some photos

way high up at 5100m
go colombia, i wish i could breath a full lungful of air.

one of the most common sights around these parts
a new zealand guy who did the hike with me along with a few soldiers who were a little too keen to let him and anyone else who wanted to pose with their gear.
at 5100 metres.

the rio magdalena...the longest river in colombia
san augustin
me in the san augustin ruins. juvenile, i think not.

market in ecuador
a view of the pasto mocoa highway
me and the horse who caused me so much pain. post camera saga, hence me looking happy. note the rainbow. it´s a sign.

so here´s the thing...they might not be as good, but the advantage of the photos off this camera is that they will have lots of me in them because people aren´t scared of it like they were of the last one. so be exited to see my bright shining face in pretty much every photo...

bienvenidos a colombia!

hola todos! I hope everyone is doing well and that the sun is beginning to make itself more known for those of you in the north part of the world. I am currently sitting in the study of the nicest family in Bogota...thanks very much to Alex Neuman for putting me in touch with his CISV friend Juanma who is very generously, along with his family, letting me sleep on the couch for a few days. It is really nice to be with a family and to not worry about all the hassles that come with a hostel. but shall we rewind a little...
I arrived in colombia in Pasto. I had heard that the highway between Pasto and a town called mocoa was the most spectacular highway in all of south america so needless to say i was keen to give it a go. However...this particular area is a bit of a hotspot in terms of guerilla activity and i had promised my mother and myself that i would not be cavalier about my travels in this oh so stigmatised country. I asked around in pasto though and of the five people, three said i would be totally fine and the other two didn´t know so i went for it. and was it EVER the best highway...i think so. sometimes so narrow i couldn´t see the edge out the window of the bus and always rough and bumpy, i never wanted it to end. but it did end, seven hours later in a small town called mocoa right on the edge of the same jungle i thought i had gotten myself out of.
once again though, i found myself breaking my own travelling rules and walking with all of my stuff at five in the morning to the bus station to travel to san augustin. it all turns out ok but i really hate it when i find myself in situations where i would be the only one to blame if something went wrong.
san augustin is known for its collection of pre colombian statues that are scattered over about five sites in a rather large region. i arrived in the small town and threw my bag down on a bed in the cutest little bamboo cabin ever with the absolute best view of the lush, never ending colombian mountains and immediately arranged for a horse tour of the more accesible ruins. pacho, my guide, arrived with the horses and the two of us set off, first at a very manageable walk and then at a not so manageable gallop. as some of you can probably fathom, i am not a very graceful horseback rider. i have not awaken to my calling as a cowgirl.
the real event of the day though was not the viewing of thousand year old ruins but rather that i lost my camera...my new camera. pleasant moment it was not, however after two hours of searching, all on horseback, i dove off the horse onto the ground where i had spotted the little blue piece of metal that had caused me so much grief. by the end of the tour i had been on the horse for nearly five hours and was feeling a ¨little¨ sore. i think i had blisters on my butt.
from san augustin i went to popayan and from there to cali. the city claims to be the salsa capital of the world but all the bars close at three so i am pretty sure there are other places in the world salsa-ing when cali decides to call it a night. nonetheless, i had a really good time there with some fun people at the hostel.
i did a day trip to a little town called san cipriano which is not accesible by road but instead was built along the little serviced railway track. the inhabitants cleverly concocted alternative means of transport in the form of small wooden platforms on runners that were previously man powered but now are hooked up to motorcycles which power the small pieces of plywood with at least ten people on them at breakneck speeds. definitely a situation where you have to look around, note that no one else seems to be worried, and let go of the thought that death is not just possible but probable. san cipriano itself is a ¨major¨tourist destination for local colombians as it boasts a beautiful river complete with waterfalls and rapids. a very enjoyable day.
from cali i headed to manizales, a city right in the middle of the coffee region of colombia. i was amazed to see just how much space the country´s second largest export takes up...hills upon hills of short stubby green plants. i can´t imagine how much space its first export occupies.
however, the main reason i went to manizales was so i could venture into el parque de los nevados which boasts three very high volcanoes complete with glaciers. at 5100 metres, i have officially set my new personal altitude record. i was actually surprised at just how hard it was to get there...my heart would not stop racing and ten steps felt like a ten km run. and we didn´t even climb that far...the road takes you to 4500m so ALL that is left is 600m which may not seem like a lot but two hours later seems like quite the accomplishment. we got to the start of the glacier, had a snowball fight, and called it a day. the thermal pools on the way down should be a requirement for every post hike drive home.
and that brings me to here, bogota in the middle of holy week. the churches are like latin american football matches and it took me three tries to get the right metro bus into the centre of town today despite very detailed directions from juanma. and so it goes.
so, as usual, i hope everyone is peachy and thanks for the emails from those of you who send them. pretty soon i hit the beach and, as they say, it´s all downhill from there. a long, gentle, sloping, six week downhill.
mucho amor
mer

