Goodbye Vill Carmen

Hi everyone,
this will probably be a fairly short post because I´m writing from an internet cafe since the hostel internet´s a bit iffy.

So for those of you who don´t already know, I´m now in Cusco. I left VC 3 days ago to continue the next part of this adventure. But first I´d better mention the last few days at VC.

The start of last week was pretty quite, I spent Monday and Tuesday collecting and processing my last water samples. Most of them had no eggs or anything else in them but my final sample collected on Tuesday held over 200 eggs!!

Making Christmas dinner

Wednesday was Christmas Eve, and for some reason that´s the day the people of Pilcopata (because it didn´t seem to be the case elsewhere) have their big Christmas meal - where they stay up and eat late to welcome in the new day. Heather and I had decided we would do the cooking. While Heather sorted out the vegetables I spent my time making Yorkshire Pudding and a Banoffee pie for desert. Now I hadn´t really made either of them before and no one here had eaten either before so it was very much hoping for the best. Luckily they both worked out brilliantly, and the whole meal was great. We celebrated with some wine and around midnight we light some fireworks and had sparklers. 

Proof that my banoffee pie worked!

On Christmas day itself we all had a lie in and only ate our brunch around midday. I spent most of the day watching bad Christmas movies and eating chocolate - as is expected on Christmas day.

Boxing day was a bit different as that was the day we left to go back to Cusco. Heather and I got all packed up and after the usual faffing about the collectivo finally left about 2 hours late - a pretty normal occurence here. 
The trip itself was pretty good but for half the trip we had a very drunk bloke with us....that was until we made our usual stop at the half way point and left him behind. The whole van was pretty happy as we drove away minus our rather annoying other passenger. 
Once in Cusco we got settled into the hostel then went looking for food. We decided to go back to La Bodega - the Italian resturant we I went to last time - and had an amazing meal: Spaghetti Bolognese followed by a delicious tiramasu.

Leaving VC (Luiz, Carlos, me, Blair, Heather)

On Saturday we had a pretty slow start bnut eventually built up the energy to walk up to San Blas - the artistic area of the city. We browsed through the shops and market stalls until lunchtime before heading to this nice little vegan resturant called Green Point where I had a great grilled vegetable sandwich, not that I could finish it all with the portion size but I did my best!
We didn´t do much over the afternoon because it started chucking it down but in the evening we headed over to Norton Rat´s bar for a little extra food and a couple of drinks. This ended up with us meeting up with a couple of Heather´s local friends and we spent the rest of the night out drinking and clubbing with them.
The club was a rather different experience in that when we showed up they suddenly bought on a bunch of ´dancers´. Eventually we left since I was starting to feel bad (the combination of lots of drink and high altitude is a bad idea) and I got back to the hostel around 3am, while the others stayed out the rest of the night.

Sunday, after having such a late night, started pretty slowly. I had a late breakfast and sat and talked to a group of cyclists staying in the hostel. They´re a big group who have been meeting up at various points, travelling seperately but reuniting in certain places. Around lunch time once Heather had returned and had a rest we went to San Pedro market for some great fresh juice, before she had to dash off and meet people. I headed back to the hostel and spend the afternoon actually relaxing and reading a book before heading back to Green Point for dinner with one of the other girls staying in our room. 

Today has again been a bit of a slow start but now that Heather´s friends from the USA have arrived we´re going to go book our Machu Picchu tickets then go do a bit more exploring. 

Not sure when I´ll next get to blog but will be back ASAP to let you know what´s been going on!
Ciao! 

OOOPS!!

Hi everyone,

Firstly, sorry the text has a weird white highlight, I've spent about an hour trying to fix it but it won't go away! 

I know I'm late in posting again but the weather has made it pretty difficult to maintain power/internet around here all week. I'll be lucky if this even posts!

So Monday was just an ordinary day, went to collect a water sample from the River Pilcopata, worked on updating the VC bird species list and checking that all the latin names were correct, and started working on a VC notice board so everyone could be kept up to date with the going's on here. 

We also had a new volunteer show up from Australia (originally South Africa). 

