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!!
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