An adventure into the past

Hi everyone,

this might just be a short post - we´ll see what happens - but it´s far too hot and I´m heading to the river as soon as possible this afternoon.

For those of you who read last weeks post I headed off to the river straight after writing (notice the common theme here) and saw something pretty awesome. Walking along the river beach we saw these rather large footprints accompanied by some much smaller ones in the sand - a jaguar and it´s cub!! After we went for a bit of a swim we walked back the same way and we heard rustling from the reed bank. Now I can´t say for certain but we´re pretty sure it was the two jaguar we saw prints of.

Here´s the paw print you can see - check out the size!

...So that´s probably the most exciting thing that happened this week but don´t stop reading just there, there rest is stilll pretty interesting - I hope. 

Sunday night and most of Monday wasn´t too good as I had some annoying 24 hour sick bug thing - i swear I´ve been sick more often in the three weeks I´ve been here than the whole three months I was in India! Anyway that meant I couldn´t really do much on Monday when the kids came to visit for a tour but I walked around with them while we showed them the abandoned plane and the bamboo house, the tortoises, and things like that.

Showing the kids the tortoises

Monday also saw our monkey trackers returning from their ten days following Howler Monkeys through the forest before heading off to continue their search in a different area on Wednesday. 

Here´s a stick bird (Common  Potoo) and you can just see it´s chick!

On tuesday I was feeling slightly better - I spent the morning working out a proper schedule for the school program for November, not super interesting but it felt good to get a proper plan drawn up - then again I think someone wiped our schedule board clean to use for something else - never mind. I then spent the afternoon studying so it was pretty much a whole day infront of a computer but that was really just the start. 

I pretty much spent all of the rest of the week trying to get information for a timeline for the local area. I´m working through a couple of documents in particular which were written back in around 1600 which are super interesting - unfortunately they haven´t given me any useful dates yet but I´m sure I´ll find something. However it´s so interesting to read an authentic description of the history of Peru, during the time when the Yncan empire was growing, all about the different people and the cultures. Definitely glad I´m getting the chance to learn more about the country´s history instead of just Machu Picchu!

Yesterday started off with the same research but for the afternoon a group of us decided to walk into town, go to the river and have a swim. The water wasn´t great after the rain the night because but it was a nice change as most of us hasn´t been to that spot before. Afterwards we got ice cream from this great place in Pilcopata before walking back to Villa Carmen for dinner.

We´ve also been caring for this tiny baby bat - isn´t it cute!

Today I spent the morning doing a bit of Skyping with the other half and talking to the family - including a cousin who found me online today who I haven´t been able to speak to in about 8 years - so that was great!
I also spent a little time looking online, doing a little research for the next little adventure - I just couldn´t help it!

Well I think that´s it for now - I haven´t got my camera cable on me at the moment but I´ll photos will follow later today!