Day 7 - Rain, machetes and caimans.

Rain, machetes and caimans. What more could a girl want?

Rain. Rain. Rain. It’s been raining here all morning, which means that it’s not a good idea to go out. The jungle reacts so much to weather, that when it’s raining and windy it makes going out potentially dangerous. Trees can fall, rivers get high and conditions are unpredictable. Just the other day there was a fresh tree fall on one of the trails, it was lucky that no one was out at that time, but it just shows how much the conditions here effect the jungle – so staying away when it’s stormy is a wise idea.

By the afternoon the weather cleared up, so Zoe and I helped out the herp team to cut a new trail where they heard some frogs the night before. The herp team usually go out at night, so listening as well as using their torches is key to finding frogs, snakes etc. They heard some noises in a swamp nearby a trail, so we just cut a new short trail that went through the swamp so they could get closer to that site the next time they go out at night. It was the first time I’ve used a machete properly. I’ll be honest, I did feel a slight connection to Michonne from the walking dead; pretending that tree stumps were zombies and that I was in imminent danger from the swarm of zombies, which were just twigs and vines that surrounded me (I was probably in more danger due to my over-enthusiastic swinging of the machete than anything else...). That’s all I need now to complete the look is a serious tan and some rippling muscles and badass hair. One day, one day... Sigh.

Me, Harry, Zoe and Tom post zombie apocalypse training

After dinner we went out caiman spotting with a few new volunteers on the boat with coordinator Luix. It was only a short boat run but we saw a young caiman that wasn’t even a foot long. Luix ran into the water to try and catch it but it was too quick and got away. I admired Louix' instant reaction, which was to jump into the water, this definitely isn't the first time he's done that, I thought. Myself and everyone on the boat just stared in amusement at the fully clothed and drenched Luix, who was empty handed. Internally I think we all thought "that's fucking brave", caimans can mean serious business if they want to fight you, it was almost a relief that it swam away. The new guys, who were only in the jungle for a couple of days, must have thought we were all insane. 

Wait, maybe we are?

Fx

Day 5 - Early bird catches the worm, or in this case, the bird

Day 5

Another 5am wake up. This morning it was for the bird team though, I was told that there’s a lot of sitting involved, I won’t lie that it was a bit of a relief. After a short walk we got to the bird traps, a loose black net like trap that captures low flying birds. Once all three are set up we wait for a short period of time and then go to check them to see if any birds have been caught. It was a pretty successful morning; we caught many different birds, identified them, studied them, tagged them and then let them free. Louis, the bird coordinator showed me how to get the bird safely from the net and back to our site location out in the jungle.

The mist nets, by Zoe Cole. 

Zoe and Louis would go to one location, Pedro and I went to the other, and we meet back with our newly captured birds. Both Zoe and I caught and secured our own birds for the first time ever. Which is awesome. It was great to be so up close to the birds and to see them more intimately.

Measuring the birds' wings

Identifying the birds

Louis looking for signs of molting 

          

Pedro (Jesus) guiding us back to camp.

It was a successful morning for us and it was a change from hiking around looking for mammals, this morning, in my opinion was a lot more hands on and I felt I learnt a lot (but then I didn’t know much to begin with!). We came back around 10am for a late breakfast and to have to little time to relax on the hammocks. We had some crazy weather today too, there was thunder like I’ve never heard before, the whole camp was shaking and the sky was roaring. It was so beautiful in the morning, the weather can change so rapidly here, one minute it’s sunny and clear, and before you know it there’s a downpour. And it’s supposedly the dry season here. Ha!

We had another evening of dinner by candlelight and played some cards. I was able to stay up a bit longer as I knew I didn’t have a ridiculously early morning ahead of me, so a few of us stayed up and discussed life, love, religion, and finally, buffy the vampire slayer, and stayed up ‘til the wee hours of the, errr, night, which was 11:30pm, which honest to goodness is late when the sun sets at 5:45pm and everyone crashes at 9pm!