Simply Spanish (Mendoza)

The last leg of my journey to Mendoza was decidedly less dramatic and far more comfortable than the rest of the trip had been. I had a beautiful full night´s sleep on a seat that reclined fully horizontal. In the morning, I awoke to a hot blue sky day and my mother waiting on the bus platform so excited that she could barely stand still. She hadn´t seen me in 5 months.
In the following days my parents and I found a language school (after being told by a lady in the tourist office that there were no schools that taught Spanish in Mendoza) called simply Spanish. The school is bedecked in maple leaves and every room in the school is plastered with posters of Canada. Needless to say, the administrators were delighted to have 3 Canadians show up on their door step unannounced. Alberto, the owner of the school, is a typical passionate Argentinian and has taken it upon himself to show us the hilights of this city which he loves so much. Mendoza is a beautiful city. The streets are lined with huge trees which shade the streets from the beating sun and with irrigation ditches left over from Incan times.
Argentina has been sweltering under a particularly hot summer and we are suffering along with the rest of the population. The apartment we have rented has no air conditioning and it can be difficult to sleep even with the fan on high. Our hope lies in the fact that our journey is to the more temporate south.

The Departure

I have finally left the animal refuge in Villa Tunari. For days I had been counting down to my departure but when the moment actually came, I left with tears rather than smiles. For the past 3 months Inti Wara Yassi has been my home away from home. I love the ideals, the animals and the people and had I not had a reason to leave I might not have been able to do so. Still, I was physically and emotionally weary of the everyday toll of the jungle and I was ready to take a vacation from my vacation. I expect one day I will return to Parque Machia but now my focus is on the journey ahead of me.

My last morning in the park began before sunrise. I stole out of bed at 4:30 am and walked the dark, rainy path to Spider Monkey Park for the dawn watch. For the last month, two wild spider monkey males have been coming down from the forest and attacking members of the captive group in an attempt to infiltrate the group or steal some of the females. They have left two of our male monkeys with serious injuries and we have set up a watch to ensure that those monkeys that do not sleep in cages are safe from from first light until the spider park volunteers arrive at 7:30. After a quick check to make sure that all was well, I sat in the rain shelter and watched the trees materialise from the darkness and the sky lighten to a muted grey. The watch was uneventful. The rain kept the monkeys, friendly or otherwise, away until 7 am when several soaking wet monkeys decided to crawl up under my shirt and chitter happily in the warmth. When my watch was over I made my way through the park saying goodbyes to the people and animals. I had a big lump in my throat as I walked across the death bridge one last time and waved goodbye to the park.

I left with 6 other volunteers. Somehow, we managed to fit the seven of us, a truely remarkable amount of luggage, and one very large sombrero into a small cab which took us to the bus terminal where we caught a (slightly) less squished mini bus to Cochabamba. Going to Cochabamba was the first mistake that I made on my farcical journey south to Mendoza. I quickly learned that the best way to get to Argentina was from Santa Cruz (10 hours back past Villa Tunari). The next bus to Santa Cruz didn´t leave until late in the evening but there was a bus to the border town of Villazon leaving in 10 minutes. I bought a ticket (for 11 $ CAD), hugged my friends goodbye, went to the toilet and headed for the bus. At the first sight of that dirty, rusty monster, I almost abandoned my ticket. The bus was decrepit even by Bolivian standards. I had a feeling that my 18 hours on board were going to be hell. There was no movie, no toilet, and no room. I couldn´t find anyone to put my backpack in the underbelly of the bus and it would not fit in the overhead bin. I shoved it under my seat as best I could, depriving myself of a precious 20 cms of leg room.

The following are excerpts from my journal of the journey:

January 2nd, 2008

5:15pm

2.5 hours in. The bus ride is already becoming unbearable. After 2 nights of limited sleep, I am tired and I am cranky. I can´t find a halfway comfortable position and despite piling on all of my easily accessible clothing, I am freezing. There is no heat. I am very unhappy. I am very unhappy and I am only 2.5 hours in. Oh God!

