Well I´m now in Playa del Carmen, Mexico´s answer to Benidorm / Ibiza ... A grotesque, touristy, plastic, partygoer´s overpriced metropolis, heaving with ignorant tourists and people I already hate just because they have chosen to come here. Thank god I only decided to come here for one day! Taht´s what i´v posted as my facebook status anyway. i got here this afternoon, it was pissing it down with rain, and i geve the address of the hostel i´d booked to the taxi driver and he said he didn´t know it, but i had written down the street it was on, and he took me there, and i asked a few restaurants on that street where it was and they said i was definitely where the address said (on 8th Calle between 5 and 10), but the hostel wasn´t there. this was in the piss pouring rain... and no one seemed to have heard of the place. oh dear. anyway i wandered about a bit, in short shorts, waterproof hiking boots, the waterproof jacket i bought off Kyle, with a backpack on and a non-waterproof case pulling behind me through the one inch puddles... thankfully i´d had the wherewithall to put everything in drybags, carrier bags etc. within the bag, so hopefully eyerything would stay dry ish. anway i found the hostel and it was indeed where the directions said it was, i guess the people who work on the street had just never noticed it, even though it was about 20 metres away. Fools!!
after i´d got into the hostel and into my room, i went out to wander around and look at the place, as the rain was easing off so it seemed like a reasonable time to have a quick look around, and within about five minutes, i was wishing i´d not come here. what do i see around me everyehwere but nightclubs and bars, and tourist giftshops selling neaon plastic shite which is the most grotesque of man´s inventions, trashy ornaments in day glow colours, and tshirts with ´humourous´ captions which may seem funny on holiday but when you get home you realise they are shite and not funny at all (truth is they never were). My god get me out of this place... why the f--k did i think it was a good idea to come here? well, because it has a beach (nice to relax on for a day, i thought) and it has Cozumel, the second biggest coral reef in the world. and i was thinking of doing some snorkelling, but it turns out all the reefs are out at sea and you have to take a glass bottomed boat which is very cheap, they do me good deal, special price just for me, book now, their company the best, other companys scam you, they make you pay extra when you get to cozumel, but they honest company with good price, special deal, very cheap, just book now... AARRGGHH!!
Anyway, the rain was worsening, and the streets were now full about 4 incehs of water, and my waterproof boots are full of water (from it going down the ankle) and i am drenched, and rather lost. i thought it would be easy enough to find my way back, i´d just stay parallel to the beach, but i didn´t realise the beach kind of curved round. not to worry, the streets are thankfully numbered and on a grid so as long as you can count, you can find your way home. Jus tglad i didn´t have to rely on asking people where my hostel wasñ i made a mental note of some more prominent nearby landmarks (Burger King) in case i did indeed need to ask. but i didn´t, and i managed to get back to my room, drenched, with girls using the bathroom for aaaages to do their makeup before they go out. Why am i here?
But i did want to go snorkelling ,so i was kind of forced to do the rounds and pick up the leaflets, but it did get tiresome, everyone saying that other companies have hidden charges but theirs doesn´t... do i really want to go snorkelling that badly..? i just thought i might come to a beachy place to have some quiet time and chill for a day before i go to ecuador, but what a fool am i, thinking that it would be quiet here. there are clubs and bars blaring out bad karaoke and club anthems, and i´m in a hostel of partygoers who have 2 day hangovers. Don´t get me wrong, i´ve had some great nights which preceded 2 day hangovers, but that´s just not what i want at the moment. i feel like i´m at university in freshers week or something. people are smoking in the kitchen and playing annoying dance music as i write this. i fear the quiet chillout time will not be forthcoming. ah well, if i will decide to go to places without really finding out what they´re like first, then i´m the master of my own misery. i just made that up but it sounds like it could be a famous quote.
anyway, i had a good day yesterday. Yeasterday i went to Uxmal, a Mayan ruin not far from Merida. the bus ride was a little longer than i expected, but it was definitely worth it. it was as extensive as Chichen Itza was, but much less touristy (only 5 or 10 other people in view at any one moment), serenely beautiful and extremely well preserved. the place is a thousand years old, and the carved stones making up the brisk structures were well carved into beautiful mosaic-like patterns. there was a great rectangular courtyard with little rooms coming off it, which echoed nicely, and you could just stand there and imagine what it would have been like a thousand years ago. they rather think the stones would have been painted, but i thought it was lovely jus tas it was. there was a central pyramid, the same size as the one i went up in Coba (in the poouring rain) but you couldn´t go up this one... but there was another one nearby which you could go up, 52 steps about a foot high, i thought it would seem hard but i did it in one go... maybe i´m fitter from all that walking in CR, but that was on the flat... anyway the view was beaturful and had a quiet stillness about it, there weren´t any annoying tourguides or tourists shouting - it was great. fat iguanas lazed about on rocks, or scampered across the grass if you got too close, but they looked like big fat lazy things - lovely though.
so that was yesterday, and today i am in a neon fibreglass town of partying twentysomethings and retired fat people. i´m looking forward to leaving already. tomorrow, i may well g oto cozumel, though i fear it may be worse than here, but you can rent mopeds there and so i might do that. or i might have to catch up on sleep if i´m kept up all night by loud music and people singing and smoking outside my room.
Ecuador soon!! Yay!
Monday, 27 September 2010
Friday, 24 September 2010
¡Snake! ¡Tocar este!
Well my 2 weeks at the reserve in Mexico has now come to an end. It´s been a nice 2 weeks but if i´m honest, not as much fun as it was in Costa Rica, as i had more friends around me then, and the days were busier. Still, it was good in Mexico and i´m glad i went. Mum says i´ve not said much about the work i did there, so i will do this now:
The average day invovled going out in the morning for a walk, to go and change the memory sticks and/or batteries in some of the camera places. this would involve walking through the jungle, but on trails, but the trails were often overgrown so that even though there was a noticeable trail on the ground, the vegetation at waist or head height was a bit crazy, though the guys usually had machetes with them and hacked away at any vegetation that got too much in the way. It would have been great if we´d seen some animals like the big cats while out on walkies, but the chances of that were slim, as the forst is so dense, and the guys only see about one jaguar a year, a few more pumas and ocelots but still it´s quite rare. i saw a tayra and an oscillated turkey but they are the only large animals i´ve seen on walks. i´ve seen small lizards like anoles and geckos, a frog, some fish, and quite a lot of small birds. after lunch, we´d perhaps go for a walk looking for tracks, like footprints or faeces, but i think we only did this a couple of times. it seemed to rain on quite a few afternoons so we stayed indoors if that happened. we would look at the memory sticks on the computers to see what animals had been captured on there, and i thus have some great photos taken by cameras set by me; several jaguar shots, pumas, ocelot, armadillo, deer, peccaries (wild pigs), and lots of oscillated turkeys, who seem curious about the camera noises / flashes, and spend a lot of time looking around and hanging round near the cameras, looking into the lens etc.
so those are the animals that i´ve seen on walks and on the photos, but i have also seen lots of animals in my cabin (which is above the kitchen, and has a bathroom too, so it´s like a whole house). i´ve had a bat flying round, tarantulas in the toilet and kitchen, a rat on the balcony, mice/rats in the bedroom, frogs in the toilets, cockroaches, geckos, plus lots of insects. however, the most exciting find happened yesterday and invovled a snake. i have a video which i will upload to facebook at some point for those interested.
