Last update from Machia Park, Bolivia. 24 April 2008
Well, I´m back... as promised. This will be my last update from Bolivia unless I miss a flight... which is possibility due to all the landslides and all that cause road blocks and other delays.
I have spent most of the last 3 days with Quirqui, the lovely grey brown puma, and it kind of grew on me... even though you do do VERY little with him. If you give him a ball to play you are lucky if he lifts one paw to try and grab it, even more lucky if he even tries to roll on his back... On the days when it´s very hot I took it upon myself to get a sponge and to keep it cool by wetting the top of his head and body. He liked it so much that he lifted its head as if to say ´this is a great idea, can you cool my neck too por favor !?´.
Officially we are supposed to speak to all the animals in Spanish not to confuse them but I always forgot.... I am sure the cat didn´t really mind and just went by tone of voice. And then as I was trying to think of ways to keep him entertained one of the Finnish guys who works nearest to me, in the macaw area, brought me a beautiful blue and red feather and a huge leaf... none of which impressed Quirqui in the least. ´Been there, done that, seen it all before, rattle your brain a bit more´... type of look. So I used the huge leaf as a fan to cool him down further. You would have thought he was a Pharaoh or Pacha of some sort. Anyone seeing him fan this cat and bring him his water bowl right under its nose would have thought I overdid it, but poor Quirqui has had such a rotten life in the zoo (they didn´t treat his eye infections and gum disease) that it was nice to go overboard ! ;) I heard they even fed him bread because they didn´t want to spend too much money feeding him meat. No wonder the poor kitty lacked all the precious minerals and vitamins needed to develop a good bone structure.
On Monday night about 3/4 of the volunteers turned up at my hotel for a big dinner. But because we hadn´t ordered a buffet, some had to wait 3 hours to be served. Dire. However, I got to talk to some people I had only briefly seen before and one guy showed me an hilarious video of a female capucchin monkey on heat. She had developed this massive crush on him and became massively jealous of any other female monkeys he might even glance at... To show him that she had the hots for him she kept holding her breasts out towards him and every time he´d turn away to look at something else, she´d jump into his field of vision so that he´d be forced to look at her again. You had to see it to believe it... He had started the video with her wobbling her breasts towards him and then he pretended to film an ant on the ground and sure enough, within 5 seconds, there she was, grinning at the camera, fondling her breasts again... then he pretended to zoom in higher up and within 5 seconds she´d leapt on a branch and was grinning at him, right where he was filming. Amazing. We were just rolling with laughter. I asked him today if he could do me one with my camera but today is 3 days later and she is no longer on heat, so he´s ´history´ and she´s ´over him now´. To start with he was really worried so he went to talk to the vets and they explained that she is on heat for 5 days ever so often and then will behave in this way towards men that take her fancy. He said she was even ´doing things with her tail that he couldn´t really describe not to be too graphic´. Hum.
The day after I was really thinking ´gee, how am I going to kill 7 hours' ... when Quirqui wants to do SO little, the days do drag, believe you me. I still appreciate the beautiful surroundings though and the jungle is SO lush, everywhere you look, you will discover a new plant you had not noticed the day before. The whole environment is so incredibly rich, even though the Machia Park is built on a secondary forest. But it is still very beautiful...
However, the morning went pretty fast as the vets brought a boa for the cage next door. He was huge, and Quirqui was very intrigued. One of the vets came to stroke him, he smelt the scent of the snake on his hand and started hissing. Quirqui may have dodgy legs and dodgy eyes but he still has a good nose it seems ! They had to operate on the snake because it had tried to eat a dog. The owner tried to rescue his dog but putting a stick in the snake´s mouth to hold it open, and by doing so, had torn the side of its jaw. They had to operate and will need to feed him chicken in a huge syringe for a while, but as soon as his jaw has healed, they will release him. I asked if a boa could kill a man but they said no, however, it could strangle a child. They don´t have much venom nor teeth, as their weapon lies in their muscle power. When there are hand feeding him there are always 3 of them doing it. One to hold the mouth, one to hold the tail and a 3rd to open his mouth with an instrument and shove the pieces of chicken in it.
