4 weeks as a zoo keeper
Trip Start
Jan 16, 2008
1
19
35
Trip End
Apr 19, 2008
Puerto Villamil,
Ecuador
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Puerto Villamil is a small town, with fantastic volcanic stone pavements and sand streets. They are building like crazy here, can definitely tell that the tourist rush is coming. Bit of a shame really, the place has a lot of charm, be interesting to come back in a few years and see how it has changed.
We're staying in a small family run inn (hospedaje) where the dad was a fisherman who decided to pack it in and retrain in tourism. He's in the process of rebuilding his fishing boat, and is already offering some tours, so he's going to take us up the volcano - Sierra Negra - this weekend.
We get breakfast and dinner at home and lunch out at a restaurant in town.
Had our first day at work today, looks like we'll be doing a whole bunch of different stuff. There are 4 other volunteers staying with us, and they've already been here for a while. We're basically doing general maintenance at the tortoise centre, plus looking after the big guys and girls (and the little ones of course). That means everything from feeding them Monday, Wednesday and Friday, cleaning up remains, raking out the enclosures, keeping the hedges trimmed, painting numbers on their shells, weeding, measuring them and pretty much anything else that the boss can think of. Nice.