Tuesday was a little less ordinary. Everything was going fine at the beginning of the morning, until it came to sampling. I was trying to transfer some Formal (formaldehyde solution) into a smaller container to use that day, but because it had one of those caps with only a tiny hole it was taking forever to get any into the other bottle. I had a bit of an impatient moment and tried squeezing the bottle harder, while holding it up to see how full the small bottle was getting. Next thing I know the cap bursts off, formal is spilling everywhere and I can't see. I manage to shout to Heather before the fumes start effecting my throat and in no time at all we piled into the truck and made a hasty dash to the hospital - luckily only a couple of minutes away and fairly quiet. After a lot of cleaning out, a shower and change (cause the stuff was so strong the doctor was starting to feel bad), an IV drip (anti-inflammatory since I got some in my throat) and a whole lot of water I finally got to go back to VC, with a cream thing to put on three time a day. So all in all no lasting damage but I'll definitely be being more careful next time I decided to play with the chemistry set!

Couldn't help but laugh at myself for managing to throw chemicals in my own face

Wednesday was mostly spent recovering quietly in my room and pointedly avoiding all chemicals/things I could fall over/ anything else I could injure myself with. One thing we did do was organise our VC secret santa game. I was meant to go out sampling to make up for missing it the day before but someone had taken the truck elsewhere and we couldn't find it until it was too late.

By the time thursday came around it was absolutely chucking it down but we finally managed to get the truck, and I was in super-careful mode so we finally got out to collect our water sample from the other river for the week. Normally it takes about 15-20 minutes because we're testing part of the sample on site but the weather was so bad we grabbed what we needed then dashed back to VC so I could do my titration experiment there instead. I got a fair bit of studying done in the afternoon and on the evening a small group of us went to the high school graduation party in Pilcopata, since we've done so much work with the community and kids there. It did mean we had to go formal but luckily I managed to borrow a dress and apparently didn't scrub up too badly. The celebration was pretty fun although it didn't finish until around 3am! I also got to try guinea pig there for the first time - I don't know what I expected but it didn't taste all that different to rabbit, just a lot stronger. 

One of the rivers where we go sampling

Friday morning was mostly spent studying/sleeping but on the afternoon we went down to town to buy our secret santa presents. I was given the name of one of the older locals here who works in agriculture. I don't know him that well but I think I got a useful - yet general - enough present that he should like it - we'll find out tomorrow when he gets it. 

I was also 'dragged' out for my first proper night out in the discos in Pilcopata. It actually wasn't really all that bad, we mostly all stuck together and danced in a group although the last hour or so was mostly spent with me trying not to step on any toes while being taught some proper latin dancing, including the cumbia. 

After yet another late night I pretty much did nothing on Saturday, but then again I think everyone else was equally as tired so we all had a rather quiet, sleepy day. Our newest volunteer also left today to go back to Cusco. It's a shame cause she had been planning on staying longer but things just didn't quite work out here. 

Yesterday got off to a pretty slow start but we did all take a trip out to Patria to visit a friend's restaurant which was fun, and the food was amazing. On the off chance any of you ever end up in that busy little village you have to eat at La Rustica! 

The team enjoying a great meal at La Rustica

 Well I guess I should get back to work now, went sampling (successfully) today and after a lot of time not doing much proper work the samples are starting to build up. 

Also next time I speak to you all it will probably be from Cusco, as I'm leaving VC on boxing day. Hopefully I'll have something different to talk about by then! 

Chat soon everyone!!

Festival Fun

Hi everyone,
A bit late once again I know but I just managed to get the next textbooks for my course and got a little distracted with that yesterday!

So in case any of you wondered about last weeks festival it was pretty cool, there was a lot of traditional dances all done in really elaborate costumes, plenty of music and, as you would expect at any festival, the alcohol was certainly flowing. Although I only stuck around for a little while it was really cool to see plus it gave us all an opportunity to snack on some great  Picarones (kind of like sweet potato doughnuts)!

Local dancing

On Tuesday our numbers were once again whittled down when Jimena, Rachel and Dan left. Jimena is coming back to continue her research in January but the others are either going back home or getting back on the road. So that brings our number (minus admin/management/'workers') down to 3. There is a new volunteer supposed to be showing up today but it's so quite around here now!

Rachel, Ricardo and Heather enjoying the festival

Unfortunately there's still very little to do around here. We were given a list of jobs we could work on but a lot of the things listed are just filler jobs which don't really have us jumping with excitment.

One thing we did do this week was go out to help clear a new trail on the other side of the river. We got the boat across early in the morning and a couple of us were quite looking forward to the expected slow pace that comes with hacking routes through the rainforest. However the route was actually pretty heavy going and the machete-ers weren't exactly hanging around. Although I thought it would be fine my knee started to protest pretty early on and, for once, i decided to do the sensible thing and turn back. This did leave me with the predicament of being stuck back on the river bank until they returned - 4 hours later - with no book/journal/other interesting thing to do but eventually, after gaining a good few dozen bug bites plus a burnt face, and losing an earring and


my water bottle (which decided to disappear down the river) the rest of the team finally showed up.