Having lots of time on my hand I got a book out of the Book Exchange cupboard that was called ´Travelling Well´. It was very interesting and I will probably buy my own copy when I return. Most people have got parasites here so I was reading on what to do to avoid contracting them, but it seems that they can be everywhere... even on bank notes, door handles, not just food or monkey poo. So, it is pretty difficult to avoid getting them. I use my anti baterial gel every day before I eat and after I use the loo, as recommended, and so far, so good... I was actually surprised to read in the book that one quarter of the world population has got hook worms !
After a hard day at work - NOT - I went back to my hotel for a swim. I do value this as I never get the chance to go to the pool much when in London and I do enjoy swimming tremendously. It is fantastic to have the whole pool to myself and not to have to fight with the kids who want to splash in my lane. Bliss.
I have a kind of routine now whereby after my meal or swim I had a little cuddle with the grey and white cat. He is so precious. I could stay another week just for HIM. He talks to me so readily too. He is SO smart, I am sure I could teach him lots of tricks. I just have to point to my lap and he will come and jump on it, and I just have to call him once, and he will come running, wherever he is. I was worried that our ´affair´ would go pear shape 2 nights ago because as I was in the pool a whole coach load of tourists pulled in the driveway. Shock and horror. No more peace and quiet... and they were ALL French. Of all nationalities, I couldn´t believe it. Talk about ruining the ´exotism´... English would be bad enough, but FRENCH !?? I never let it on that I could understand everything they were saying... I always find it interesting to ear'drop on conversations, when one has nothing better to do anyway!
I overheard one say ´they have a pool here, didn´t you see la dame swim in it!?´... Now, I can no longer feel my French, but ´la dame´, to me sounds like "the [older] woman" is implied. Which made me feel SO old. My sister may dispute this, but I remember saying ´dame´ when I was a kid referring to senior citizens. Shooot... No one has said ´the girl´for a LONG time now. Sigh. Like I haven´t been called ´Mademoiselle´ for years now, everybody assumes I´m a ´Madame´. Oh well... still, just to show I´m not resentful I did my good deed by translating the Spanish - English menu into French for them. I tried to imagine my mother in this situation and figured it would be a nice thing to do... it didn´t take me long as the menu doesn´t have more than 4 choices of meat - poltry - fish - vegi stuff - soups - desserts. Plus it did kill another 15 minutes.
The day after, to help relieve some of the boredom, Karen, who works with the other ocelot and keeps coming back year after year, took me to see Tigre. She was as beautiful as Millie. SO playful. I really enjoyed my morning with both of them. Karen is my age and loves travelling as much as I do... she has lived in the Galapagos islands on and off, cruised French Polynesia last year on a millionaire´s private yacht... she just does all sorts of weird and wonderful things. She was a minefield of information. She loved Tigre to bits and said that the cat is what keeps her coming back. To get to her cage was quite hard though as you to walk upstream, in a dry stream... though some rocks were still a bit slippery. She was SO fit compared to me, boy.... AND she told me that during the rainy season it´s far more difficult because you still have to use the stream as the only way up and so you have water gushing down into the stream left right and centre and sometime she is knee deep in water, unable to see where to place her next foot and having to fight the strength of the current. I mean, is this insane or is just me !??? I would never do anything as crazy for a cat... and God knows I do love them, but not to the point of risking my life and my health for them. She told me that one day a girl who looked after Tigre when she wasn´t around completely got lost and had to spend the night in the jungle. The cat had kept walking and walking beyond the boundary of the park so the poor girl got completely lost... and as soon as it gets dark, you stand no chance in the jungle as everywhere you look is the same and there are hundreds of trip hazards that you need to be aware of... including bullet ants and the nasty spikes on many trees. And some are as long and sharp as needles. So this poor girl found a river bed and slept on the sand and tried to cover herself with rocks to stop the mosquitoes from biting. She was found the next day by two passer bys who assumed they´d stumbled across a dead body, and who drove her to the park on their moped. Thankfully they were GOOD men. Karen said that they did have a search party for her but because she was beyond the park boundary, they didn´t search there. Also, it doesn´t matter how much people people shout your name, if you stand next to a stream, the sound gets diluted and you will never hear it. Karen got stung by bullet ants 3 times... each time she couldn´t feel her hand for 3 days. Geee. Not for me, thank you very much. I know I will disappoint my greatest fans who may think that I am a super woman, but... as I said, nope. I realise that I have to know my limits, and I definitely discovered that about myself here. Looking after the lion cubs in Africa was a piece of cake in comparison to this.