picture the scene... it´s my last day on the reserve, and i´m packing my bags, so i have everything everywhere. then i hear a squeaking noise, as i often do at night, looked up, and saw a snake and a mouse in the thatching / rafters of my roof. the mouse looks pretty dead. i take a few photos for the sake of interest, but then nothing much seems to be going on, and the snake is keeping itself to itself, so i decide i´ll leave it be. and i thus go back to my packing. ...then, i hear / see the mouse fall down, and scuttle into all my junk on the floor. yeah, it was still alive, and now i look up to see the snake kind of hanging down and into my room. it´s a pale green colour underneath, and a green mottled pattern on top, about an inch in diameter, and i can´t tell how long it is but i see it´s possibly a metre (it later turned out to be over 1.5m). so now the snake is hanging down into my room, and i´ve got a semi-live(?) mouse which it presumably wants, hiding in my stuff! HELP!! i was alone in the cabin, and kind of panicked now, so i grab my camera, put on my wellies (nearest shoes to hand) and go running off to get men. the nearest cabin to mine is where the workers are, and i think they may have been having an afternoon nap, but i just ran up to the house and shouted "Louis! Jonas! Hay una problem! Ayudo! Hay una grande... um... snake... en mi casa! No me gustan!" evidently the word snake is not internationally understood so i showed him the photo and Jonas was like "Ahora? aqui?" and i was like "SI! Ahora! En mi casa. No me gustan!" and they said something to each other and i ran back to my cabin to keep an eye on it, becasue what i REALLY would not want was for me to get back there but for it not to be there, and i know it`s somewhere but don´t know where. anyway, it was still up in the rafters, and Jonas and Louis came in and i shouted down to them "Es aqui! Es aqui!" and they came upstairs. i pointed it out, and Jonas said to me "no se nada" in a reassuring tone so i wasn´t that worried any more but still i wanted them to get rid of it. so i picked up my little video camera and recorded it. Jonas climbed up the wall and started poking around in the thatching at the snake, and when it poked its head out and was hanging down into the room, he hit it. it looked a bit nasty but the snake was ok, but it fell out of the roof and landed onto the mosquito net on my bed. this alone freaked me out a bit and i was there having a fight-or-flight response as the snake is there on my bed... i think it got itself off the bed then, as Jonas got down from the wall, and Louis then went in and tried to pin it down with a stick, which he managed. i in my semi-panicked state, half laughing but half scared (though the video sounds like i´m crying, but i wasn´t!) was trying to say in spanish "get it!" or "take it"; the word take is "tomar", but i kind of forgot, and instead was saying "tocar este" which means "touch this", which obviously makes no sense! anyway, the snake was pinned and then Jonas went to pick it up and it grabbed onto my shoe which again freaked me. snakes are fine in the forest, but when they are in my possessions, i don´t like that at all. the snake wrapped itself around Jonas´s wrist, but the two of them managed to half get it into a binbag... they then took it downstairs. i followed, still recording and saying useless spanish phrases like "tienes en maleta" ("have in bag") . then downstairs, just as we thought it was about to go into the binbag, it jumps out and starts sidewinding across the floor in that creepy snaky way that snakes do. i´m alternating between English and Spanish, like "Shitshitshitshitshit!! Tienes!! Grab it! En la maleta!" and Louis pinned it again with the stick, and Jonas got it into the binbag and tied it up. i then asked him "Este es venomosa?" (which i´d learnt off Danya when we got Rick to eat a non-poisonous flower in front of the rafting guys for a dare!) and Jonas shrugged and smiled, but added "no se nada... no se nada" so i felt better, even though the video sounds like i´m crying, i´m kind of half laughing but half freaked out.
anyway, they took the snake 50m or so away from my cabin and released it, and said later that it was fine. i sat down for a minute and calmed down. i´ve had lots of snake encounters in costa rica, but in the forest, and that´s where snakes belong, and they´re fine there, but i don´t want to interact with them and i don´t want them in my living space - ugh!
Meanwhile, i still had a mouse to go and find in amongst my stuff. i went up, not quite sure whether i wanted the mouse to be dead or alive - again, i don´t want it scuttling round my stuff. but i found it, and it was alive although rather scared i think. i put it in the yoghurt pot the guys had left there for me to catch tarantulas in, and the mouse just sat in it looking scared and curled up and not trying to get out. i took it outside, a few metres from the cabin, and tipped it out onto the floor, but it just sat there looking scared. i could see it was alive, but it wasn´t running off for cover, so i thought a gentle prod might make it run to safety under some leaves or something. it ran a little bit, but still sat out in the open, though it was close to things it could hide under. so i just left it there. i came back 20 minutes later and it was gone, though i´m not sure whether it had recovered and escaped to freedom, or if it had just sat there and consequently got eaten, or if it was injured by the snake, and had gone somewhere to die. i´ll hope it´s the former. anyway, i wasn´t really in the mood for packing after that, so just tossed it all into carried bags and left it till later!!
Juan (project leader) came in later and asked why i was scared of the snake, adding "it doesn´t do anything, it won´t harm you". well (a) i didn´t know if it´s dangerous or not, and (b) even if it wasn´t harmful, i don´t want it snaking round through my bags looking for a mouse to eat! So there you go, just another day in the life of Karen Lancaster, or Crocodile Lancaster, as Helen suggested i should be called... i´m thinking of Snakeskin Lancaster though. travelling round the tourist sights - not to mention the daily grind back in england - may seem a little dull by comparison!!
I am now in Merida, a Colonial city near to the ruins of Uxmal, and some caves full of stalactites and stalagmites, which i will see in due course. however, i think i may use tomorrow as a chillout day, as i´ve had 7 hours of travelling today, and i am in desperate need of doing laundry. i haven´t done any since i was in costa rica (i rinsed a few things in the sink with some shampoo, but they still smelt.) I can no longer use the terms ´clean´ and ´dirty´ to describe my clothes; they are now only ´wearable´(smells and looks grubby) or ´únwearable´ (stinks to high heaven and looks grubby). Yeah, exotic stuff.
Ecuador in a week though, and i´m hoping that that experience will be as good as Costa Rica was. Mexico has been fun but i´d like a bit more company, and busier days. I may regret saying that, but there you go i´ve said it now!!
The average day invovled going out in the morning for a walk, to go and change the memory sticks and/or batteries in some of the camera places. this would involve walking through the jungle, but on trails, but the trails were often overgrown so that even though there was a noticeable trail on the ground, the vegetation at waist or head height was a bit crazy, though the guys usually had machetes with them and hacked away at any vegetation that got too much in the way. It would have been great if we´d seen some animals like the big cats while out on walkies, but the chances of that were slim, as the forst is so dense, and the guys only see about one jaguar a year, a few more pumas and ocelots but still it´s quite rare. i saw a tayra and an oscillated turkey but they are the only large animals i´ve seen on walks. i´ve seen small lizards like anoles and geckos, a frog, some fish, and quite a lot of small birds. after lunch, we´d perhaps go for a walk looking for tracks, like footprints or faeces, but i think we only did this a couple of times. it seemed to rain on quite a few afternoons so we stayed indoors if that happened. we would look at the memory sticks on the computers to see what animals had been captured on there, and i thus have some great photos taken by cameras set by me; several jaguar shots, pumas, ocelot, armadillo, deer, peccaries (wild pigs), and lots of oscillated turkeys, who seem curious about the camera noises / flashes, and spend a lot of time looking around and hanging round near the cameras, looking into the lens etc.
so those are the animals that i´ve seen on walks and on the photos, but i have also seen lots of animals in my cabin (which is above the kitchen, and has a bathroom too, so it´s like a whole house). i´ve had a bat flying round, tarantulas in the toilet and kitchen, a rat on the balcony, mice/rats in the bedroom, frogs in the toilets, cockroaches, geckos, plus lots of insects. however, the most exciting find happened yesterday and invovled a snake. i have a video which i will upload to facebook at some point for those interested.
picture the scene... it´s my last day on the reserve, and i´m packing my bags, so i have everything everywhere. then i hear a squeaking noise, as i often do at night, looked up, and saw a snake and a mouse in the thatching / rafters of my roof. the mouse looks pretty dead. i take a few photos for the sake of interest, but then nothing much seems to be going on, and the snake is keeping itself to itself, so i decide i´ll leave it be. and i thus go back to my packing. ...then, i hear / see the mouse fall down, and scuttle into all my junk on the floor. yeah, it was still alive, and now i look up to see the snake kind of hanging down and into my room. it´s a pale green colour underneath, and a green mottled pattern on top, about an inch in diameter, and i can´t tell how long it is but i see it´s possibly a metre (it later turned out to be over 1.5m). so now the snake is hanging down into my room, and i´ve got a semi-live(?) mouse which it presumably wants, hiding in my stuff! HELP!! i was alone in the cabin, and kind of panicked now, so i grab my camera, put on my wellies (nearest shoes to hand) and go running off to get men. the nearest cabin to mine is where the workers are, and i think they may have been having an afternoon nap, but i just ran up to the house and shouted "Louis! Jonas! Hay una problem! Ayudo! Hay una grande... um... snake... en mi casa! No me gustan!" evidently the word snake is not internationally understood so i showed him the photo and Jonas was like "Ahora? aqui?" and i was like "SI! Ahora! En mi casa. No me gustan!" and they said something to each other and i ran back to my cabin to keep an eye on it, becasue what i REALLY would not want was for me to get back there but for it not to be there, and i know it`s somewhere but don´t know where. anyway, it was still up in the rafters, and Jonas and Louis came in and i shouted down to them "Es aqui! Es aqui!" and they came upstairs. i pointed it out, and Jonas said to me "no se nada" in a reassuring tone so i wasn´t that worried any more but still i wanted them to get rid of it. so i picked up my little video camera and recorded it. Jonas climbed up the wall and started poking around in the thatching at the snake, and when it poked its head out and was hanging down into the room, he hit it. it looked a bit nasty but the snake was ok, but it fell out of the roof and landed onto the mosquito net on my bed. this alone freaked me out a bit and i was there having a fight-or-flight response as the snake is there on my bed... i think it got itself off the bed then, as Jonas got down from the wall, and Louis then went in and tried to pin it down with a stick, which he managed. i in my semi-panicked state, half laughing but half scared (though the video sounds like i´m crying, but i wasn´t!) was trying to say in spanish "get it!" or "take it"; the word take is "tomar", but i kind of forgot, and instead was saying "tocar este" which means "touch this", which obviously makes no sense! anyway, the snake was pinned and then Jonas went to pick it up and it grabbed onto my shoe which again freaked me. snakes are fine in the forest, but when they are in my possessions, i don´t like that at all. the snake wrapped itself around Jonas´s wrist, but the two of them managed to half get it into a binbag... they then took it downstairs. i followed, still recording and saying useless spanish phrases like "tienes en maleta" ("have in bag") . then downstairs, just as we thought it was about to go into the binbag, it jumps out and starts sidewinding across the floor in that creepy snaky way that snakes do. i´m alternating between English and Spanish, like "Shitshitshitshitshit!! Tienes!! Grab it! En la maleta!" and Louis pinned it again with the stick, and Jonas got it into the binbag and tied it up. i then asked him "Este es venomosa?" (which i´d learnt off Danya when we got Rick to eat a non-poisonous flower in front of the rafting guys for a dare!) and Jonas shrugged and smiled, but added "no se nada... no se nada" so i felt better, even though the video sounds like i´m crying, i´m kind of half laughing but half freaked out.