6:15 pm

I am definately not in Villa Tunari any more. The landscape passing by outside my window is stark and frigid. There is a chill seeping into me- a feeling I have not experienced in Parque Machia. Is this summer?
The bus driver has jacked up the Bolivian guitar music to nightclub volume. Not even in Oruro yet. The girl in the seat next to me is purloining more and more of my space by the minute.

6:25 pm

Back in llama territory.

8:30 pm

Leaving Oruro. Things are looking up. During the break, I managed to use the bathroom, buy some bread, recline my seat a little and rearrange my bag so I have a bit more leg room.

8:31 pm

Things are looking down again. I overheard that we are expected to arrive in Villazon at 11am tomorrow not 8 am as I was told when I bought the ticket. That is 21 hours on this @#!€ bus. Only 6 have elapsed.

January 3rd, 2008

7 am

During the night, the bus ride became unbearable. All of my muscles cramped and spasmed, my head ached from the quick assent (Villa Tunari 300m, Potosi 4000m) and my throat was parched from my illness/lack of water (I had carefully rationed the water to avoid the pressing need for a bathroom break. Worst, though, was the cold. The bus had no heating and the leaky windows offered little protection from the chill of the thin air. I had packed my silk sleeping bag liner for extra warmth and lay completely entwined in it like a cocoon. It helped but not enough.
I kept looking at my watch and time seemed to stretch and slow so that it passed imperceptibly.
At 1 30, I was in agony. I wanted to scream, to lash out, to move to stretch, to jump off that god forsaken bus. I took drastic action. I managed to pull my rucksack upright from under my seat and wrestle out my sleeping bag from where it was packed at the very bottom, a taskthat took nearly 15 minutes due to my lack of space, and wiggle into it. Warmth spread through me and I attained a state as close to comfort as possible given the situation. I dozed and miraculously the sun eventually rose marking the end of that long torturous night.

7:33 am
During a break in an unidentified town, I took the opportunity to roll up my sleeping bag. In it I found my change purse that had inexplicably disapeared 2 months earlier when I changed residences in Villa Tunari. It had over 200 Bolivianos in it (enough to sustain me for a week in Bolivia).

8:40 am

The road is no longer paved. Too bumpy to write more.

2:55 pm

The border was a nightmare. Not that it took an incredibly long time or that I had any trouble but the combination of lack of sleep, lingering illness, dehydration, and altitude, plus the complete disorganisation of the crowd made me want to scream and cry in frustration. I held it together and while the wait was long, I was asked no questions and my bag was not searched. On the Argentinian side of the border I breathed a sigh of relief.
I was pressured into buying a ticket to Salta while in Bolivia ( I was told it was very difficult and more expensive to buy the ticket on the Argentinian side of the border). I was skeptical but tired enough to hand over my money anyways. Once across the border I wandered to the bus station and relieved my bursting bladder. I am sitting in front of the bus station now I just hope my bus comes.

7:53 pm

So, the bus may have come in time but I failed to take into account the TWO HOUR time difference between Bolivia and Argentina (even though I crossed a north-south border). My bus left before I made it to Argentina. To make it worse, while I was waiting for my bus I watched a bus direct to Mendoza pull into the station and leave. It doesn´t go again until tomorrow. I bought a new ticket to Salta and am now on the bus heading south.

11 pm

Our bus was stopped for a random passport and bag check. Everybody had to get off the bus and get our bags from under the bus. Mine was the only bag on the bus that they didn´t bother to take off. They told me they didn´t want to search it and to line up in the passport line. I stood in the line for 10 minutes before they waved me out of the line and told me to go back to the bus along with the rest of the tourists. I watched, unmolested, while the south americans had everything taken out of their bags and searched. I am glad that they didn´t search my bag. I would be embarrassed by the amount of oreos and lollipops in there ( I stocked up before crossing the border).

January 4, 2008

2:30 am

Just as I thought I was going to kill my seat partner for encroaching on my personal space (the story of my whole trip) he got off the bus and I had a glorious 1/2 hour of semi comatose almost comfortable sleep.
The bus rolled into Salta just before 2 am. I considered getting a hotel but I noticed a bus leaving for Tucuman. I bought a ticket and hopped on board. I have the two front seats to myself and it is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

6:25 am

Am arrived in Tucuman. No buses to Mendoza today. FUCK! I am so tired and so frustrated. All I want is a bus ticket to Mendoza. I am losing terribly at this amazing race. I should have started in Santa Cruz!!!!

