Bit more about life at La Hesperia

  Middle of nowhere really, Ecuador
Saturday, December 8, 2007

www.volunteersecuador.com

Bit more about life at the reserve...

Well there must be something in the water because its baby central here

Cyd (or to give her her full show name - Little Baby Goat Face) is doing well, all healthy and being goaty, walking around eating n stuff. She hasnt quite followed all the other goats in spending almost all their time escaped from the enclosure but surely its just a matter of time.

Theres been a baby Barred Hawk in a nest near one of the waterfalls for a few weeks but it was gone when we went to look at it this week - mum or dad was there in the nest, so hopefully junior was off with the other one flying and, you know, being generally birdy.

The new vanilla hut is currrently home to six pheasant chicks - kinda cute but a bit smelly it must be said.

aaaw

cute

Updates for those with vested interests -
Veggie garden looking good and weedish free, currently load of Canadian seeds courtesy of Vanessa being planted in there.
Nursery - pretty much immaculate and weed free, plus rather excitingly we found a load of Tangare seeds on the hike on Friday so shall be planting those Monday.
Med Garden - all looking good, weeding of blackberries and the left hand bed going to be done this week.
Reforestation - planted a load of Canelos this week around the fields across the pond.
Bathrooms - new exotic, scary spiders and snakes to be foud in there on an almost nightly basis. See Vidars camera/Facebook for about a million shots of each one. Heres one fella who comes out at the same spot every night, builds his web, gets fed moths by Dan (quite cool to watch, in a kinda disturbing way) and then goes to bed inside the bamboo until the next night.

yikes

and double yikes

My bench - succesfully sat on by three bigish blokes last week and came through with flying colours.

The common room drawers are filling up with jars of pickled insects from the Bug Project (we are measuring (I say we, its pretty much me and Andrea) the type and quantity of insects we find in the three areas of the reserve - pasture land, reforestation areas and primary forests (nice bits with the cool looking trees and stuff).

Personally, besides the bugs, Ive been doing a lot of work on the computer making the new information boards for a few of the short trails we have around the reserve. Nice to sit down to do some work for a change. Very little sitting involved in most of the jobs at the reserve and a good sit is very much under estimated. We have lots of carrying, digging, chopping, pulling, pushing, and walking but none of them can really be done whilst having a sit.

Que mas?
This week we will be down to an all time low of 5 volunteers, although a new one is expected Monday, you never know.

The tractor is currently a bit poorly having only made it up the hill as far as just below the San Fransisco house, which was unfortunate as it was carrying a load of very heavy bamboo that is now currently stuck at the same place and frankly having carried a few of them up already it can stay there until the tractor is fixed.

boo

aw crap...

My Galapagos trip is sorted, Im off on Jan 2nd til Feb 5th, got the flights all sorted eventually after they initially just booked a one way ticket, then from the wrong city, then on the wrong return date. I have detailed instructions about how to get to the station - look for some bloke called Manola when I get to the island. Should be easy enough.

Sorry for the lack of photos, but weve had a professional photographer at the reserve for a few weeks (Hi Joe) and quite frankly when you look at his photos and camera, its difficult to get motivated to get my happy snappy one out. He´s done some great shots for my info boards and the website should have load of great new shots in a couple of months once hes finished playing around with them in photoshop (which i think is cheating personally, but...).

Signs of Christmas are all around now, rhe Trole in Quito is currently playing a rather flat version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer to tell people top get out of the way before they go splat. Theres a Christmas tree in the tourist house and I put my bug net lights to flashing mode the other night. But only for about 5 mins as it was bloody difficult to read that way. Speaking of reading after three months or so I galloped to the end of La Guerra de los Mundos and have already sped through the first quarter of Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal (sure you can all work them out).

We are at the business end of the footie season now, Ive probably only got two games left and need to score in both to keep my 100 percent scoring record. Its a nervous time. I scored (if i do say so myself) with a magnificent lob from the half way line on Wednesday. Of course it was helped that the keeper was Carlos whos about 5 foot tall but the goals are petty small too.

Anyhoo, gotta go.

Next time - tune in for my Christmas message, probably going to be more like the Channel 4 alternative one than the one with Liz droaning on about how horrible her anus was.

Terrible when Im trailing my own blogs really...

Chao