anyway, they took the snake 50m or so away from my cabin and released it, and said later that it was fine. i sat down for a minute and calmed down. i´ve had lots of snake encounters in costa rica, but in the forest, and that´s where snakes belong, and they´re fine there, but i don´t want to interact with them and i don´t want them in my living space - ugh!
Meanwhile, i still had a mouse to go and find in amongst my stuff. i went up, not quite sure whether i wanted the mouse to be dead or alive - again, i don´t want it scuttling round my stuff. but i found it, and it was alive although rather scared i think. i put it in the yoghurt pot the guys had left there for me to catch tarantulas in, and the mouse just sat in it looking scared and curled up and not trying to get out. i took it outside, a few metres from the cabin, and tipped it out onto the floor, but it just sat there looking scared. i could see it was alive, but it wasn´t running off for cover, so i thought a gentle prod might make it run to safety under some leaves or something. it ran a little bit, but still sat out in the open, though it was close to things it could hide under. so i just left it there. i came back 20 minutes later and it was gone, though i´m not sure whether it had recovered and escaped to freedom, or if it had just sat there and consequently got eaten, or if it was injured by the snake, and had gone somewhere to die. i´ll hope it´s the former. anyway, i wasn´t really in the mood for packing after that, so just tossed it all into carried bags and left it till later!!
Juan (project leader) came in later and asked why i was scared of the snake, adding "it doesn´t do anything, it won´t harm you". well (a) i didn´t know if it´s dangerous or not, and (b) even if it wasn´t harmful, i don´t want it snaking round through my bags looking for a mouse to eat! So there you go, just another day in the life of Karen Lancaster, or Crocodile Lancaster, as Helen suggested i should be called... i´m thinking of Snakeskin Lancaster though. travelling round the tourist sights - not to mention the daily grind back in england - may seem a little dull by comparison!!
I am now in Merida, a Colonial city near to the ruins of Uxmal, and some caves full of stalactites and stalagmites, which i will see in due course. however, i think i may use tomorrow as a chillout day, as i´ve had 7 hours of travelling today, and i am in desperate need of doing laundry. i haven´t done any since i was in costa rica (i rinsed a few things in the sink with some shampoo, but they still smelt.) I can no longer use the terms ´clean´ and ´dirty´ to describe my clothes; they are now only ´wearable´(smells and looks grubby) or ´únwearable´ (stinks to high heaven and looks grubby). Yeah, exotic stuff.
Ecuador in a week though, and i´m hoping that that experience will be as good as Costa Rica was. Mexico has been fun but i´d like a bit more company, and busier days. I may regret saying that, but there you go i´ve said it now!!
Sunday, 19 September 2010
¿Me gustan las ruinas? ¡Si! ¿Me gustan la lluvioso? ¡No!
Well, another update from sunny(¿?¡!) Mexico:
The weather last night and the night before was unbearably hot - the first time since I´ve left Inglaterra that i´ve really thought it was just too hot for me to sleep. it was about 35´C - ugh! in the end i ran my sheet under the cold tap and slept with a wet sheet on me! it was all i could do to cool down, as putting the fan on (you don´t get air con for 100pesos (5 quid) a night) was like putting a hair dryer on. Anyway, i survived (and slept!)
Yesterday I went to Chichen Itza - a Mayan ruin from about 1000 AD ish. The weather was gloriously hot and sunny - over 30´C, which is nice during the day time) and the place was pretty incredible. grey granite rocks built into perfect geometric pyramids 25metres tall, as well as multiple dwellings and other buildings from the same period. One notable remaining structure was an I-shaped ballcourt, where the object of the game was for teams to hit a 5-kilo (or 5 pound?) ball through a stone hoop 10 metres off the ground, using only the shoulders, elbows, knees and hips. The losign team were put to death - but don{t be too shocked, it was an "honourable" way to die, apparently! The place was beautiful, and filled with market vendors giving ridiculous discounts on amazing items - eg $1 US for a 12 inch mayan mask carving. but there were so many of them that you just got complacent and were like "no gracias" no matter what they said. i ended up not buying any carvings, but now wish i had! i did buy something, but have to think of luggage and the item filling up my bags for the next 10 weeks, i guess :(
today my plan was to go to Coba, and then Tulum - two other Mayan ruins. So, i got the bus to Coba, and the guy stops the bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere and shouts "¡Coba!" and so i got out, but could see no ruins, no signs, and basically nothing distinguishing this road from any other road in Mexico. I asked some randomers on the road (the only people who were there, i might add) if there were some ruins, and they pointed me in a direction, so off i toddled.
got to a car park, asked a few more people, and found a tiny entrance which was less well signposted than the toilets were! Got ticket, went in, and it starts to rain. 600-quid camera in drybag, crappy binliner poncho on, and i wandered round some rocks piled up on one another, with no info plaques or anything. Stood under a hut for a while to try and stay drier.... wandered round the small and info-less ruins and got wet... Hmm... Big long walk to get to the next set of (presumably small and info-less) ruins, i decided i might just head straight for Tulum, which, according to the font size on the photocopied map i have (all i´ve got!) Tulum would be bigger. i asked about the buses though, and it seemed that the next bus to Tulum wasn´t till 1.30, it being 11.30 when i asked. Ho hum, i may as well hang round Coba (still raining a bit, i´m soaked from the waist down, not sure if my camera is dry, but don´t wanna check and risk letting more water into the bag. CBA walking all the way round the place, so paid 30 pesos (1.50) for a bike, and cycled it. still raining a bit. saw some other slightly bigger and more impressive but still info-less buildings. but then, the piéce de resistance - a massive 42 metre-high structure which the great unwashed can traipse up - woo! So i parked up the bike, and the heavens opened as it lashed it down with rain onto me, my one-pound poncho, and 600-pound camera, as i ascended the 1000-year-old monument with one small rope at ankle height (WTF?¡) and a torrent of water gusign down, and signs saying "climb at your own peril" and picture of someone falling off the top! at the top, i was rewarded for my efforts with a beautiful view of the surrounding area - dense forest in the piss-pouring rain! I´m writing in a complainy-tone, but it was good really, in spite of the weather. No me gustan la lluvioso.
when i finally got the bus, after being told to walk into town (in the pouring rain) because the bus didn't come to the car park, then i got the bus at 2pm, and it drove down to the car park i´d just come from (grr!) and by the time it got to tulum it was gone 3pm and still raining, and the bus i was on was going to cancun, so i just paid more money and went straight to cancun. Cancun was dry ish, and i bought some foodie supplies (fruit and chocolate mainly) and then headed back to the office where i´m spending the night... and spending time uploading Jalova videos to Facebook. :D
More adventures next week!
PS - my big camera survived dry as a bone in the drybag, so thanks to Herman or RAchel - whoever it was who left it in our room when they went. The little camera and video cameras were fine too, in ziplock food bags. :D
The weather last night and the night before was unbearably hot - the first time since I´ve left Inglaterra that i´ve really thought it was just too hot for me to sleep. it was about 35´C - ugh! in the end i ran my sheet under the cold tap and slept with a wet sheet on me! it was all i could do to cool down, as putting the fan on (you don´t get air con for 100pesos (5 quid) a night) was like putting a hair dryer on. Anyway, i survived (and slept!)