out of the jungle

hi everyone, i am sitting right now in otavalo, a small town in northern ecuador that boasts one of the most exciting saturday markets on the continent. needless to say i am quite stoked because we all know how much i love markets. a lot.
since i last wrote i have travelled quite a ways. from iquitos, kylee and i caught another boat out to a town called yurimaguas. this boat was much nicer than the last one but still it was four days sitting in our hammocks. stir crazy, just a bit. this is how i spent my birthday...i ate bread and jam for breakfast, started a new book about female undercover spies in the second world war, celebrated by adding tomato and avocado to the rice, meat and plantain for lunch, ate some chocolate mint cookes, finished my book and drank half a glass of bad red wine. let´s hope the year is more exciting than the birthday.
from yurimaguas though we embarked on one of the more challenging adventures i have done so far this trip. the road from yurimaguas is six hours to the next town and under construction. it is therefore necessary to ride in the back of a pickup along this road at night...along with all of the other people in the back of pickup trucks who can´t travel during the day either. i swear i thought we were going to die. it was like mountain rally of pickup trucks with probably drunk drivers. we had one flat tire and one blown tire and i was trying to get dust out of my mouth three days later. from tarapoto, we then got on what was meant to be an 18 hour bus trip to the nearest city but ended up being 30 because we got stuck on the highway from midnight to six in the mornign because of a land slide cause be a mine. it was at some point during this oh so pleasant six hours of just sitting there that i think my camera must have been extracted from my backpack and dissappeared (used as a verb as is the tradition in south america) into the night.
from piura, the city we tried so hard to reach, it was just a sweet little three and a half hour bus ride to the coastal party surf town of mancora. we power tanned and funned for a day and a half and then i got antsy to head on and so on we went to quito. where i bought a new camera, visited zoe savage at the jail again and got my fill of tv at the hostel. kylee decided that she wanted to go back to peru and i am here, getting pumped to cross the border into colombia on sunday. ok well i think i thought i had more to say than that, but sin photos i am afraid the blog will be a little bare until i take some more with the new little sexy thing i have now.
i hope everyone is doing well and before i know it i will be seeing some of you!

this is kind of cool

i saw on a friend´s blog that he had a map of where he had been so i got jealous and wanted one for myself. here they are!

the latest

these are a bunch of photos of Bellen, the floating slum district of Iquitios which we visited by means of a canoa the day after arriving in the city. it was hot. right now it is relatively low water but during high water we were told the whole city of 15000 people basically floats for three or four months about three metres higher than it is right now.

Hi everyone, I hope all are finding themselves well.

I will try to recap a bit of what I have been doing since the last time.

So, the last week at the centre was great. I know i have said it before but i will say again that i really enjoyed my time at the centre and this last week was no exception. while doing the shopping on monday glen saw a boy on the street with a baby coati (related to raccoon i think) on a lead and gloudina was able to convince this boy and his mother that the animal would be better off with us in the jungle where it would have the chance to be released into the wild again. this is not common...most people do not appreciate the intrusion and do not genuinely think that there is anything wrong with keeping wild animals as pets. thus, it was heartening to witness a positive interaction and to know that if the baby survives the next month or so without its mother that it has a very realistic chance of living on its own happily in the jungle. it had been being fed yoghurt almost exclusively though by the family and so trying to make it eat the fruit and protein that it needs was a challenge but a rewarding one once it started to voraciously tuck into an egg.