Maybe I can get a bus to Cordoba and from there get to Mendoza. Could be dangerous...is it better to be stuck in Cordoba or Tucuman?

7:15 am

I am defeated and in tears. Nobody has a seat to Mendoza. Nobody has a seat to Cordoba. Nobody has a seat in remotely the correct direction. And everbody here has been extremely less than helpful as I have gone from ticket window to ticket window asking for advice and help. I have taken refuge in the bus station cafe to pull myself together enough to make a decision. I will try one more time and then I will find a hotel with a shower, a bed and a television. Just finding a hotel seems an insurmountable task... I want to sleep my troubles away on a bus to Mendoza. No hay, no hay, no hay.

9:35 am

Over breakfast I regained some control. I bought a bus ticket to Mendoza for tomorrow night. There is no point in running around getting stuck in Cordoba. A hotel will cost the same as the bus ticket and be a lot less frustrating. I wandered aimlessly around a supermarket for a while but I didn´t want to buy anything. I almost decided to walk into town but realised that in my state this was a poor decision and hailed a cab. The cabbie was very nice and took me to a hotel. Now the only decision before me is sleep or shower... I am still wearing the same clothes I wore two days ago for monkey watch but the bed is so soft...

Christmas in Bolivia

Christmas in Bolivia is celebrated on the 24th of December and, after a vote among the volunteers here at Parque Machia, we decided to follow suite. We planned a big dinner with all of the volunteers (both Bolivian and foreign), a secret santa, and decorated the cafe and casa in Christmas cheer. Even though it was Christmas, however, the animals needed to be fed and walked and everyone worked a full day as usual before rushing off to prepare their part of the meal. The food was not standard Bolivian Christmas fare but rather an eclectic mix of various Christmas traditions mashed together into one meal. It was a fun night and there were many nice people there but I couldn´t help feeling a little homesick on my first Christmas away from my family.
Christmas day dawned far too early for most of us. I had beach day with Gato and had to begin at 8 instead of the usual 9 am. I was at the Cafe at 7 45 but my partner, a 3rd year Bolivian veternary student who had started with Gato while I had been sick a few days before, did not show up until 9 30. I was more than a little angry and became more so when after explicit instructions to keep up on the way down to the beach, he failed to do so and was found 20 minutes later laying in the hammock at Gato´s rest spot. I told him to go home and spent a beautiful Christmas day wandering the beach alone with my Puma. The last few days had been sunny and the water was the lowest I had seen it in months. It was one of the best days I have had here. Still, I did glance at my watch and shed a tear as I followed my family´s Christmas festivities in my mind. In the evening, my 9 housemates and I made a dinner, opened stockings, and played games together.

Two days after Christmas, after many hours of thought and a few tears, I decided that I would no longer be able to work with Gato. The old tendonitis in my knees had flared up painfully and I realised that I might jeopardize many things in the rest of my trip if I continued to walk the Puma trails. I was reassigned to Spider Monkey park for my last week here at Inti Wara Yassi.

I like the Spider Monkies a lot but it is a very different day than that of a cat person. The day starts at 7 30 in the morning and lasts until 7 in the evening. In between, we feed the monkies (3 times), clean their night cage, and try and keep them happy by grooming them and playing with them. I even got up at 4 30 one morning to guard the male spider monkey, who does not sleep in a cage, from two wild Spider monkies trying to steal his females. It was pretty cool to watch the sunrise with a Spider monkey snuggled up under my shirt.

I leave Villa Tunari on the 2nd of January to meet up with my parents in Argentina. I love it here but, now that I know I am leaving, I am excited to go. I may come back but I am ready for a change.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all my friends and family. I will be celebrating christmas here in the steamy hot jungle. We have put up a christmas tree and have hung up some stockings but boy it feels much too hot for christmas! I hope everyone is well and has a merry day



Love

Meghan

The Rainy Season

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=77934&l=3aaf3&id=802760462


The rainy season has finally set in here in the jungle...and while the river may be swollen and the rain plentiful there is a distinct drought of volunteers. Everyday it becomes harder to juggle people so that all of the animals get taken care of properly. In the shuffle, I have taken on the job of walking Gato...alone. Under normal circumstances Pumas are always walked by a pair of volunteers. In times of shortage, it is possible for one experienced volunteer to walk Gato by him or herself. I am both thrilled to have the opportunity and a bit disapointed that I did not perservere with Maggie. Still, I think things worked out the best in the end.