Yesterday I went to Chichen Itza - a Mayan ruin from about 1000 AD ish. The weather was gloriously hot and sunny - over 30´C, which is nice during the day time) and the place was pretty incredible. grey granite rocks built into perfect geometric pyramids 25metres tall, as well as multiple dwellings and other buildings from the same period. One notable remaining structure was an I-shaped ballcourt, where the object of the game was for teams to hit a 5-kilo (or 5 pound?) ball through a stone hoop 10 metres off the ground, using only the shoulders, elbows, knees and hips. The losign team were put to death - but don{t be too shocked, it was an "honourable" way to die, apparently! The place was beautiful, and filled with market vendors giving ridiculous discounts on amazing items - eg $1 US for a 12 inch mayan mask carving. but there were so many of them that you just got complacent and were like "no gracias" no matter what they said. i ended up not buying any carvings, but now wish i had! i did buy something, but have to think of luggage and the item filling up my bags for the next 10 weeks, i guess :(
today my plan was to go to Coba, and then Tulum - two other Mayan ruins. So, i got the bus to Coba, and the guy stops the bus seemingly in the middle of nowhere and shouts "¡Coba!" and so i got out, but could see no ruins, no signs, and basically nothing distinguishing this road from any other road in Mexico. I asked some randomers on the road (the only people who were there, i might add) if there were some ruins, and they pointed me in a direction, so off i toddled.
got to a car park, asked a few more people, and found a tiny entrance which was less well signposted than the toilets were! Got ticket, went in, and it starts to rain. 600-quid camera in drybag, crappy binliner poncho on, and i wandered round some rocks piled up on one another, with no info plaques or anything. Stood under a hut for a while to try and stay drier.... wandered round the small and info-less ruins and got wet... Hmm... Big long walk to get to the next set of (presumably small and info-less) ruins, i decided i might just head straight for Tulum, which, according to the font size on the photocopied map i have (all i´ve got!) Tulum would be bigger. i asked about the buses though, and it seemed that the next bus to Tulum wasn´t till 1.30, it being 11.30 when i asked. Ho hum, i may as well hang round Coba (still raining a bit, i´m soaked from the waist down, not sure if my camera is dry, but don´t wanna check and risk letting more water into the bag. CBA walking all the way round the place, so paid 30 pesos (1.50) for a bike, and cycled it. still raining a bit. saw some other slightly bigger and more impressive but still info-less buildings. but then, the piéce de resistance - a massive 42 metre-high structure which the great unwashed can traipse up - woo! So i parked up the bike, and the heavens opened as it lashed it down with rain onto me, my one-pound poncho, and 600-pound camera, as i ascended the 1000-year-old monument with one small rope at ankle height (WTF?¡) and a torrent of water gusign down, and signs saying "climb at your own peril" and picture of someone falling off the top! at the top, i was rewarded for my efforts with a beautiful view of the surrounding area - dense forest in the piss-pouring rain! I´m writing in a complainy-tone, but it was good really, in spite of the weather. No me gustan la lluvioso.
when i finally got the bus, after being told to walk into town (in the pouring rain) because the bus didn't come to the car park, then i got the bus at 2pm, and it drove down to the car park i´d just come from (grr!) and by the time it got to tulum it was gone 3pm and still raining, and the bus i was on was going to cancun, so i just paid more money and went straight to cancun. Cancun was dry ish, and i bought some foodie supplies (fruit and chocolate mainly) and then headed back to the office where i´m spending the night... and spending time uploading Jalova videos to Facebook. :D
More adventures next week!
PS - my big camera survived dry as a bone in the drybag, so thanks to Herman or RAchel - whoever it was who left it in our room when they went. The little camera and video cameras were fine too, in ziplock food bags. :D
Friday, 17 September 2010
¡Viva Mexico! ¡Viva los insectos!
I´m currently in a hostel with free internet, so this is a long entry, filled with stories of critters in the living quarters, and unpleasant insect encounters. readers of a nervous disposition are advised to consult a physician before reading. it starts off ok but gets grosser and grosser towords the end. enjoy.
Well i have had one week in Mexico now, and it is a BIG change from Jalova (where i was in CR). Here´s why: Jalova was 20 volunteers, plus 7 staff, who all spoke excellent english, most being native speakers. El Eden, here in Mexico, has just one volunteer (me) and 4 staff, only one of whom speaks any English!! So I´m having a lot of "me time". When I left England (where i live alone), knowing i was going to spend all those weeks living in each others pockets with 25 people, i thought i might get sick of it, but I never did (thanks to people like Marcus, Kyle, Sarah, Sam, (1st 5 weeks) and Danya, Rick, Marshall, Casey, Emma, Alice, and Julia (second 5 weeks)). Now i´m moslty on my own, i miss all that company. Still, my spanish is improving (it´s still diabolical, and i have conversations like "Tengo todos del agua aqui" and point to my wellies (which were full of water, as the beautifully crafted spanish sentence tells!) and then the guy i´m saying it to laughs, and replies a load of stuff i don{t understand, and i smile and nod back - ha ha!
The people i work with are all mexican middle-aged men, who live on site. There is Juan - project leader who speaks very good english, and he is like a Mexican version of my dad (although not as brown as my dad!) ie, he is stocky, middle-aged and looks like my dad, right down to the bulging scar on his forehead, no doubt from disregarding safety procedures (like my dad!) There is also Pedro who rarely speaks, Louis who speaks fast (probably normally!) and Jonas, who is a bit crazy and whoops with excitement at things like rain storms, attacks vegetation with his machete in any spare moment, and he talks to me sometimes and i can get the gist of what he´s saying, which i like!
the weather here is hotter than CR - i always thought it was supposed to be hotter near the equator, but i guess that´s where my knowledge of the weather ends. it´s a fairly consistent 32´C in the day, and it drops to about 27´C or even 25´C (brrr!!) at night. i´m not kidding, the other day when it rained, i put on my fleece jacket (complete with Barney hair) for the first time, and wore trousers all day, feeling rather chilly, and it was 25´C. Shit, i am gonna DIE when i come back to England in December!!
the camp is in the middle of a forest, and the nearest town is 50km away. there are a few wooden cabins, which are pretty big - the main cabin is about 15 metres by 15 metres, and downstaris is a kitchen and dining room, with a TV which gets a dreadful snowy reception, and upstairs there are 4 beds (one is mine) and 2 showers (cold) and 2 toilets (flushing, but dirty paper still goes in the bin, which stays there for about 4 days - nice!) and above that is a watch tower, which is only about 2 mtres squared. they use it to look out for forest fires, and i use it to look out for birds, and there´s more of a breeze up there. so far i´ve seen hawks (roadside, i believe) plus great kiskadees, flycatchers, a flock of swallows, great egret, snowy egret, little blue heron (juvenile), yukatan jays, and a few other birds i cannot identify. you can see for miles from there, and the view iw pretty muych identical ion every direction: completely flat land, covered in deciduous forest. it´s pretty dense forest, but seems quite desolate to look out and that´s all you see, but i like it, and i quite like to know that there´s no one else for miles around. well, except for some people with a bulldozer who came and started bulldozing the forest without permission, and did that for about 2 days before anyone noticed, and the police came down and arrested them, and now Juan has their bulldozer. that was a couple of weeks ago though.