Kylee and I and another australian, Sophie, left for Tena after saturday feeding and cleaning to see what we could see and because it is on the way to Coca, my and Kylee´s destination finale. From Tena we visited another animal release slash rescue centre called AmaZOOnico which is located on the Rio Arajuno. It was very interesting to see how a different centre was run and to see in a way the next step for the animals as they are released into the wild. They have quite successfull monkey release programs that some of the monkeys from santa martha have been sent to participate in so it was heartening to see that some progress is sometimes actually made. It can feel that what we are doing is quite futile a lot of the time.

From Tena Kylee and I headed to Coca to get on a boat there that would take us to the Peruvian border. We were lucky (for the last time) and hopped on a boat right off the bus that took us to Nueva Rocafuerte, the last town on the ecuadorian side. In Coca, we bumped into Andy, a guy who had worked at the centre with us and was heading int he same direction, so at this point there were three of us travelling somewhat together ish.

After a night in Rocafuerte we got a canoa to Pantoja, the first town on the Peruvian side where we knew the big boats to Iquitos left from. Upon arrival though we were told that the next boat would not arrive until Sunday or Monday or not at all because the river was too low. It was Tuesday. Needless to say this news was greeted with a bit of despair but we had little choice but to just settle down and wait. So wait we did and it wasn´t all bad. We strung our hammocks out on the deck at the back of the actually quite nice hospedaje in town and spent our timing spreading out what activities we had such as reading the few precious books Andy and I had (about 6 accumulatively), doing sudoku puzzles, cooking fresh caught fish and papas over the open fire grill, listening to music and playing cards with a couple of kids that would show up to stare at us. We tried to teach one little girl how to play snap but she really didn´t jive with the whole idea of taking turns to put cards down and wasn´t all that good at actually snapping when there was a double card put down so basically the game ended up being us throwing cards into a chaotic pile in the middle and randomly yelling snap whenever you ran out of cards. Not exactly lasting satisfaction as far as games go.

Finally, the boat did arrive on Sunday night and we watched as hundreds of bottles of cola were unloaded along with a few fruits and vegetables. Monday we finally took off, hammocks in place down river that we were told would take us five days to reach Iquitos. As you can see from the photo, the boat was no honeymooners paradise. Although no real complaints can be made because in the end we reached where we were trying to get to and nothing bad happened along the way, it was an experience. As we slowly made our way downstream, anyone living along the way would flag down the boat with a white shirt or at night a bright light and we would go past and then turn to come back up to the shore upstream. With a bump the boat would hit the sand bank and people, bulls, plantains, chickens, pigs, absolutely anything would get on and we would be on our way again. Person by person, hammock by hammock the boat filled up until by the end my hammock was right over andy´s and kylee and i were basically cuddling and kylee was unfortunate enough to have a quite disagreable woman beside her who seemed to resent the lack of space. Food was served three times a day and was basically unvarying: rice, platano, yuca and a bit of freshly butchered meat. Not bad to be truthful, but lacking in any kind of vitamins and vegetables of any sort. We basically spent our days lying in our hammocks, sitting on the roof or out front with the bulls or wondering how long it was until we ate again.

On the second last day, a small girl got on with a baby monkey which she was taking to iquitos to sell. It had a tie around its waist that was too tight and was cutting its stomach and you could tell that all it wanted was to play and be given the attentiont that it should have been getting from its mother and the other monkeys in its group. however, for the price of 15 soles, about 5 dollars, it was about to start a life that would contain very little playing or comfort. It was sad to see, especially after what we have been doing for the last month or more, and if it had been possible we would have bought it right then and taken it with us. However, travelling across hundreds of miles and a border with a wild animal would be challenging to say the least so one has to face the fact that the world is unjust at times and hope that there is karma. As well as a monkey, there was also a baby tigrillo, like an ocelot we think, a red macaw, a bunch of tortoises and a bagillion chickens. and probably about 50 or 60 people.

Arrival in Iquitos was A Good Thing.

Andy left yesterday morning for Tabatinga, in Brasil, and Kylee and I are preparing ourselves to get on another boat for three days to Yurimagua. The boat, which we went to see this morning at the port, is a world better than the Siempre Adelante III and we are in fact not unhappy about getting on at all as it will be a very different experience for a shorter period of time. It probably means however, that I will be spending my 21st birthday swinging in a hammock as we slowly make our way downstream once again. I did find a three dollar bottle of champagne today though which will have to suffice as far as wild and crazy celebrations go. wooohooo.