The little friend I made down by the river - got within 3 feet of me

The next mission was to actually get back over the river. The boat wasn't showing up and after about an hour and a half it was decided that we would have to use a different, less powerful boat, which meant getting further upriver so it could reach us and get back without struggling to get back upstream. So after a good half an hour of fast, difficult, trail-less scrambling we finally made it to where the boat could get us and we managed to get back to VC. Unfortunately my knee's still not great so I've been having to take it easy this last few days.

For the rest of my time in VC I'm going to be totally taking over with collecting and processing the water samples needed for the larvae project which is kinda cool, especially using a couple of little chemistry techniques I haven't used since high school. It's going well so far although it's only a couple of times a week.

In other news I got to work planning the rest of my time in Peru since I'll be leaving VC in under 20 days and leaving Peru in just over 40. So far I'm making sure to visit quite a few important sites between Cusco and Lima though I have a few days extra to either plan out or leave free to see what happens. I'm kind of disappointed as I was hoping to make the trip with a friend on his motorbike but with my knee being a cause for concern it wouldn't be a good idea - but maybe next time!

Well that's all I have for you guys this time, probably should get working on some of these water samples now!

Ciao 

Nature walk

Hi everyone,
so I know I'm late...again, but there hasn't been that much to write about lately.

I spent Monday/Tuesday helping process more water samples and looking for eggs and larvae.

On Wednesday the SFS students left. They've been here for an entire semester studying biodiversity and conservation in the Amazon but term finished so we all said our goodbyes and they left to go to Cusco before returning home. The rest of that day was pretty quiet -understandable with only about 6 people only at VC now.

Saying goodbye: Jimena, Rachel, Rachel (the SFS intern), me, Heather

This last few days it's been pretty hot here so we've been spending our afternoons hanging out down by the river trying to stay cool.

On Friday Rachel and I went out for a hike along the trails. We didn't see much but we did spot a few cool birds, and an interesting looking snake. 

This weekend there's an election going on in town, alongside a big festival for the town's patron saint. It was pretty interesting going down there yesterday to see the entire town out on the streets, people dancing, a parade and everyone out enjoying themselves. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures since I forgot to bring my camera along but if this sudden rainstorm moves on I'll go get some pictures later today.

yellow rumped cacique

Well since that's my weekly roundup all ready over here's a brief round up of some of the birds we've seen around here for those of you who are interested: 

- Yellow rumped cacique

- Black vulture

- Scarlet macaw

- Blue and yellow macaw

- Turkey Vulture

- White banded swallow

- Red capped cardinal

- Purple gallinule

- Cocoi heron

- Smooth billed ani

- Barn owl

- Haotzin

- Blue tailed emerald 

- Common poto

- Sunbittern

- Spix's guan

- Blue grey tangier

- Caped heron

- Black tailed trogon

- Cobalt winged parakeet

- Black faced Dacnis

and many, many more - some of which I haven't been able to identify yet. 

Blue grey tangier

So it sounds like the rain's stopped - think I'll go head down to the festival. 

Speak to you all again soon!

Happy Thanksgiving

Hi everyone,
so I know I'm late in posting once again but we had a busy day yesterday. Maybe you should all just start expecting to see my posts on Mondays instead.

The main part of the week was once again fairly quiet. I spent a lot of time studying, looking at academic plans for the future such as Masters course (because it can't hurt to be prepared), and various other not so interesting things.

On Wednesday however we had a nice change when Mike, a reasearcher who'd returned briefly to continue his research on frogs, gave a presentation on his specialised topic to a class from the local high school. He bought some speciemens with him to show the kids which, as expected, led to a bit of craziness when one of them escaped and started hopping around the classroom!

Just before it escaped!

Thursday saw most of the students working in the kitchen and preparing for Thanksgiving dinner. Since it was my first Thanksgiving I wasn't entirely sure what to expect but we made handturkey place settings in the morning and a small lunch of soup and deviled eggs - didn't taste as weird as I expected. After a fairly quiet afternooon studying we finally got our Thanksgiving dinner. 

Some of the food included turkey, lentil loaf, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, roast vegetables, stuffing, broccoli salad gravy. For desert there was spiced peaches, apple crisp and bannana empinadas. So much good food!!!

YUM!!!

Over the weekend I got a bit of studying done but saturday afternoon was mostly spent at this great swimming hole Jimena found for us. 

