. She later went to the hospital and had to have it fitted with a drain. Yuk!
Another Jew had a bad experience with monkeys. Unfortunately for her, her teeth protruded excessively and her eyes goggled out of her head like a hanging victim. Her spiral hair didn't help matters either. Unfortunately, showing teeth and eyes to monkeys is a sign of aggression. So every time she ventured into the monkey park, she would get attacked. How we laughed!
Some people forgot they were working with semi-wild animals. A man from Ireland got the chance to work with a puma. However on his third day, he decided to wrestle with it and promptly broke his wrist. WHY!!!!????
Day Off
Lisa and Charlie both arranged to have their day off together. They decided to go to the areas of the park that are out of bounds. Lisa had a problem in the morning as the Cat Coordinator, a very antisocial and rude Frenchman called Harold, had obviously not remembered that it was Lisa’s day off and so she asked Ann to look after him for the day. Once this was done L and C walked down to the beach to try and see the Puma Gato but only succeeded in seeing the Baby Spectacled Bear called Baloo. He was climbing a tree and breaking all the branches he was standing on (not overly furnished in the brain department!). He was very cute and we both got to see him on a regular basis as he walked the tourist trail.
We then walked down the riverbed to where the Jaguar used to be kept. We both hit a section of quicksand but quickly removed ourselves without causing a scene as there were people around us. A few days earlier Lisa and other cat people had been asked to carry rocks from the big river to put on the floor of the old cage. The cage was now to be used for the formation of a group of white capuchins. Two of the capuchins from Quarantine where put into the cage. This cage was in one of the most beautiful settings possible as there was a lovely clear stream running over sand with a beautiful opening in the forest. We then headed up to the spider monkeys and played around with them until we decided it was time to go to the internet and spend the rest of our day to ourselves.
On another day Charlie went to meet Antonio to build a bridge on their trail. Antonio worked with a Puma called Gato, who was the same species and age as Quirqui, so Lisa decided it would be a good education for her to see him aswell. Charlie had skipped carrying cages and Lisa had skipped work entirely but to our misfortune the wierdy beardy Spanish crazy, Andres, appeared close behind us on the path. We almost ran down to the river hoping he wouldn’t follow but he soon appeared on the banks. Thankfully he stopped to chat to some people so we quickly walked down the river and turned to hide behind some vegetation. Feeling like naughty little schoolgirls we giggled quietly and walked silently behind the vegetation and back to where we had started. Gato was late down onto the beach but we soon met up with them. Gato was much smaller than Q but quite a sweet little fellow.
Party
On our last night, the people who worked at the spider monkey park had a party to raise monkey for some new equipment. Obviously we assumed that this was all a front and the party was actually for us. Everything started well at first and the drinks were flowing nicely. Unfortunately for us, Ann developed hungry vahina syndrome shortly after the start of the party and made any male or female that got in her way a potential sexing target. Sarah's monkey was violated frequently. Ann chased round many people that night fuelled by her lust. One especially targeted unfortunate was Sam, a 19 year old from Leeds, who spent the evening trying to avoid Ann?s advances.
Midway through the party there was an Api eating contest, banana eating contest and a raffle. All in all hiodeous. And all overseen by the overenthusiastic Sideshow Bob. Luckily, the booze ran out so we all had to relocate to the nearby Discoteca for ultra hideousness. Charlie and Sarah and Luis (the roly poly vet) ended up in the scary local karaoke bar next door.
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