The Passport Police and I are not Best Friends

After 5 weeks without a day off and two days lying sick in bed, I headed to Cochabamba to renew my visa. I dropped my passport off without a hitch and spent the evening pampering myself in my hotel room. In the morning, I went to go buy all of the things people had asked for from the big city but to my disgruntlement most of the shops were closed for no apparent reason. It was 11 am on a Wednesday and the streets were deserted and all of the shops shut. I did manage to find some of the things I was looking for but others, like peanut butter, eluded me even though I must have asked at 50 different tiendas. I needed to go to the supermarket but that was closed as well. I learned that there was a protest in town but no matter how many people I asked nobody could give me a straight answer as to what people were protesting. At 4 30 I went to the passport office as I had been told to do only to find it closed. The lady at the hotel said that the protests would likely close down the city until friday which means that I won´t get my passport back until Monday at the earliest. So I am going back to Villa Tunari. I am not waiting in an empty, closed city for that long. I haven´t seen Gato in 3 days and I miss him terribly and I miss the people who have become like my second family. I will just have to come back to Cochabamba to pick up my passport next week. This may be the stupidest thing I´ve ever done but that will just be loads of fun to blog about.

Meghan is a Bad Blogger

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I know it has been awhile since I blogged but I hadn´t realised until now just how long...I am sorry to those of you who have been waiting for new posts. After spending the day working with a Puma and completing my cat coordinator duties I am much more interesting in relaxing or foraging for food than in fighting the crowds and slow connections at the Villa Tunari internet cafe. Updates might be scarce until I leave.

I have been at Parque Machia in Villa Tunari for almost six weeks now. In that time, I have gone from being a newbie to being one of the most senior volunteers in the park (there is a fast turn over here. Out of the 45 odd non-permanent volunteers in the park only 5 were there when I arrived).
I am still working with Gato. I thought I would get bored walking the same trails every day but everyday there is some small drama to keep it interesting. After Callie left I worked with a Swedish girl named Daniella for two weeks. We had a very good time together but unfortunately an old knee injury was aggravated by a stumble she took and she had to make the decision to leave. From the day that Daniella left to this moment I have not had a volunteer that has come with me for more than 3 days. Sometimes this was because they were only temps and others because they could not do the job physically. The monkies have done a good job scaring off my new volunteers. One in particular, who always likes to cuddle me, decided it would be fun to bite any new person I brought with me! I now have a guy named Colin lined up for the job but I have been sick and in Cochabamba renewing my visa so I haven´t worked with him yet.

There has been quite a bit of drama in the park. There have been several attempts during the night to steal some of the animals (one morning our spectacled bear wandered down to the cafe to join us for breakfast after his cage door had been kicked in). There have also been quite a few landslides, one of which completely crushed the cage of one of the ocelots. We spent several depressing afternoons digging the debris out from her cage trying to determine if she was alive or dead but she was found alive wandering in the jungle by another ocelot volunteer.

I would like to write more but I have a serious mission of procurring personal stashes of peanut butter and other such goodies not available in our small town.

New Volunteers

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Yesterday was a sad day. 6 people left Inti Wara Yassi. Today, 3 more left and tomorrow there will be a few more. The community here is always shifting and changing as people leave and new people come. By today, the people that I had spent the most time with were were all gone and in their places were strange new faces. I will learn these new peoples´ names and when they leave I will probably mourn their departures as well.

The Halloween party was amazing. The children who live at our house helped us carve jack o lanterns out of watermelons and papaya. They were very excited to participate in a holiday that they had never celebrated. People were extremely creative with their costumes given the limited resources and experience (for many people it was their first halloween party).

I have a new partner with Gato, Daniella. Daniella is Swedish but has lived in London for the past several years. She is a very sweet girl and is highly amused by my knowledge of Swedish culture. The day´s here have adopted a constant rhythm of work and I feel as if I have been here a very long time. Time here is not controlled by a watch but by the whims of a puma. There are no weekends and the days of the week have morphed into egg day, straw day, beach day... I love it.

Even though the routine of every day is the same, there are so many dramas with the animals and people of Inti Wara Yassi that things never get dull. Today, for example, Daniella went flying off of the path as we tried to sprint as fast as Gato and both Gato and I submerged in the river trying to recross an arm that had risen substantially since we had crossed it a few hours before. It is always an adventure and even after hard and frusterating days I sit in the cafe and feel satisfied that I have done something to make the world a little bit better for something other than myself.