On Sunday a couple of us set off to hike to Quacaria (the local indiginous community village). We made it about half way when a truck drove up and we managed to scrounge a lift the rest of the way - standing in the back of a pickup truck, speeding along the country roads is a perfect way to cool down from a long walk. We spent a couple of hours out there in the river enjoying the Sun and the beautiful little swimming hole before deciding to head back. Although we didn't get a lift this time we were mostly walking downhill so the walk wasn't too bad despite the heat. It was after 2pm by the time we made it back to Pilcopata which meant nowhere was serving food so instead we sat in our favourite ice cream place with some fruit from the market and got some nice cold drinks which finished up the day nicely. 

One big difference around here as of Friday is that Zeidy - one of our volunteers - is no longer here Her and her girlfriend left for Cusco before heading home later in the month. It was great to spend time which such a lovely lass and we're already missing her here but a few people have already made vsiting promises so it's good to see such great friendships lasting beyond our stays here at VC. 

Saying goodbye - L to R: me, Jimena, Zeidy, Rachel (back) Maike, Mauricio (back) and Claudia

Well I can't think of anything else to share this time so I guess it's back to work - today I've been giving Rachel lessons in the Scottish langue, culture and history, since her father bought some land there. Definitely a fun exercise!

Ciao!

Comiendo en Cusco

Hi everyone,
I know I'm late once again but there have been problems with the internet....again.

Last week was pretty quiet and I spent practically all my time working through samples for the larvae project. The only other really funny thing was playing clips of peoples accents in Orkney and in the North East of England (since that's where my family's from) - the best clips where from Radio Orkney and some old clips of Auf Weidersehen, Pet. However the end of the week was much more exciting - Jimena and I headed to Cusco for a few days off.

On thursday we got the bus around 10.30am and after a pretty speedy journey (only 7 hours) we arrived in Cusco and our hostel - Estrellita. It was a nice enough little place and the people there were lovely but it was really noisy on a night with cars coming past beeping their horns all night.
For dinner we met up with a couple of the guys from Villa Carmen who where also down in Cusco. We went to a great pizza place called La Bodega and the food was amazing - unfotunately the rich cheesy pizza disagreed with my altitude-effected stomach so I only got a couple of slices but it was so worth it!

The following day we headed over to San Pedro market for a little shopping - Jimena to stock up on chocolates and I needed to get an extra jumper to combat the Cusco climate. The trip was a success and I managed to get a lovely alpaca-mix jumper for only 33 soles (£7.20). After the market we chilled out in a nice juice bar near the main plaza and used their wifi for a bit before splitting up.

Incan part of Qurikancha

I headed to Qurikancha - the Temple of the Sun. In Incan history it is the most important temple of the Empire, dedicated solely to the Sun God - Inti. It was an interesting place to visit and to see the variations in architecture between the Incan building and the more recent Spanish alterations, although the set up made it a little difficult to navigate.

The Spanish part of Qurikancha

Next we regrouped and headed across town for a real un-Peruvian afternoon. We went to the cinema. We'd heard about the latest Hunger Games movie coming out so we grabbed some popcorn and fizzy drinks then found our seats. Now the movie in general was pretty awesome visually, unfortunately it turned out to be dubbed in Spanish with no subtitles so I didn't understand a fair portion of the film - though I did get to keep working on my language skills I guess.
After the movie we had to head over to the ACCA office so Jimena could pick up so things for her project then we went back to the project to chill out for a bit.
Eventually our stomachs had just about settled after the mass amount of popcorn but we decided to keep it simple for dinner. We found a chinese restraunt off the plaza behind the main one and settled for wanton soup and spring rolls for dinner.

popcorn anyone?

Saturday got off to a slow start as we actually both managed to ignore the traffic long enough to get a lie in. After a late breakfast (fried egg sandwich) we walked up to San Blas where they have a craft market on Saturdays. We had a good look around and I now have some great ideas for what to get for a few luckily people back home. After that we found this amazing place in the same little Plaza called The Meeting Place where they have delicious Belgian waffles and an extensive coffee selection (including a very yummy hazelnut latte).
We headed back to the hostel very much satisfied with our morning's adventure and spent a good part of the afternoon making the most of the reasonable internet connection by skyping home.
By mid evening it was good time and we opted for Indian (trying to cover yet another foody base). There's a place on the main street with an unlimited Indian buffet for only 15 soles (about £3.80). The food was great, even if we did try our best to avoid eating the rice - our main ingredient back at Villa Carmen). After food we decided that we should grab a couple of drinks as we were heading back to the project the following day. There's a great bar on the corner of the main plaza (Plaza de Armas) called Norton Rats which is run by a motorbike enthusiast. It looked like it could have been a regular pub back in the UK with its dark wood decor, flags and bike raly shirts everywhere, plus dart boards and a pool table. Although we stuck to the local beer (four times cheaper than anything recognisable back home at £2.20) we still had a good time. Jimena made friends with the bar staff - including one little guy who set us up with an almost impossible game of darts - while I got chatting to a group of Dutch expats who now live in Cusco.
By around 11pm we called it a night and went back to the hostel.

