Most important news ever from La Hesperia!

  La Esperie, Ecuador
Saturday, November 3, 2007

Croeso a La Hesperia

www.volunteersecuador.com

Hola all

I never thought I would be writing this, and for all ex Hesperians I´m afraid I have some shocking news, that may be upsetting to some of you. We´ve lost something very dear and integral to the reserve. I doubt really know how to break it to you, other than to say it straight - Raul has shaved off his tache! Yep its gone, he turned up Monday sin bigote, tachless, top lip totally exposed. No photos of it sorry, it was just too traumatic.
Frankly my world is shattered, I don´t really know what to do. Maybe we should all get together and have some sort of group counselling session, talk about how we feel about the loss. Let me know what you think.
Well what other insignificant news is there? And is there any point after such a revelation?

While on the subject of sad losses, I´m afraid its R.I.P for my trusty machete XKallybur, he valiantly gave his life attempting to chop down a big tree. We had some good times together and chopped down a lot of bad stuff. He´ll be missed.

R.I.P XKallybur

Well they had been busy while I was away for September, who would have thought the place could function without me? There´s a new covered entrance to the volunteer house, a new bamboo hut on the lawn to grow vanilla and a new big bug in the bathroom.

New porch

Casa de voluntarios

Night time at the house

New hut

Big bug

Bigger bug

Biggest Bug (well ok, moth)

The area where we cleared and spent the summer digging hundreds of holes has now been filled with trees, I know thats the idea but they didn´t need to fill them all while I was away and we´re now creating new lines in the main reforestation area near the house, which means I need to change my entire map of the area. And make new signs, and add pages to teh Snoopy book. This planting trees doesnt half get in the way of having nice neat books and signs and stuff.

Theres about a million canela trees growing in the nursery coz those are the only seeds we can find, but when we find them we find them big.

The medicinal garden is looking all perty with new signs:

Med garden entrance

Med garden signs

We´ve had a few births, two kid goats were born a couple of weeks back but neither made it through the first day, boo. But another one was born just over a week ago and s/he seems to be doing well, yay!

Goat family

There was also a baby Barred Hawk in a nest by one of the waterfalls when we went on the rapelling trail. Mum and Dad weren´t too happy about us being there but we disappeared as soon as possible. For future rapelling trails though I am demanding danger money having been hit by four rocks while I was underneath the falls helping people down. Plus not one person got a boot full of water on the deep one, despite my best attempts to convince them to go a bit to the left.

Xica continues do attempt to do things that are just wrong to Benny, particularly given that she´s his daughter. Wrong wrong wrong. And very disturbing for new people to have to witness.

Benny and Xics

Benito

A couple of chicas from the Basque Country have been at teh reserve for a few weeks and I was told (quite incorrectly really) that the didn´t speak much English. So with narely a dictionary or verb book in site I embarked on giving them the intro talk and tour in Spanish. To be fair to them they didn´t laugh too much or look too confused so think I managed to do it ok. Yes boys, I´ve gone beyond "¿Donde esta?"

I´m thinking of going pro with the bamboo construction, I have another seat to my name, but this ones covered. Not quite finished yet, need to put a grass covering over the split bamboo to make it look really cool. I´m going to have an info board there explaining to visitors that the entire thing is built from grass (yep bamboo is a grass) so in true "why don´t you" style basically tell people that they can build stuff like this without cutting down lovely old hardwood trees.

Bench 1

Bench 2

Bench 3

But you go build a good bench, and theres always someone who tries to top it... But he had a chainsaw, I only had a machete...

Raul showing off

I´m also working on making some of the other trails more educational, putting signage around them telling visitors what they´re looking at. So prob need to find that out myself first.

I´ve also pimped my net, just coz I was a bit bored, I´ll be honest...

Pimp my net 1

Pimp my net 2

And while on spooky pics, Eco-Girl turned up for Halloween
 

Eco-Girl at Halloween

My scoring record in the Wednesday football matches remains unbroken. I reckon I must be on about a 20 game streak at the mo. And I´m supposed to be a defender - things are going to change when I return to the mighty Central.

I´m finally actually off to the jungle in about 2 weeks, going to Samona lodge which is well into the Amazon area so that should be fun, and I´m probably going to spend January working at the reserve on the Galapagos and then do a diving tour around there. Then head South for proper.

Thats all for now. Laters.