I asked Karen how on earth she could have afforded to retire at 40 and to travel the world and she said that she had worked in a bank for 5 years and saved up all she had, and then she had a house that she sold for 40,000 Canadian dollars... which goes a LONG way in the 3rd world. So, she is very happy. Interestingly, she didn´t use to travel much as a child at all, so... I guess there is some truth in the adage ´you have to be grateful for what your parents gave you and for what they didn´t´... what they didn´t, gave the taste to do it all herself, as it did me.
The afternoon, back with Quirqui was more boring. We were a bit worried about his excessive lack of energy... could not be bothered to eat, didn´t even stand up to pee... nada. Didn´t even chew on Sarah´s arm and that´s his favourite past time. So we told the vet but they said it was quite natural for cats to be real lazy every 4 months or so. Besides, in the wild they would be lucky to get a good meal every 5 days.... to be fed every day is a luxury. So I thought I´d wash his blanket/duvet as the whiff of urine that emanates from it reminded me of my incontinent clients too much. In doing so, I ended up snapping a tiny thorn in the palm of my left hand. I didn´t even notice until later in the day when I couldn´t make a fist with my hand without it hurting. Upon close examination I noticed a black spot. No mention in my book on how to retreive a thorn so I did what mother taught me way back.... went swimming for 30 mins, showered with hotter water for 15mns, to make my skin all wrinkly, got a needle out, applied my Chinese white flower oil as a kind of local anaesthetic, put the end of the needle in the blue part of a flame to kill all germs, picked at it, used the tweezers and out it came. Phew. It was so tiny. I was amazed. The ´wound´(if I dare call it that, but it sounds seriously OTT) had become all red and sore and I had feared infection (especially as there is so much bacteria in soil and water here) but I was fine next day. I thought to myself ´if this is the extent of my injuries after 10 days in this mad park, I have done pretty well ! ´. As I am writing this, people are still going to the hospital EVERY day for parasites... today was Sarah´s turn. She thought she´d grab the chance I could baby sit Quirqui one last afternoon to get to the hospital and ask for a test.
After my swim last night, I was reading the last chapter of the (very good) book I had found at Miami Airport when there was a knock on my door. The chaps from the hotel were doing a BBQ and invited me over as I was the only guest they had. I thought ´why not !?´... It gave me the chance to practice my Spanish for 90 mins as I never get to speak much at Machia (except maybe ´sandwich con queso por favor´to the cook. That´s pretty much it. Dire, I tell you. I knew I made mistakes as soon as I´d said some of the stuff I said but we got by... I believe I would improve faster if I had no choice and more practice but improving my Spanish just didn´t work out on this trip. Pity. They even gave me a whole jar of real lemonade as I told them I didn´t drink alcohol and their lemonade is the best I´ve ever had. SO much better than bottled fizzy stuff. Just doesn´t compare to what a good real lemonade should be like. I was telling them of my travels and working with the pumas and how they have to feed them pollitos (little chickens) and they told me ´oh, here in Bolivia in the circus they feed live dogs to the lions, people think it´s good entertainment´. I was shocked. I bet the lions are starved before hand so that they can pounce on the dog even faster... I am amazed SOS Animals has not stepped in (it is their RSPCA equivalent I understand).