As I always say, it is wonderful to hear from those of you who email...I appreciate the full inbox as those of you who travel know and i hope everyone is having a peachy march month.

love mer

animal centre to iquitos

sunset from the top of the boat as we slowly oh so slowly made our way down the Napo. night number five.
our little spot amongst the chaos. andy on the left and kylee on the right. my spot is the blue one in the middle. as you can see, it was a pretty tight, overlapping situation.
a few of the many many many hammocks on board
andy playing with the monkey and me just playing in the hammock above
the siempre adelante III which took us down the napo from pantoja to iquitos. for those of you who need translation, that means the always ahead III. needless to say it´s a rather hopeful name. there were probably 60 people on board.
canoas
on the boat: the girl who brought the monkey on board with the baby monkey and the baby tigrillo. what a picture.
kylee and andy preparing the fabulous breakfast in pantoja
the fish and chips
cooking the sweet meal we made
me and baby
me and a boa constrictor...how´s that one for you mum?
me and kylie, australian who i am travelling with at the moment
monkey hands
¨monster¨the woolly monkey
the baby coati and i

Hi everyone, time is funny sometimes...a couple of days of travelling can seem like a month while a couple of weeks of staying in one place can seem like a day or two. hence, i have trouble recalling what has happened in the last couple or few weeks because life has fallen into a nice rhythm of work and hammocks and food.
i am still at santa martha animal refuge and am planning (oh plans and how they change) on staying another week before packing the pack and heading out again.
this last week has been good, very good, and i am sure that week four will be even better. as i become more competent and confident around the animals and just generally with the way things work there is more time to look around and notice where i am and what is going on around me.
a few things we did in the last couple of weeks:
one of the woolly monkeys died. we didn´t know why and he had been totally fine, but after an autopsy preformed by gloudina and two chilean veterinary students the cause of death was put down as poisoning. and, because he escaped the week before for just a day, this explanation makes a sad sort of sense; having never been in the wild, he may not have known what to eat and what not to eat. this was a demonstration to me at least of why it is so important to try and create the most natural environment possible for these animals and to actively seek release possibilities in areas where they will be safe from hunters.
we did more work on the dam...there has not been very much rain lately and so our water pressure has been quite low. we built the dam higher by filling sacks with clay and then cementing them in place. hopefully it will work out better this way.
friday night called for an epic everybody plays everybody else table tennis tournament on the dining room table. unfortunately, my mad skills let me down and i came second to last out of seven. bummmmer
it is carnaval time right now in ecuador (in a lot of places i think) so saturday night in baños was crazy. it was like a foam war zone with everyone running around with cans of spray foam. nobody was immune, old women, small children, no one.
this week gloudina sat us down to tell us that johnny, a local entrepreneur who has basically supported the foundation out of his own pocket, will not be able to provide us with any more funding because of his own financial situation. thus, the fate of the centre is a bit up in the air at the moment and brainstorming for ideas of how to get fruit for the animals at lower prices and how to get more volunteers and just generally how to get more money is high on our to-do list every day. if anyone as any good ideas, we would love to hear about them!!
well, i am sure that this week will just fly by and then i will be off, most likely travelling with an australian girl who has also been working at the centre. our current plan (it is become the p-word) is (get out your ever handy map of northen south america) to head north to coca, ecuador, from where we will catch a boat through the amazon to iquitos, peru. from there we will head to the coast of peru before beelining back up through ecuador in order to get to colombia, panama and all the rest. you know how it goes.
i hope everyone is well and that there is light at the end of the winter tunnel.
love mer

glen with two of the four puppies
the baby armadillo who has to be forced fed grasshopper guts by syringe
kids from the family and andy watching gloudina feed the armadillo
we saw another tarantula...smaller by about half but it stuck around for a couple of hours

ricky trying to play with a puppy
kitty and a puppy

ricky the dog was chasing something while we were sitting around the campfire one night and i looked down to see what it was and there was the tarantula. the cigarette is for sizing.
one of the boys from the family in the lagoon by the house
we went for a jungle walk

kitty
the kitchen
katia´s monkey bite one week later