Norton Rats bar!

On Sunday morning we got all our stuff together then waited for a new member of the VC team to meet us at the hostel. The girlfriend of one of the current volunteers was coming to visit her and we'd been charged with the mission of getting her there safely.
The bus left at around 11.30 - only an hour later than scheduled - and despite making some strange detour which we had no idea about we finally made it back to Villa Carmen just in time for dinner, followed by an early night.

The search for the lost petroglyphs

This post was written on Monday but posting was delayed due to lack of internet.

Sorry!!!

 I know I was meant to be getting back on schedule and posting yesterday but we were super busy and I didn't have time.

It's been a reasonably busy week over all. On tuesday (since I wrote about Monday in my last post) Claudia and I spent most of the day finalising and finishing up our Villa Carmen leaflet advertising some of the wonderful goings on here at the centre. The design was finally sent off to Cusco with the idea that it would be here in time for the stand we were going to have at Forest Week's fair on Saturday.
Tuesday also saw two big groups of school kids showing up to work with SFS (School for Field Studies). They planned out a bunch of activities including a display of the local watershed and some games about the food web.
They all had a pretty good time by the sound of it but their second group apparently had a little too much energy, especially when the teachers wouldn't help control them.

Our team of volunteers and researchers (some of them anyway)!

On Wednesday we had more kids coming to work with SFS so a lot of time was spent making sure everything there was going to plan, including making sure they all got their snacks sorted out.

By thursday I think the SFS students were glad to see the end of their brief teaching roles and we had no more visitors. Apparently the community outreach team (that's us) were meant to be giving some sort of presentation in the school but for some unknown reason they decided that wasn't going to happen. Instead I decided I would help Jimena - one of the visiting researchers who's here for a few months - with her research project. She's studying population of larvae in the rivers in this area and after a week of concentrated sampling she's been left with a lot of samples to work through. I'm now going to be helping her on a regular basis with studying samples and in return I'm hoping she'll teach me more about the scientific aspects and how to recognise different macroorganisms that we find in samples.

Going to collect water samples: seeing full sized trees floating past was pretty crazy!

Friday started far to early due to the constant thunder storm in the early hours of the morning. By the time it eased off it was basically time to get up. This would be fine under normal circumstances but it was day three of the same and we were starting to get a little grumpy from the lack of sleep.
For forest week we were eant to be going to cheer on and encourage the kids in a drawing/painting competition they were taking part in but once again we ended up staying on base - I'm not sure if it was because the competition was cancelled or if we just didn't go for some reason.
Instead I went with Jimena to collect samples. The state of the river was pretty amazing - there was no longer any sort of beach, the water level had moved up over 10ft and full sized tree trunks were being carried downstream.

On saturday we were supposed to be going to the Forest Week fair except due to some organisation issue we didn't have a tent set up or anything else prepared. I don't know if anyone else ended up going, but like the other events we were supposed to go to over the week we ended up not going.
Instead I spent the day studying and learning all about water treatment techniques.

Yesterday was our day off and we decided to go do something a little different. Not too far away there are some ancient petroglyphs which we'd heard about and wanted to go check out, so sraight after breakfast we set off. We'd been given brief instructions as to how to get there, apparently it was only about a two hour hike, but either we were walking to slowly or there was a bit of a miscomminication there cause it took us about three and a half hours to find them - also the might we took a wrong turn somewhere along the way might have accounted for some of that extra time...
It was a nice walk though and we did eventually find the petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs

I'm not sure if we were expecting a bit more but there were a couple of big rocks with a few drawings on - though I'm not sure how old. It was a good trip out anyway.
We got back a little before dinner with just enough time for a nice cold shower and a little Skype call with the other half and after dinner it was bat feeding time and the start of the first Lord of the Rings.

Looking out over Pilcopata, Andes in  the background 

Today has so far been dedicated to processing water samples and installing a new rain gauge.

Well back to work anyway - lots of samples to go through!