This morning, my last morning, I worked with the ´Small Animals´. Caotis (that love to curl up on your knees and sleep in a ball, enjoying being patted and stroked), Coochi Coochi (no idea how to spell that but it sounded like this) and tyaras (that are more vicious and look like ferrets). We had to clean their cages, get the poo out, spray bleach, brush the boards, hose them down with water, then get their bananas and papayas for lunch, fight off the monkeys, etc. It was actually hard work. I sweated a lot and I realised that looking after Quirqui wasn´t so bad after all. I was desperate for a shower by 11am and I knew that because I had to go to the internet cafe tonight, it would be a fair few hours before I get to smell good again ! And the worse part is that since my insect repellent got washed away with sweat, it stopped working earlier than I realised so that my arms are now pretty repulsive to look at as sand flies had a field day.
It poured down this morning, so much so that we couldn´t do anything for a while. Then when I enquired where were the heavy duty gloves to get rid of the poo and all, I was told ´there is no glove, just a brush and broom´. Oh no, no, no.... call me picky, but I refuse to touch poo with no glove protection, especially in view of the fact that SO many people around me were affected by parasites. So I walked to the village next door (5 minutes) and bought 6 pair of gloves. Nurse Sylvie on target and on duty. I figured that anyone who has to handle poo should have their hands protected. But of course I wasn´t banking on the flipping monkeys who within 2 hours had stolen one of my mine and the coatis had chewed another one. So much for my good intentions. But hopefully I did my bit to spread the message ´you will be no good to the animals if you do not learn to look after yourself FIRST´.
So, in effect, when Sarah asked me to look after Quirqui this afternoon while she went for her parasite at the hospital I felt quite relieved. He was in a more playful mood today. I sensed he wanted to chew on my arm again but I didn´t want any more bruises. I scratched him a lot around his neck though and he did purr... I was very happy. I think it´s the first time he purred with just me around. Usually Sarah gets all the purring. So I felt I´d made small progress... just 3 hours before leaving him for good. But hey, better than nothing.
Tomorrow I have to go back to Cochabamba for my 2.45pm flight to La Paz and there´d better not be any serious landslides or road blocks. If so, I may miss it and hope I will be able to catch a later flight, even if I have to pay more. It´d be better than missing my connection to London after my 6am departure for Miami, as you may remember that my tickets are not officially ´linked´. So I´d have to fork out a lot more money to buy another ticket for that on the day, or the day after, God forbid. I won´t even ´go there´in my head...
My mobile phone is still barred so I am not sure when I´ll get the chance to call anyone on my return. I am at the mercy of Orange... and seriously p... d off by now. Oh, and the main disaster of the day is that I lost my lovely safari hat. The hat I had had for 10 years... When my driver dropped me off here on the first day, he took my suitcase off the boot and then drove off. I assumed he was driving off to park the car around the corner, but no, he was gone for good, and my hat was on the front seat. He never said good bye or anything... didn´t wait for his tip, so when I realised he was gone I asked the park to call his office to ask them to call him so that he could drop it off on the way. They assured me he had and all was in order. But today, when I confronted them with it, it turns out the guy never handed over my hat and is nowhere to be found.. ´he´s gone on vacation for 10 days´ is the official line. Right, as if Bolivianos could afford to take a 10 day vacation. My better guess is that my hat has been sold at the market for a few BS. I tried to say I wanted compensation but no one wants to take responsbility ´if we find it again, we will ask an English volunteer to mail it back from England for you´... yeeeeah, I could be waiting a LONG time. So I am really annoyed... But I guess it´s only a material thing. Best to have my health still fine... but still, you know how it is... one gets annoyed all the same. Mainly because the culprit will never be punished ´it´s Bolivia you know´... but I was very nice to this man, shared my food and water with me, and so I just felt doubly betrayed. Oh well... another lesson learnt I guess.
I´d better sign off my driver will be here in about 5 minutes on the dot ! Bisous, moi xxx
PS - the next holiday will be in Italy, last week in May 2008, with my parents and sister. NOT as exotic, but supposedly very beautiful too, nr Lake Como... ´whose beauty is legendary´... so I´ll see if I get the chance to give you some feedback via this blog in due course... Ciao !