We spend the days going to cameras, where we change the batteries and check the memory cards to see if there have been any photos of animals on them. so far since i{ve been there, we´ve got photos of jaguars, ocelots, pumas, deer, agouti (big rodent thing), tayra (kind of black foxy thing), and ocelated turkeys. theat´s really cool, as they are really good photos too!! i´ve not seen any big cats myself yet, but saw an ocelot (medium cat) tail disappear into the bushes, and i´ve seen a tayra (also saw one of them in CR). we also go on surveys looking for feild signs (shit and footprints!) of the animals, mainly the carnivores. it´s been pretty dry though, but we have seen jag prints and puma prints, as well as fox and raccoon poo!
one day, we went on a walk through the forest, and up to a cenote (lake) and an alligator came swimming over to us as we stood on the bank. Remembering Jon´s freaked out reaction when Herman went standing near a crocodile and throwing stones into the water in Jalova, I backed away from the water´s edge, while Juan picked up a stick and started slapping the water´s surface in front of the alligator, who then came out of the water onto the bank, and he was going to me "she´s tame, she´s a pet, she´s called Benita". and then he got some string and tied a bit of wood to the end, and dangled it above her head, and she was sat up and snapping at the string, like a cat might paw at a bit of wool you dangle for it. i was taking photos, and then he said did i want a photo of me and her, so i was like, OK, and she went back into the water, and i crouched by the water´s edge, and she came about a foot away from me. I was going "oh shit!" and he was goign "she´s tame, it´s fine, sh´wont go for you" but i kept looking at her mouth which was as long as my forearm, and thinking, Barney is tame, but he still bites sometimes, so my expression is half smile half grimace!
what else? well, i was watching Spiderman 2 (dubbed in Spanish, but i know the story so i virtually forgot they were´saying a word i could understand!) with Jonas and Louis, and I went up to the toilet, and there was a massive (the size of a man´s hand) tarantula on the back of the door. it was black all over, and its body was about 2 inches in diameter, and its leg span was about 6 inches, and it was really hairy, the hairs being about half an inch long, black hairs all over, but bright orange hairs on its abdomen, quite beautiful really. so after about 5 seconds when i´d got over my mini heart attack, i went and got my camera and got some great photos of it. then went downstairs (ith the camera, to show the guys) and i was like "Jonas, hay una tarantula grande en el baños" and they lkooked at the photos and seems a bit shocked, and i was like "si, aqui, ahora". I thought they´d be like "oh yeah, it happens all the time, deal with it", but instead, they grabbed a carrier bag and came upstairs and they emereged from the bathroom holding the carrier bag, wit hthe tarantula crawling up the side of it, with Jonas holding it at arms length and bending over, and Louis jumping away scared, and they weretrying but failing to turn the bg inside out, and as the tarantula was crawling up and nearing Jonas´s hand and he was going "ah!!" i took the lid off the bin and pushed itover, and he threw the bag (plus tarantula) into the bin and the two of them put the lid on it super-quick, and took it downstairs. Jonas was saying to me (in Español, but with actions) that they can climb into your welies, and if they bite you it swells up. i went to put my camera away, and went downstairs to carry on watching Spiderman 2, and saw the two of them poking around the kitchen bin, and i saw a tarantula, and they said it was "un otro! dos!" i thougth oh shit, and blamed it all on Spiderman! then at the end of the film, i was asking them (in no doubt dreadful spanish) what i should do if i see another in the night, and while i was asking, Louis pointed into the kitchen, and there was another tarantula (or one of the ones they´d released outside and had come back) in the kitchen!! AARRGGHH!! anyway, they said to catch it in these giant yoghurt pots they had, and they loaded me up with yoghurt pots and a torch, and that was me ready for the night!! Juan said to me that they don{t bite, and to be honest, i wouldn{t have been that bothered by one being there, but it was the reactions of the guys that freaked me out a bit! anyway, they didn{t return, and i haven{t seen one since.
i did,however, see a rat running round next to my bed, which bothered me more than the tarantulas and the bat (oh yeah, there´s a bat too which comes and goes) becausae it was right next to my bed. i tried to get a photo of it but it was too quick and kept running up the walls and behind shutters, the nwhen i´d open the shutter, it wasn{t there. it bugged me because it was noisy as if it was squabbling with another mouse. in the morning, the toilet paper had been shredded, apparently by the said rat. ah well.
a few days ago, i was going out on a survey, and Juan said to put a lot of bug spray on, because we were going to a place where there were a lot of ticks. i kind of visibly cringed and said i hated ticks, and he laughed and said he didn{t like them either, but he was like "a wild man" (his words) and he said that the place we were going to, one time he went there, and pulled 218 ticks out of his legs that day. i duly went crazy with the bug spray. naked, i sprayed it onto my body, then i turned my trousers inside out and sprayed the inside, and then put them on, and sprayed the outside. i also wore long socks and wellies. i found one tick crawling on my arm (which i hadny sprayed, as they{re generally lurking below wais height) and that was all. he said after that because it had rained, it was not that ticky(?) weather... but i appreciated the warning anyway!
however, i´d already had a tick problem before this.... for those who don{t know, there was a bit of a tick problem in CR before i left, and about 5 people had found ticks on themselves. i was one of the lucky ones who hadn{t, even though i played with the dogs, who you could see the fleas crawling on them, so i{m sure they had ticks too) but then when i was in Panama city airport, changing plnes between CR and Mexico, i feltsomething sjharp like a splinter in between my toes. i ignored it at first, but then it hurt again so off came the shoe and sock in the departure lounge, and ´{m sure you can guess what i{m about the say was there - yeah, a tick, happily munching away on my foot! i tried to pull it off wit hmy fingers, but i hurt and i yelled out in pain, thus attracting attention, as i then had to virtually empty my bag looking for tweezers, which i then grabbed onto the tick and yanked it off my foot. it hurt. and indeed it hurt for about another 4 days afterwards. that was a week ago and i can still feel it a bit, but that may be because after it was still hurting after 4 days, i thought maybe the head was still embedded in my foot (as i{ve heard can happen), so i had to pick off the scab, and have a scrape around in the hole to see if i could find any bits of tick. i think i pulled out something, but i´m not wholly sure if it was part of me or part of a tick. anyway that may have set back the recorvery, or may have helped it, i don{t know.
ok, that´s it for now. tomorrow i´m off to see some Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza, as it´s the weekend and i can amuse myself. then another week of forest surveys - this time with 4 volunteers, who will hopefully speak some english - if not, my spanish will improve even more!
Well i have had one week in Mexico now, and it is a BIG change from Jalova (where i was in CR). Here´s why: Jalova was 20 volunteers, plus 7 staff, who all spoke excellent english, most being native speakers. El Eden, here in Mexico, has just one volunteer (me) and 4 staff, only one of whom speaks any English!! So I´m having a lot of "me time". When I left England (where i live alone), knowing i was going to spend all those weeks living in each others pockets with 25 people, i thought i might get sick of it, but I never did (thanks to people like Marcus, Kyle, Sarah, Sam, (1st 5 weeks) and Danya, Rick, Marshall, Casey, Emma, Alice, and Julia (second 5 weeks)). Now i´m moslty on my own, i miss all that company. Still, my spanish is improving (it´s still diabolical, and i have conversations like "Tengo todos del agua aqui" and point to my wellies (which were full of water, as the beautifully crafted spanish sentence tells!) and then the guy i´m saying it to laughs, and replies a load of stuff i don{t understand, and i smile and nod back - ha ha!
The people i work with are all mexican middle-aged men, who live on site. There is Juan - project leader who speaks very good english, and he is like a Mexican version of my dad (although not as brown as my dad!) ie, he is stocky, middle-aged and looks like my dad, right down to the bulging scar on his forehead, no doubt from disregarding safety procedures (like my dad!) There is also Pedro who rarely speaks, Louis who speaks fast (probably normally!) and Jonas, who is a bit crazy and whoops with excitement at things like rain storms, attacks vegetation with his machete in any spare moment, and he talks to me sometimes and i can get the gist of what he´s saying, which i like!
the weather here is hotter than CR - i always thought it was supposed to be hotter near the equator, but i guess that´s where my knowledge of the weather ends. it´s a fairly consistent 32´C in the day, and it drops to about 27´C or even 25´C (brrr!!) at night. i´m not kidding, the other day when it rained, i put on my fleece jacket (complete with Barney hair) for the first time, and wore trousers all day, feeling rather chilly, and it was 25´C. Shit, i am gonna DIE when i come back to England in December!!
the camp is in the middle of a forest, and the nearest town is 50km away. there are a few wooden cabins, which are pretty big - the main cabin is about 15 metres by 15 metres, and downstaris is a kitchen and dining room, with a TV which gets a dreadful snowy reception, and upstairs there are 4 beds (one is mine) and 2 showers (cold) and 2 toilets (flushing, but dirty paper still goes in the bin, which stays there for about 4 days - nice!) and above that is a watch tower, which is only about 2 mtres squared. they use it to look out for forest fires, and i use it to look out for birds, and there´s more of a breeze up there. so far i´ve seen hawks (roadside, i believe) plus great kiskadees, flycatchers, a flock of swallows, great egret, snowy egret, little blue heron (juvenile), yukatan jays, and a few other birds i cannot identify. you can see for miles from there, and the view iw pretty muych identical ion every direction: completely flat land, covered in deciduous forest. it´s pretty dense forest, but seems quite desolate to look out and that´s all you see, but i like it, and i quite like to know that there´s no one else for miles around. well, except for some people with a bulldozer who came and started bulldozing the forest without permission, and did that for about 2 days before anyone noticed, and the police came down and arrested them, and now Juan has their bulldozer. that was a couple of weeks ago though.
