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A MONTH IN THE JUNGLE.............
...............And what a month it was!
Well I have finally found the stamina to begin to put into words my experience in the rainforest. Although it is no easy task, as most of what I did and saw would take a month to describe. I'll start by saying that remote is not the word! It took 2 days to get to Bilsa Biologica Reserve. 5 hours on a coach then 2 hours stood on the back of a truck on a muddy road. Over night at 'La Ye de la Laguna' in a cabin by the most beautiful lake (RAMSAR site for those of you who care!), swam in it in the eve and again before breakfast - later learned that they have a healthy population of large caymen! Then the whole of the next day on the back of a horse ploughing through the mud. Finally arriving at the house in the dark, ate dinner with my new 'family'by candlelight and knew then that it was going to be an adventure!
The reserve exists to help to protect the small amount of primary wet forest lest in western Ecuador. And it was an interesting learning curve over the month; becoming friends with families in the local community, the very people who clear land for farming. In all fairness though the bigger problem is logging; but I wont go into that, mainly for fear of worrying my family with some of the not so nice stories about heavy handed tactics to put Bilsa off buying land to stop logging. So the foundation (Jatun Sacha) has the huge job of managing the reserve, and reforesting secondary 'bosque'. As volunteers we worked 6 days a week; collecting seeds from hardwood trees such as mahogany, managing seedling beds, and I spent one day out with the park guards actually planting trees at a break-neck speed, but not until I'd been there 3 weeks and was strong enough to keep up! The other days we worked on site maintenance; working in the medicinal garden, building paths, carrying huge bunches of bananas for us to eat etc! And the other days we worked with the scientists based at Bilsa; doing bird surveys, and amphibian and reptile surveys. Both of which were awesome; the bird survey involved getting up at 4 to set up nets and spend the day catching and disentangling small tropical forest birds, then taking various measurements; blood, pollen etc. The humming birds were the best, it was just so amazing to handle them. I got quite involved with the amphibian and reptile surveys which were really tiring but very rewarding. It is just amazing to know that unlike the UK there is a really high chance of you finding a new never seen before species (One of the local boys brought us an unusual frog which we took lots of photos of for Quito uni to decide if he was undescovered or not!). We went out and searched a transect during the day and again at night, using a stick to avoid being bitten by snakes! So I got to see some unbelievable frogs, lizards and snakes, and as a bonus plenty of tarantulas, diablo insects, blue morph and owl butterflies (huge!), sleeping birds under leaves, scorpions and other great insects to name just a few. Lets just say my fear of the dark went out of the window by the second night transect! We also got to go out hiking other days when we got taught about the forest etc. The best hike was one up a river, when we had to swim up gorges amongst huge rock spiders and lots of fish. Then scramble up waterfalls and through pools, the highlight being practicing my climbing skills up the middle of a 10m waterfall over a huge pool: awesome fun!
We had 3 trips away from the house, camping and staying at the next village away (a 6 hour hike!). One of the camps was to look at some land that Carlos the director was interested in buying. We stayed at a families farm; which I thought might involve some kind of solid wooden building, but it didn't! It was just a wooden shack on stilts in the middle of knowhere, with the river the wash in! (I never took the cold shower back at Bilsa home for granted again, and even that is just rainwater!) We had to go fishing for our breakfast, lunch and dinner and ate a lot of fish and bananas over those 4 days!! The trip to Dogola the next local community was also insightful. The people were lovely and the kids were enchanting. We spent time at their 'library' and some time at their 'bar' too!
For fear of going to too much I'll leave it there. Both the other volunteers and the full time Bilsa staff were fantastic. My Spanish has been improved hugely (thanks partly to all of my Spanich volunteer friends!). I've had an unforgettable month, with more experiences than I ever even imagined to gain. I was very sad to leave, but it was the end of adventure chapter 1. And so begins the latin american experience.......
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