Well, I´m back... as promised. This will be my last update from Bolivia unless I miss a flight... which is possibility due to all the landslides and all that cause road blocks and other delays.
I have spent most of the last 3 days with Quirqui, the lovely grey brown puma, and it kind of grew on me... even though you do do VERY little with him. If you give him a ball to play you are lucky if he lifts one paw to try and grab it, even more lucky if he even tries to roll on his back... On the days when it´s very hot I took it upon myself to get a sponge and to keep it cool by wetting the top of his head and body. He liked it so much that he lifted its head as if to say ´this is a great idea, can you cool my neck too por favor !?´.
Officially we are supposed to speak to all the animals in Spanish not to confuse them but I always forgot.... I am sure the cat didn´t really mind and just went by tone of voice. And then as I was trying to think of ways to keep him entertained one of the Finnish guys who works nearest to me, in the macaw area, brought me a beautiful blue and red feather and a huge leaf... none of which impressed Quirqui in the least. ´Been there, done that, seen it all before, rattle your brain a bit more´... type of look. So I used the huge leaf as a fan to cool him down further. You would have thought he was a Pharaoh or Pacha of some sort. Anyone seeing him fan this cat and bring him his water bowl right under its nose would have thought I overdid it, but poor Quirqui has had such a rotten life in the zoo (they didn´t treat his eye infections and gum disease) that it was nice to go overboard ! ;) I heard they even fed him bread because they didn´t want to spend too much money feeding him meat. No wonder the poor kitty lacked all the precious minerals and vitamins needed to develop a good bone structure.
On Monday night about 3/4 of the volunteers turned up at my hotel for a big dinner. But because we hadn´t ordered a buffet, some had to wait 3 hours to be served. Dire. However, I got to talk to some people I had only briefly seen before and one guy showed me an hilarious video of a female capucchin monkey on heat. She had developed this massive crush on him and became massively jealous of any other female monkeys he might even glance at... To show him that she had the hots for him she kept holding her breasts out towards him and every time he´d turn away to look at something else, she´d jump into his field of vision so that he´d be forced to look at her again. You had to see it to believe it... He had started the video with her wobbling her breasts towards him and then he pretended to film an ant on the ground and sure enough, within 5 seconds, there she was, grinning at the camera, fondling her breasts again... then he pretended to zoom in higher up and within 5 seconds she´d leapt on a branch and was grinning at him, right where he was filming. Amazing. We were just rolling with laughter. I asked him today if he could do me one with my camera but today is 3 days later and she is no longer on heat, so he´s ´history´ and she´s ´over him now´. To start with he was really worried so he went to talk to the vets and they explained that she is on heat for 5 days ever so often and then will behave in this way towards men that take her fancy. He said she was even ´doing things with her tail that he couldn´t really describe not to be too graphic´. Hum.
The day after I was really thinking ´gee, how am I going to kill 7 hours' ... when Quirqui wants to do SO little, the days do drag, believe you me. I still appreciate the beautiful surroundings though and the jungle is SO lush, everywhere you look, you will discover a new plant you had not noticed the day before. The whole environment is so incredibly rich, even though the Machia Park is built on a secondary forest. But it is still very beautiful...
However, the morning went pretty fast as the vets brought a boa for the cage next door. He was huge, and Quirqui was very intrigued. One of the vets came to stroke him, he smelt the scent of the snake on his hand and started hissing. Quirqui may have dodgy legs and dodgy eyes but he still has a good nose it seems ! They had to operate on the snake because it had tried to eat a dog. The owner tried to rescue his dog but putting a stick in the snake´s mouth to hold it open, and by doing so, had torn the side of its jaw. They had to operate and will need to feed him chicken in a huge syringe for a while, but as soon as his jaw has healed, they will release him. I asked if a boa could kill a man but they said no, however, it could strangle a child. They don´t have much venom nor teeth, as their weapon lies in their muscle power. When there are hand feeding him there are always 3 of them doing it. One to hold the mouth, one to hold the tail and a 3rd to open his mouth with an instrument and shove the pieces of chicken in it.