We spend the days going to cameras, where we change the batteries and check the memory cards to see if there have been any photos of animals on them. so far since i{ve been there, we´ve got photos of jaguars, ocelots, pumas, deer, agouti (big rodent thing), tayra (kind of black foxy thing), and ocelated turkeys. theat´s really cool, as they are really good photos too!! i´ve not seen any big cats myself yet, but saw an ocelot (medium cat) tail disappear into the bushes, and i´ve seen a tayra (also saw one of them in CR). we also go on surveys looking for feild signs (shit and footprints!) of the animals, mainly the carnivores. it´s been pretty dry though, but we have seen jag prints and puma prints, as well as fox and raccoon poo!
one day, we went on a walk through the forest, and up to a cenote (lake) and an alligator came swimming over to us as we stood on the bank. Remembering Jon´s freaked out reaction when Herman went standing near a crocodile and throwing stones into the water in Jalova, I backed away from the water´s edge, while Juan picked up a stick and started slapping the water´s surface in front of the alligator, who then came out of the water onto the bank, and he was going to me "she´s tame, she´s a pet, she´s called Benita". and then he got some string and tied a bit of wood to the end, and dangled it above her head, and she was sat up and snapping at the string, like a cat might paw at a bit of wool you dangle for it. i was taking photos, and then he said did i want a photo of me and her, so i was like, OK, and she went back into the water, and i crouched by the water´s edge, and she came about a foot away from me. I was going "oh shit!" and he was goign "she´s tame, it´s fine, sh´wont go for you" but i kept looking at her mouth which was as long as my forearm, and thinking, Barney is tame, but he still bites sometimes, so my expression is half smile half grimace!
what else? well, i was watching Spiderman 2 (dubbed in Spanish, but i know the story so i virtually forgot they were´saying a word i could understand!) with Jonas and Louis, and I went up to the toilet, and there was a massive (the size of a man´s hand) tarantula on the back of the door. it was black all over, and its body was about 2 inches in diameter, and its leg span was about 6 inches, and it was really hairy, the hairs being about half an inch long, black hairs all over, but bright orange hairs on its abdomen, quite beautiful really. so after about 5 seconds when i´d got over my mini heart attack, i went and got my camera and got some great photos of it. then went downstairs (ith the camera, to show the guys) and i was like "Jonas, hay una tarantula grande en el baños" and they lkooked at the photos and seems a bit shocked, and i was like "si, aqui, ahora". I thought they´d be like "oh yeah, it happens all the time, deal with it", but instead, they grabbed a carrier bag and came upstairs and they emereged from the bathroom holding the carrier bag, wit hthe tarantula crawling up the side of it, with Jonas holding it at arms length and bending over, and Louis jumping away scared, and they weretrying but failing to turn the bg inside out, and as the tarantula was crawling up and nearing Jonas´s hand and he was going "ah!!" i took the lid off the bin and pushed itover, and he threw the bag (plus tarantula) into the bin and the two of them put the lid on it super-quick, and took it downstairs. Jonas was saying to me (in Español, but with actions) that they can climb into your welies, and if they bite you it swells up. i went to put my camera away, and went downstairs to carry on watching Spiderman 2, and saw the two of them poking around the kitchen bin, and i saw a tarantula, and they said it was "un otro! dos!" i thougth oh shit, and blamed it all on Spiderman! then at the end of the film, i was asking them (in no doubt dreadful spanish) what i should do if i see another in the night, and while i was asking, Louis pointed into the kitchen, and there was another tarantula (or one of the ones they´d released outside and had come back) in the kitchen!! AARRGGHH!! anyway, they said to catch it in these giant yoghurt pots they had, and they loaded me up with yoghurt pots and a torch, and that was me ready for the night!! Juan said to me that they don{t bite, and to be honest, i wouldn{t have been that bothered by one being there, but it was the reactions of the guys that freaked me out a bit! anyway, they didn{t return, and i haven{t seen one since.
i did,however, see a rat running round next to my bed, which bothered me more than the tarantulas and the bat (oh yeah, there´s a bat too which comes and goes) becausae it was right next to my bed. i tried to get a photo of it but it was too quick and kept running up the walls and behind shutters, the nwhen i´d open the shutter, it wasn{t there. it bugged me because it was noisy as if it was squabbling with another mouse. in the morning, the toilet paper had been shredded, apparently by the said rat. ah well.
a few days ago, i was going out on a survey, and Juan said to put a lot of bug spray on, because we were going to a place where there were a lot of ticks. i kind of visibly cringed and said i hated ticks, and he laughed and said he didn{t like them either, but he was like "a wild man" (his words) and he said that the place we were going to, one time he went there, and pulled 218 ticks out of his legs that day. i duly went crazy with the bug spray. naked, i sprayed it onto my body, then i turned my trousers inside out and sprayed the inside, and then put them on, and sprayed the outside. i also wore long socks and wellies. i found one tick crawling on my arm (which i hadny sprayed, as they{re generally lurking below wais height) and that was all. he said after that because it had rained, it was not that ticky(?) weather... but i appreciated the warning anyway!
however, i´d already had a tick problem before this.... for those who don{t know, there was a bit of a tick problem in CR before i left, and about 5 people had found ticks on themselves. i was one of the lucky ones who hadn{t, even though i played with the dogs, who you could see the fleas crawling on them, so i{m sure they had ticks too) but then when i was in Panama city airport, changing plnes between CR and Mexico, i feltsomething sjharp like a splinter in between my toes. i ignored it at first, but then it hurt again so off came the shoe and sock in the departure lounge, and ´{m sure you can guess what i{m about the say was there - yeah, a tick, happily munching away on my foot! i tried to pull it off wit hmy fingers, but i hurt and i yelled out in pain, thus attracting attention, as i then had to virtually empty my bag looking for tweezers, which i then grabbed onto the tick and yanked it off my foot. it hurt. and indeed it hurt for about another 4 days afterwards. that was a week ago and i can still feel it a bit, but that may be because after it was still hurting after 4 days, i thought maybe the head was still embedded in my foot (as i{ve heard can happen), so i had to pick off the scab, and have a scrape around in the hole to see if i could find any bits of tick. i think i pulled out something, but i´m not wholly sure if it was part of me or part of a tick. anyway that may have set back the recorvery, or may have helped it, i don{t know.
ok, that´s it for now. tomorrow i´m off to see some Mayan ruins in Chichen Itza, as it´s the weekend and i can amuse myself. then another week of forest surveys - this time with 4 volunteers, who will hopefully speak some english - if not, my spanish will improve even more!
Wednesday, 8 September 2010
Top 10s...
TOP 10 FAVOURITE MOMENTS
1. White water rafting – both times
2. Slackjaw zombie fest with Molly, Kyle and Sarah
3. The dares, especially the one involving mummy bird spitting into baby bird’s mouth – it was so funny!
4. When Kyle (Rice ‘n’ Beanz) and I (Dr Tang) became rappers
5. Freeing the turtle which had been tied up by poachers, with Molly. Rachel and Deanna
6. The embarrassing banking crisis with Danya
7. Sarah having to hold Kyle’s feet to stop him falling into the hole when we excavated the leather back nest
8. Arno’s birthday pinata and him breaking stuff
9. Seeing the leatherback turtle make it to the sea
10. The Helen Kellar turtles coming up to us and the one who almost nested on me
TOP 10 FAVOURITE ANIMALS I'VE SEEN
1. Leatherback hatchling
2. Green turtles
3. Hawksbill turtles
4. Keel-billed toucans
5. Capuchin monkeys
6. Spider monkeys
7. Red-eyed tree frogs
8. Howler monkeys
9. Eyelash pit vipers
10. Tiger herons
TOP 10 THINGS I LOVED AND WILL MISS
1. The people I met and the friendships I forged
2. Having turtles lay eggs into my hand
3. Canal bird surveys and spotting the birds
4. Seeing all the cool animals on Incidentals walks in the forest (mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, turtles, frogs, spiders and insects)
5. Knowing I'm doing something of international importance that helps animals and the environment
6. The chilled out feeling of not having deadlines, targets or stress – Pura Vida! Being cut off from all the usual shite of the real world
7. Taking amazing photos
8. Playing cards and other games in the evenings (Skippy!!)
9. Hearing some of the bird calls I’d spent so long learning
10. Chilling in the hammocks
TOP 10 THINGS I HATED AND WON'T MISS
1. The pain of getting stung in the eye (and ear and neck) by the wasp
2. Mosquitoes biting you in the forest, sand flies biting you on the beach, and ants biting you in camp; the constant itching of these bites
3. Getting sand in your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and under your clothes, in your underwear, around your neck… basically everywhere
4. Insects flying into your face when you’re using candles in the evenings
5. Annoying people being annoying
6. Unimaginative meals like porridge; spag bol; rice and beans
7. Getting hair out of the showers or having to touch the burnables buckets full of shitty toilet paper when on camp duty
8. Washing using a bucket of cold, sandy water
9. Being hot and sweaty all the time
10. Having bats, toads, wasps, cockoraches, spiders, scorpions, and insects in the dorms, toilets, and kitchen
Some things you may have hated, but didn't even make my list: having no space to yourself; living out of a bag; having dangerous animals all around you; having to wear long sleeves, trousers and wellies even in 30'C heat in the forest; sleeping in 28'C (you get used to it... now, if it's 25'C or less, i get into my sleeping bag, and if it's 23'C or less, i wear long sleeves and trousers in the sleeping bag - and it's not just me who does that!); having to walk 5 to 10 miles a day nearly every day; being totally cut off from people in the outside world; not being able to wash your clothes properly, or stop your clothes / yourself from smelling; getting turtle gooey egg-laying lubricant coming out of the turtle and onto yout wrists and arms when counting eggs (we have latex gloves but they don't cover your wrists); only being able to use electrical appliances for an hour a day - usually just to charge stuff; having to cook for and clean up after 30 people when it's your turn to do camp duty.... the list goes on, but none of this stuff really bothers me. it makes you realise what is really important in life.