I have two weeks left here at Inti Wara Yassi and everyone is gearing up for Christmas. I find the concept of Christmas in the jungle hard to grasp but I think it will be a day to remember.
I only have two more weeks here before I head down to Mendoza to meet up with my parents.

Never Turn Your Back on a Puma

I have been here in Villa Tunari at Inti Wara Yassi going on 2 months now. There have been many changes during my time here but the biggest change came last week when after 6 wonderful weeks working with Gato, I switched pumas. I am now working with Maggie, Gato´s polar opposite in the park. Gato is 13, calm, and motivated to walk. Maggie (the only female puma in the park) is a kitten (11 months old), full of energy at times and frusteratingly lazy at others. Maggie is a cat that operates in 3 dimensions, she is just as likely to be in a tree above you, as the path ahead of you or the jungle below you and will jump on you from anywhere. I knew when I started with Maggie that working with her would be a different experience than working with Gato but I wasn´t quite prepared for how much I felt like I was starting from the very beginning again. The most difficult lessons that I had to learn were to never turn your back on a puma and never step away from a jump, step into it. These things are not instinctual and I have the bruises and scratches to show from my inability to look a puma in the eyes and stand my ground as she charged me. Maggie has never attacked hard enough to do serious damage but she is tenacious and she is testing me. For the first several days every time that I would touch the rope she would begin an attacking fit that would often leave me in tears of frusteration and pain. I began to seriously doubt my ability to continue working with her because I was quite convinced that she hated me. It also wasn´t helpful that my partner, Cyril, has the same command of English as I do of his native French...not much. We communicate in Spanish, which is great practice but causes big problems when Maggie has her teeth in my love handles and I can´t remember the words for ¨don´t pull her off it´ll only make the scratches worse¨. One day I really believed that I would have to quit but I realised that I had much more to gain by staying and gaining Maggie´s respect than I did by walking away. Things have become marginally better in the subsequent days but I must admit that I am much more relieved to walk away from Maggie´s cage at the end of the day than I ever was with Gato.

The other big change here has been the coming of rainy season. It has been raining more often than not and since both my pink rain jacket and the yellow plastic rain ponchos they sell in town are extremely reminiscent of the plush toys that Maggie takes delight in mauling I have opted to just get wet. I know that it sounds like I am not enjoying my time as much any more but that is not the truth. I love the people (especially my longtime housemates) and animals of Inti Wara Yassi and it is where I want to be the most of anywhere right now.

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

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=74547&l=a2f02&id=802760462
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=74543&l=017e5&id=802760462

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

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67521&l=5f26e&id=802760462
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=66206&l=09fe5&id=802760462
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=67530&l=2f4fb&id=802760462

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.

The Changing of the Guard

Changes are happening at Inti Wara Yassi. Cally and I are planning a halloween party for Wednesday which will also serve as the goodbye party for the approximately 10 volunteers (several of them long timers) who are leaving the next day. This exodus of volunteers (about a quarter of the people in the park) is causing much shifting and changing among the volunteers remaining. My Gato partner, Cally, is among the departing, which means that I will have a new volunteer to train and work with starting on Wednesday. It is a bit strange to go from being a trainee myself to the boss in just over a week but I do feel very confident that I know Gato´s trails and can predict his behaviour. Today, Cally gave me the keys to Gato´s cage and I realised that I am now the person in charge of the well-being of a puma. I will also be taking over Callie´s job as new volunteer tour guide. People move into positions very quickly here at Inti Wara Yassi because the volunteer turn over is quite large. If I stay until Christmas (which is my plan) I will be one of the most senior volunteers.

I am going to miss many of the people who are going away. Many of them are the best friends that I have made here and so many are going all at once.