Having lots of time on my hand I got a book out of the Book Exchange cupboard that was called ´Travelling Well´. It was very interesting and I will probably buy my own copy when I return. Most people have got parasites here so I was reading on what to do to avoid contracting them, but it seems that they can be everywhere... even on bank notes, door handles, not just food or monkey poo. So, it is pretty difficult to avoid getting them. I use my anti baterial gel every day before I eat and after I use the loo, as recommended, and so far, so good... I was actually surprised to read in the book that one quarter of the world population has got hook worms !
After a hard day at work - NOT - I went back to my hotel for a swim. I do value this as I never get the chance to go to the pool much when in London and I do enjoy swimming tremendously. It is fantastic to have the whole pool to myself and not to have to fight with the kids who want to splash in my lane. Bliss.
I have a kind of routine now whereby after my meal or swim I had a little cuddle with the grey and white cat. He is so precious. I could stay another week just for HIM. He talks to me so readily too. He is SO smart, I am sure I could teach him lots of tricks. I just have to point to my lap and he will come and jump on it, and I just have to call him once, and he will come running, wherever he is. I was worried that our ´affair´ would go pear shape 2 nights ago because as I was in the pool a whole coach load of tourists pulled in the driveway. Shock and horror. No more peace and quiet... and they were ALL French. Of all nationalities, I couldn´t believe it. Talk about ruining the ´exotism´... English would be bad enough, but FRENCH !?? I never let it on that I could understand everything they were saying... I always find it interesting to ear'drop on conversations, when one has nothing better to do anyway!
I overheard one say ´they have a pool here, didn´t you see la dame swim in it!?´... Now, I can no longer feel my French, but ´la dame´, to me sounds like "the [older] woman" is implied. Which made me feel SO old. My sister may dispute this, but I remember saying ´dame´ when I was a kid referring to senior citizens. Shooot... No one has said ´the girl´for a LONG time now. Sigh. Like I haven´t been called ´Mademoiselle´ for years now, everybody assumes I´m a ´Madame´. Oh well... still, just to show I´m not resentful I did my good deed by translating the Spanish - English menu into French for them. I tried to imagine my mother in this situation and figured it would be a nice thing to do... it didn´t take me long as the menu doesn´t have more than 4 choices of meat - poltry - fish - vegi stuff - soups - desserts. Plus it did kill another 15 minutes.
The day after, to help relieve some of the boredom, Karen, who works with the other ocelot and keeps coming back year after year, took me to see Tigre. She was as beautiful as Millie. SO playful. I really enjoyed my morning with both of them. Karen is my age and loves travelling as much as I do... she has lived in the Galapagos islands on and off, cruised French Polynesia last year on a millionaire´s private yacht... she just does all sorts of weird and wonderful things. She was a minefield of information. She loved Tigre to bits and said that the cat is what keeps her coming back. To get to her cage was quite hard though as you to walk upstream, in a dry stream... though some rocks were still a bit slippery. She was SO fit compared to me, boy.... AND she told me that during the rainy season it´s far more difficult because you still have to use the stream as the only way up and so you have water gushing down into the stream left right and centre and sometime she is knee deep in water, unable to see where to place her next foot and having to fight the strength of the current. I mean, is this insane or is just me !??? I would never do anything as crazy for a cat... and God knows I do love them, but not to the point of risking my life and my health for them. She told me that one day a girl who looked after Tigre when she wasn´t around completely got lost and had to spend the night in the jungle. The cat had kept walking and walking beyond the boundary of the park so the poor girl got completely lost... and as soon as it gets dark, you stand no chance in the jungle as everywhere you look is the same and there are hundreds of trip hazards that you need to be aware of... including bullet ants and the nasty spikes on many trees. And some are as long and sharp as needles. So this poor girl found a river bed and slept on the sand and tried to cover herself with rocks to stop the mosquitoes from biting. She was found the next day by two passer bys who assumed they´d stumbled across a dead body, and who drove her to the park on their moped. Thankfully they were GOOD men. Karen said that they did have a search party for her but because she was beyond the park boundary, they didn´t search there. Also, it doesn´t matter how much people people shout your name, if you stand next to a stream, the sound gets diluted and you will never hear it. Karen got stung by bullet ants 3 times... each time she couldn´t feel her hand for 3 days. Geee. Not for me, thank you very much. I know I will disappoint my greatest fans who may think that I am a super woman, but... as I said, nope. I realise that I have to know my limits, and I definitely discovered that about myself here. Looking after the lion cubs in Africa was a piece of cake in comparison to this.