For other related things that normal people may find annoying, see my Gross list
End of 10 week phase in Costa Rica >:o(
Well, that's my 10 weeks in Costa Rica done and dusted. I left base camp this morning and I'm writing this from Gaudy's hostel in San Jose; I fly to Mexico tomorrow. I'm sure Mexico will be great, but I feel so sad to be leaving Jalova, as I have had such an amazing time there. I'm not afraid to say that a few tears were shed, and not just by me. In a way I feel like it's gone quite fast (too fast) and on the other hand, teaching in Loughborough, and my old life seems like another lifetime. I feel like I've known people like Marcus and Arno and Sonja for years! Anyway, I'm not going to dwell too much on how sad i am to be leaving; instead I am going to remember the brilliant, funny, or otherwise memorable things that have happened.
My most recent 'memorable moments' from Costa Rica:
- All those stupid dares with Rick, Danya, Marshall, Alice, Emma, Casey and Julia. It was so funny when Marshall kept saying Danya's name by accident and suffering the consequences, and when Rick couldn't drink the soy sauce drnik that I'd made him as it was like pure salt, and of course, the infamous mummy bird spitting into baby bird's mouth... it was the funniest thing that's happened since me and Kyle became rappers!
- Marshall saying "we're gonna get fucked uuuup!" in a high-pitched voice
- Rafting and all the associated drunknenness
- Competing with Danya at Memory, Scrabble, and getting the best photos
- When the tayra (black fox type thing) ran past, and I thought it was Congo (the ranger's dog) for a minute
- Someone wrapping up their turds and putting them in the burnables bin. Pretty disgusting stuff, and we never did find out who it was or why the'd done it. Weird.
- Carrying the shopping back from the rivermouth with Alice, and singing stupid songs to try and take our minds off how heavy the crate was!
- Building a triple-decker hammock and then getting into it.... the trees held the weigt of 3 people, then broke later when Marshall got into it... fat bastard! (that is a joke, in case the cold toneless writing of the internet can't convey my tone)
- The banking crisis with Danya. It was a monumental task which i might elaborate on later. Suffice it to say that it was funny and embarrassing and Danya was an invaluable translator and I was glad I wasn't going through it on my own, and becasue it was so funny it took my mind off how pissed off and anxious i was at not being able to get any of my millions of colones out of the bank.
- The Helen Kellar turtle(s) who went right past us and appeared not to know or care that we were right next to them. They just looked around, sighed in that turtley way, and carried on past us, unperturbed! - the first was with Molly, Casey and Danya, and then a few nights later, two more turtles did exactly the same thing when I was out with Marta, Arno and Deanna; one of the turtles even used me and Arno to push against on her way past us!
- Playing Shag, Marry Kill (or go on a cruise, if playing with Ruth, who doesn't want to kill anyone) this is where someone says three famous people, and you have to decide who you'd shag, marry, kill / cruise with. Who would have thought that i'd shag Saddam Hussein, go on a cruise with Skeletor, and marry Hitler... or that I'd shag Barbie, kill The Little Mermaid, and marry Tinkerbell... or that I'd shag a manatee, kill the howler monkey, and marry the turtle?!
- Casey reading intimate phrases out of a Spanish phrasebook, e.g. "Shall we go to the bedroom" "Please stop" "I like you as a friend" and (my personal favourite) "Touch me here" (Tocar me aqui)... who says this shit? It's so funny to imagine two people getting naked while one (or both) of them are reading phrases out of a phrasebook!
- Trent asking "How'd y'all get the smell of turtle out of your backpacks?", and we all laughed and replied "You don't!"
This being my last week, I wanted to make the most of it all and savour the moments, as they'll never come again. The last Bird survey was beautiful... the sun was shining, and the water was still, reflecting the trees dangling over it; there were mealy parrots squawking overhead and a tiger heron flying along with us and posing for incredible photos. You could hear the howler monkeys groaning from across the forest, and spider monkeys were swinging about near the water's edge to get a good look at us... we saw more herons, egrets, and kingfishers (and northern jacanas, of course!) than I've seen on any bird survey, and it was a great survey to finish on. They can often be like that, it just felt all the more poignant as it's the last one i'll ever do.
My last turtle survey was also pretty funny, when a deafer, blinder cousin of the Helen Kellar turtles tried to nest on top of me: picture the scene... I'm lying face down on the beach, with my hand under a turtle and she's laying eggs into my hand, but has dug the body pit so deep that my head is lower than my feet as I'm reaching under her, and i was gradually slipping in. Then I hear Ruth say to Marcus "That turtle is about to go right into Karen" and I look over my left shouder to see a turtle whose head is about 50 cm from mine, and she's coming right at me. I can't move, as once you start counting eggs, you have to finish come rain, sand flies or army ants (or blind turtles). Then I see Marcus come into the small space between me and the turtle, and he shoos it away. I only found out after that he and Ruth had already deflected the turtle away from me on two prevoius occsaions. They'd seen it coming up towards me, and Ruth had shone her light right in its face, to get it to go away; the turtle simply changed direction slightly, but then continued heading for me... i think they then stood in front of it, shone their lights in its face, and it appeared to half moon (return to the sea) and Ruth and Marcus began triangulating, but after they'd done one tree, ruth turned around to see that the turtle had changed direction again and was less than a metre away from me. that was when they finally managed to get rid of it once and for all. Most turtles get scared and half moon if they see you, or if they see your light, or if you walk in front of them, but not this gal. the problem is that they weigh about half a ton, and could easily crush me as I was lying there on the sand. ah well, crisis overted... she was a persistent one!
My last two Incidentals walks were also great... with Jon and Emma, I finally got to see the Keel-billed toucan I've heard several times but never seen, and they are quite possibly the most beautiful bird in the world. The two we were following kept lading in trees, seemingly disappearing, then just as you'd spot it, it'd fly off to another tree and disapper - little buggers - which meant I couldn't get a photo, but I saw them, so I'll remember that. With Andres and Alice, we saw several red-eyed tree frogs (the quintessential symbol of Costa Rica) and unlike the toucans, the frogs pose for a photo adorably, and you take about ten, then go to put your camera way, then they move to look even more beautiful, so you take more photos, then go to put your camera away, then they move to look even MORE amazing... this happened about 6 or 7 times, so I have about 100 photos of red-eyed tree frogs now. Not that i'm complaining. One time, as I saw Andres leaning down, I saw an eyelash pit viper in front of him, and said "öh yeah, eyelash viper" and he was like "where?" and turned his head and it was about a foot away from his face! he'd not seen it, and was bending down to pick up the red-eyed tree frog. it was quite funny. They are highly (fatally) venomous, but so sluggish you could probably prod it in the face several times without it biting you. That's the impression i get, anyway, but i'm not going to test it.
Today, I left the camp at 4.30am to get the taxi boat to Cano Blanco, but it's a big day for the people staying at camp - there is a close encounter of the child kind on its way, invading like the army ants did, destroying everything in their wake... ok, maybe i'm over-dramatising a litte: there is going to be a beach clean, where 50 ish local children are coming along to learn about recycling, not littering, and to pick up the litter that gets washed up on the beach, and how it can hurt turtles or other animals. I'm sure it will be a memorable day, whether it is a complete success, or a total flop. Even if it's a bit chaotic, it should get the beach a bit cleaner, at the very least. But 50 spanish-speaking 5 to 12 year olds is not everybody's idea of fun: suddenly, Suzie, Rick and Danya were volunteering for nest checks and camp duty - anyhting to avoid the kids! that's exactly what i'd be doing too if i were there! But despite the almost complete lack of Spanish language skills, most people are looking forward to having the kids around. Just imagine it though - 50 kids coming to a forest inhabited by jaguars and venomous snakes, picking up broken glass and hazardous waste off a beach in the midday heat - God help the person who had to write the rish assessment!!
