i´m not sure that two consecutive blog entries could contrast more - from drinking cocktails on the beach to one cold drink a week being unbelievable luxury; from having one of the best meals of my life to eating potato-based slop for dinner, every. single. night; from samba music in the streets to "my heart will go on" played repeatedly on panpipes by bolivian teenagers. that being said, the last blog had no big cats, no macaws, and no cheeky baby monkeys, so it doesn´t win on all accounts!

the reason that it has been such a long time since the last blog is because i couldn´t quite bring myself to leave "jungle life" after only three weeks. the park that i was volunteering at was packed full of amazing animals [see photos], utterly wonderful people [see somewhat less-representative photos], and provided a way of living that was a real breath of fresh air for me - self-sufficient, technology-free, and a complete break from the outside world. don´t get me wrong - i found the first week at the park extremely difficult. this, however, could have been because on the day i arrived, so too did the annual forest fires, meaning that, rather than getting our precious [few] hours sleep, we had to spend the nights sitting on fire trails, observing the process of the fires, armed only with machetes and rakes incase the flames were to come too close to the cats´ enclosures. thankfully, this never happened, and the fires passed after a week, allowing me to settle into camp life proper. this meant 6.30am starts, an hour of work before breakfast - preparing food for the house animals [macaws, parrots, toucans, wild pigs, deer, a tapir...], long days with the cats, and sweaty, sweaty nights sleeping on straw-mattresses, whilst being attacked by all manner of insects [mosquitoes, ants, ticks that you had to pick off with tweezers before they sucked -too- much of your blood...]

at the park we worked six full days a week, with a half day on saturday morning. this meant that: a] on friday nights everyone would go to the nearest village to drink cold beers and listen to "piano man" on the jukebox, and b] on saturday afternoons we could hitch or catch the bus into the nearest town [50km away] to use incredibly slow internet, stock up on goodies in the supermercado, and eat one spectacularly un-sloppy meal in the "international" restaurant. work days were repetitive, but i got into the routine, especially since the work was so enjoyable.

i was initially assigned to an ocelot named OB - the smallest ocelot in the park, and [in my completely unbiased opinion] most definitely the cutest cat. a day with OB would involve taking her out on a lead so that she could walk her trails and explore the surrounding jungle, napping with her when she was having a lazy afternoon, and feeding her gross chicken heads for her dinner. i was completely smitten with OB - she´s fairly "wild" in temperament - biting and scratching most days - but this just meant that when she did decide to show affection to me, after ten days or so, it was all the more special. after two weeks, a big group of volunteers leaving meant that my schedule was changed, and now i was to spend my mornings with OB and my afternoons with Inti, Wara, and Yassi, three puma sisters who have been at the park since they were cubs. at first, i was slightly scared of the sisters - they are some of the biggest pumas in the park, and compared with OB they seemed utterly huge, and terrifyingly powerful! the sisters always run when you let them out of the cage for their walks, and i was convinced that i was going to get pulled over onto my face because it became clear that a puma runs quite a lot faster than a suzie. however, within a couple of days i felt more at ease with them, and managed to stay on my feet during our walks!

there are a few moments from my five weeks at the park that are especially worth mentioning - the first being my unexpected night in the jungle. the park has a philosophy of "love, respect, and patience", and the third of these was certainly tested with me, when on an afternoon walk, Inti [my favourite of the sisters] decided she was in no mood to come home. at 7pm this was humorous, by 10pm, exasperating, and by midnight, i was convinced that we were going to be there till morning. we were, however, saved from this fate by our excellent plan to carry Inti back to the cage. bearing in mind that she is massively overweight [probably about 50kg], this was more "dragging" than "carrying", and we had to do it in shifts because it was so exhausting, but we got her back nonetheless and were back at camp ourselves by half-midnight, seven hours later than planned!

the second incident involves no wild cats, but something far more dangerous, namely bolivian kitchen appliances! my friend kate celebrated her birthday at the park, and, as i´ve been missing baking so much i decided to bake her a cake, miraculously scraping together all the ingredients from the communal kitchen supplies [plus a couple of apples pilfered from the animals´ breakfasts!] unfortunately, the gas oven was more powerful/erratic than i´d anticipated, and when i went to light it, a fireball enveloped my face. everyone came running in from the dining room, because it had been such a massive explosion, but i escaped with only a singed tuft of hair, and considerably shortened eyelashes. a slightly terrifying experience, but at least the cake was good...

the third and final incident, and the reason i stayed for one extra week at the park, was that Wara, one of the sisters, made a bid for freedom as we were entering the cage one day. as soon as she was out, she sprinted off into the jungle, leaving me and monica [a bolivian friend who was also working on the sisters with me] in complete disbelief! the first day was spent wandering around the trails where the sisters normally walk, calling Wara´s name, and wafting meat around. each night, two of us slept in hammocks by the cage, in case she got hungry and came home. we always heard things, but could never be absolutely sure it was her. on the third day of her being out, there was a kerfuffle in the pios´ [emu-like birds] enclosure, with three out of the four of them having escaped. Wara was then spotted nearby, and though we were incredibly close to getting a hold on her, she eluded us [as did the fourth pio, which never came back...] i had decided to stay until we got her back, thinking it would be a matter of days, but Wara proved far more jungle-equipped than we anticipated, and ten days later i left the park with Wara still wild, feeling that i couldn´t hang around waiting for her indefinitely. an automatic cat-trap has now been set up, and i hope to hear news of her return very soon!

before all of this park-excitement i made my way across from rio to santa cruz [the big city from which you get to the park], via the jesuit missions in the east of bolivia. this involved a very dodgy border crossing [that i later found out was used by all the drug-traffickers], and a night in an awful border town when i had no idea which country i was in - some people spoke spanish, some portuguese, some people wanted me to pay in the brasilian currency, others in bolivianos!

the jesuit missions in the area are all attached to tiny little dusty bolivian villages, and travelling between them felt like "real travelling" - i was bundled off the teeny local buses, and wandered the streets with my backpack until i came across "economico" accommodation, which was always very cheap but incredibly small, and never with another gringo in sight. for the whole time i was exploring, i never really had a clue what i was doing, but i managed to see six of the missions in five days, which felt like quite an achievement, considering how erratic the buses were! what was most remarkable about the missions was the way you approached them - driving for hours along dirt roads of nothingness, when suddenly, a magnificent church would appear! all six that i saw were in varying stages of decay or reconstruction, interesting in their own way. in san miguel i was lucky enough to be shown round by a chap who had been involved in the reconstruction of the [incredible] woodwork. he opened the church just for me, and then regaled me with information as to how everything was achieved, and with charming stories of the people he worked with. it was lovely to hear some of the background to it all.

i´m now back on the well-trodden tourist route of bolivia - doing the things that harry, ben, and will did when i was back home [i am aware that this will make for a very dull next-blog!] i´ve got less than two months left now, and i feel like there´s still a BILLION things i want to do, so it´s going to be an exciting few weeks!

ocelots and lots of love,
from a mozzie-bite-ridden suzie xxxxxxxxxxxxx