I asked Karen how on earth she could have afforded to retire at 40 and to travel the world and she said that she had worked in a bank for 5 years and saved up all she had, and then she had a house that she sold for 40,000 Canadian dollars... which goes a LONG way in the 3rd world. So, she is very happy. Interestingly, she didn´t use to travel much as a child at all, so... I guess there is some truth in the adage ´you have to be grateful for what your parents gave you and for what they didn´t´... what they didn´t, gave the taste to do it all herself, as it did me.
The afternoon, back with Quirqui was more boring. We were a bit worried about his excessive lack of energy... could not be bothered to eat, didn´t even stand up to pee... nada. Didn´t even chew on Sarah´s arm and that´s his favourite past time. So we told the vet but they said it was quite natural for cats to be real lazy every 4 months or so. Besides, in the wild they would be lucky to get a good meal every 5 days.... to be fed every day is a luxury. So I thought I´d wash his blanket/duvet as the whiff of urine that emanates from it reminded me of my incontinent clients too much. In doing so, I ended up snapping a tiny thorn in the palm of my left hand. I didn´t even notice until later in the day when I couldn´t make a fist with my hand without it hurting. Upon close examination I noticed a black spot. No mention in my book on how to retreive a thorn so I did what mother taught me way back.... went swimming for 30 mins, showered with hotter water for 15mns, to make my skin all wrinkly, got a needle out, applied my Chinese white flower oil as a kind of local anaesthetic, put the end of the needle in the blue part of a flame to kill all germs, picked at it, used the tweezers and out it came. Phew. It was so tiny. I was amazed. The ´wound´(if I dare call it that, but it sounds seriously OTT) had become all red and sore and I had feared infection (especially as there is so much bacteria in soil and water here) but I was fine next day. I thought to myself ´if this is the extent of my injuries after 10 days in this mad park, I have done pretty well ! ´. As I am writing this, people are still going to the hospital EVERY day for parasites... today was Sarah´s turn. She thought she´d grab the chance I could baby sit Quirqui one last afternoon to get to the hospital and ask for a test.
After my swim last night, I was reading the last chapter of the (very good) book I had found at Miami Airport when there was a knock on my door. The chaps from the hotel were doing a BBQ and invited me over as I was the only guest they had. I thought ´why not !?´... It gave me the chance to practice my Spanish for 90 mins as I never get to speak much at Machia (except maybe ´sandwich con queso por favor´to the cook. That´s pretty much it. Dire, I tell you. I knew I made mistakes as soon as I´d said some of the stuff I said but we got by... I believe I would improve faster if I had no choice and more practice but improving my Spanish just didn´t work out on this trip. Pity. They even gave me a whole jar of real lemonade as I told them I didn´t drink alcohol and their lemonade is the best I´ve ever had. SO much better than bottled fizzy stuff. Just doesn´t compare to what a good real lemonade should be like. I was telling them of my travels and working with the pumas and how they have to feed them pollitos (little chickens) and they told me ´oh, here in Bolivia in the circus they feed live dogs to the lions, people think it´s good entertainment´. I was shocked. I bet the lions are starved before hand so that they can pounce on the dog even faster... I am amazed SOS Animals has not stepped in (it is their RSPCA equivalent I understand).