My most recent 'memorable moments' from Costa Rica:
- All those stupid dares with Rick, Danya, Marshall, Alice, Emma, Casey and Julia. It was so funny when Marshall kept saying Danya's name by accident and suffering the consequences, and when Rick couldn't drink the soy sauce drnik that I'd made him as it was like pure salt, and of course, the infamous mummy bird spitting into baby bird's mouth... it was the funniest thing that's happened since me and Kyle became rappers!
- Marshall saying "we're gonna get fucked uuuup!" in a high-pitched voice
- Rafting and all the associated drunknenness
- Competing with Danya at Memory, Scrabble, and getting the best photos
- When the tayra (black fox type thing) ran past, and I thought it was Congo (the ranger's dog) for a minute
- Someone wrapping up their turds and putting them in the burnables bin. Pretty disgusting stuff, and we never did find out who it was or why the'd done it. Weird.
- Carrying the shopping back from the rivermouth with Alice, and singing stupid songs to try and take our minds off how heavy the crate was!
- Building a triple-decker hammock and then getting into it.... the trees held the weigt of 3 people, then broke later when Marshall got into it... fat bastard! (that is a joke, in case the cold toneless writing of the internet can't convey my tone)
- The banking crisis with Danya. It was a monumental task which i might elaborate on later. Suffice it to say that it was funny and embarrassing and Danya was an invaluable translator and I was glad I wasn't going through it on my own, and becasue it was so funny it took my mind off how pissed off and anxious i was at not being able to get any of my millions of colones out of the bank.
- The Helen Kellar turtle(s) who went right past us and appeared not to know or care that we were right next to them. They just looked around, sighed in that turtley way, and carried on past us, unperturbed! - the first was with Molly, Casey and Danya, and then a few nights later, two more turtles did exactly the same thing when I was out with Marta, Arno and Deanna; one of the turtles even used me and Arno to push against on her way past us!
- Playing Shag, Marry Kill (or go on a cruise, if playing with Ruth, who doesn't want to kill anyone) this is where someone says three famous people, and you have to decide who you'd shag, marry, kill / cruise with. Who would have thought that i'd shag Saddam Hussein, go on a cruise with Skeletor, and marry Hitler... or that I'd shag Barbie, kill The Little Mermaid, and marry Tinkerbell... or that I'd shag a manatee, kill the howler monkey, and marry the turtle?!
- Casey reading intimate phrases out of a Spanish phrasebook, e.g. "Shall we go to the bedroom" "Please stop" "I like you as a friend" and (my personal favourite) "Touch me here" (Tocar me aqui)... who says this shit? It's so funny to imagine two people getting naked while one (or both) of them are reading phrases out of a phrasebook!
- Trent asking "How'd y'all get the smell of turtle out of your backpacks?", and we all laughed and replied "You don't!"
This being my last week, I wanted to make the most of it all and savour the moments, as they'll never come again. The last Bird survey was beautiful... the sun was shining, and the water was still, reflecting the trees dangling over it; there were mealy parrots squawking overhead and a tiger heron flying along with us and posing for incredible photos. You could hear the howler monkeys groaning from across the forest, and spider monkeys were swinging about near the water's edge to get a good look at us... we saw more herons, egrets, and kingfishers (and northern jacanas, of course!) than I've seen on any bird survey, and it was a great survey to finish on. They can often be like that, it just felt all the more poignant as it's the last one i'll ever do.
My last turtle survey was also pretty funny, when a deafer, blinder cousin of the Helen Kellar turtles tried to nest on top of me: picture the scene... I'm lying face down on the beach, with my hand under a turtle and she's laying eggs into my hand, but has dug the body pit so deep that my head is lower than my feet as I'm reaching under her, and i was gradually slipping in. Then I hear Ruth say to Marcus "That turtle is about to go right into Karen" and I look over my left shouder to see a turtle whose head is about 50 cm from mine, and she's coming right at me. I can't move, as once you start counting eggs, you have to finish come rain, sand flies or army ants (or blind turtles). Then I see Marcus come into the small space between me and the turtle, and he shoos it away. I only found out after that he and Ruth had already deflected the turtle away from me on two prevoius occsaions. They'd seen it coming up towards me, and Ruth had shone her light right in its face, to get it to go away; the turtle simply changed direction slightly, but then continued heading for me... i think they then stood in front of it, shone their lights in its face, and it appeared to half moon (return to the sea) and Ruth and Marcus began triangulating, but after they'd done one tree, ruth turned around to see that the turtle had changed direction again and was less than a metre away from me. that was when they finally managed to get rid of it once and for all. Most turtles get scared and half moon if they see you, or if they see your light, or if you walk in front of them, but not this gal. the problem is that they weigh about half a ton, and could easily crush me as I was lying there on the sand. ah well, crisis overted... she was a persistent one!
My last two Incidentals walks were also great... with Jon and Emma, I finally got to see the Keel-billed toucan I've heard several times but never seen, and they are quite possibly the most beautiful bird in the world. The two we were following kept lading in trees, seemingly disappearing, then just as you'd spot it, it'd fly off to another tree and disapper - little buggers - which meant I couldn't get a photo, but I saw them, so I'll remember that. With Andres and Alice, we saw several red-eyed tree frogs (the quintessential symbol of Costa Rica) and unlike the toucans, the frogs pose for a photo adorably, and you take about ten, then go to put your camera way, then they move to look even more beautiful, so you take more photos, then go to put your camera away, then they move to look even MORE amazing... this happened about 6 or 7 times, so I have about 100 photos of red-eyed tree frogs now. Not that i'm complaining. One time, as I saw Andres leaning down, I saw an eyelash pit viper in front of him, and said "öh yeah, eyelash viper" and he was like "where?" and turned his head and it was about a foot away from his face! he'd not seen it, and was bending down to pick up the red-eyed tree frog. it was quite funny. They are highly (fatally) venomous, but so sluggish you could probably prod it in the face several times without it biting you. That's the impression i get, anyway, but i'm not going to test it.
Today, I left the camp at 4.30am to get the taxi boat to Cano Blanco, but it's a big day for the people staying at camp - there is a close encounter of the child kind on its way, invading like the army ants did, destroying everything in their wake... ok, maybe i'm over-dramatising a litte: there is going to be a beach clean, where 50 ish local children are coming along to learn about recycling, not littering, and to pick up the litter that gets washed up on the beach, and how it can hurt turtles or other animals. I'm sure it will be a memorable day, whether it is a complete success, or a total flop. Even if it's a bit chaotic, it should get the beach a bit cleaner, at the very least. But 50 spanish-speaking 5 to 12 year olds is not everybody's idea of fun: suddenly, Suzie, Rick and Danya were volunteering for nest checks and camp duty - anyhting to avoid the kids! that's exactly what i'd be doing too if i were there! But despite the almost complete lack of Spanish language skills, most people are looking forward to having the kids around. Just imagine it though - 50 kids coming to a forest inhabited by jaguars and venomous snakes, picking up broken glass and hazardous waste off a beach in the midday heat - God help the person who had to write the rish assessment!!
It's nearly the end of the Tico-Brit spotting contest, and it looks like Jon is going to win it for England, and unless Andres can spot several new species of animal in one day, he's going to be saying goodbye to his leg hair.... there doesn't seem to be any wax strips in camp (why didn't anyone buy some?) so he may have the hair epilated - OUCH! Hopefully someone will update the Facebook group with photos and info on the painful culmination of ten weeks work!
In other news, the five interns now know their placements: Marcus and Deanna are going to a forest project where they'll get to be in the forest every day, and it's mainly flora-based research. Karen B will be going to the Hatchery where they collect freshly-laid eggs and then return them to the beach when they're hatching. And Sonja and Arno will stay at Jalova as staff members. Everyone seems pretty happy with their placements, and hopefully they'll get out of it what they hope for.
Well I guess this is about it from Costa Rica for now... although I still have some top tens that i'm going to write.
PURA VIDA !!!!!
this is a Costa Rican phrase meaning 'take it easy' 'enjoy life' etc
Well I guess this is about it from Costa Rica for now... although I still have some top tens that i'm going to write.
PURA VIDA !!!!!
this is a Costa Rican phrase meaning 'take it easy' 'enjoy life' etc
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