This morning, my last morning, I worked with the ´Small Animals´. Caotis (that love to curl up on your knees and sleep in a ball, enjoying being patted and stroked), Coochi Coochi (no idea how to spell that but it sounded like this) and tyaras (that are more vicious and look like ferrets). We had to clean their cages, get the poo out, spray bleach, brush the boards, hose them down with water, then get their bananas and papayas for lunch, fight off the monkeys, etc. It was actually hard work. I sweated a lot and I realised that looking after Quirqui wasn´t so bad after all. I was desperate for a shower by 11am and I knew that because I had to go to the internet cafe tonight, it would be a fair few hours before I get to smell good again ! And the worse part is that since my insect repellent got washed away with sweat, it stopped working earlier than I realised so that my arms are now pretty repulsive to look at as sand flies had a field day.
It poured down this morning, so much so that we couldn´t do anything for a while. Then when I enquired where were the heavy duty gloves to get rid of the poo and all, I was told ´there is no glove, just a brush and broom´. Oh no, no, no.... call me picky, but I refuse to touch poo with no glove protection, especially in view of the fact that SO many people around me were affected by parasites. So I walked to the village next door (5 minutes) and bought 6 pair of gloves. Nurse Sylvie on target and on duty. I figured that anyone who has to handle poo should have their hands protected. But of course I wasn´t banking on the flipping monkeys who within 2 hours had stolen one of my mine and the coatis had chewed another one. So much for my good intentions. But hopefully I did my bit to spread the message ´you will be no good to the animals if you do not learn to look after yourself FIRST´.
So, in effect, when Sarah asked me to look after Quirqui this afternoon while she went for her parasite at the hospital I felt quite relieved. He was in a more playful mood today. I sensed he wanted to chew on my arm again but I didn´t want any more bruises. I scratched him a lot around his neck though and he did purr... I was very happy. I think it´s the first time he purred with just me around. Usually Sarah gets all the purring. So I felt I´d made small progress... just 3 hours before leaving him for good. But hey, better than nothing.
Tomorrow I have to go back to Cochabamba for my 2.45pm flight to La Paz and there´d better not be any serious landslides or road blocks. If so, I may miss it and hope I will be able to catch a later flight, even if I have to pay more. It´d be better than missing my connection to London after my 6am departure for Miami, as you may remember that my tickets are not officially ´linked´. So I´d have to fork out a lot more money to buy another ticket for that on the day, or the day after, God forbid. I won´t even ´go there´in my head...
My mobile phone is still barred so I am not sure when I´ll get the chance to call anyone on my return. I am at the mercy of Orange... and seriously p... d off by now. Oh, and the main disaster of the day is that I lost my lovely safari hat. The hat I had had for 10 years... When my driver dropped me off here on the first day, he took my suitcase off the boot and then drove off. I assumed he was driving off to park the car around the corner, but no, he was gone for good, and my hat was on the front seat. He never said good bye or anything... didn´t wait for his tip, so when I realised he was gone I asked the park to call his office to ask them to call him so that he could drop it off on the way. They assured me he had and all was in order. But today, when I confronted them with it, it turns out the guy never handed over my hat and is nowhere to be found.. ´he´s gone on vacation for 10 days´ is the official line. Right, as if Bolivianos could afford to take a 10 day vacation. My better guess is that my hat has been sold at the market for a few BS. I tried to say I wanted compensation but no one wants to take responsbility ´if we find it again, we will ask an English volunteer to mail it back from England for you´... yeeeeah, I could be waiting a LONG time. So I am really annoyed... But I guess it´s only a material thing. Best to have my health still fine... but still, you know how it is... one gets annoyed all the same. Mainly because the culprit will never be punished ´it´s Bolivia you know´... but I was very nice to this man, shared my food and water with me, and so I just felt doubly betrayed. Oh well... another lesson learnt I guess.
I´d better sign off my driver will be here in about 5 minutes on the dot ! Bisous, moi xxx
PS - the next holiday will be in Italy, last week in May 2008, with my parents and sister. NOT as exotic, but supposedly very beautiful too, nr Lake Como... ´whose beauty is legendary´... so I´ll see if I get the chance to give you some feedback via this blog in due course... Ciao !
posted by Sylvie at 9:42 PM
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