Ecuador Part 4

'April 22, 2010

Today was my first day in quarantine. It was good except that I keep thinking I'll forget something and I keep second guessing myself. Right now there are 5 birds there so there isn't a lot of work to do there and it was basically uneventful. Last night there was a bonfire which was nice. The fire pit is right next to the river so it's pretty loud. Speaking of the river, yesterday Andrea and I went swimming/bathing in it. The water is cold but I find it very refreshing and it's quite something to be sitting on the rocks of a raging river in the middle of the jungle. So far that has given me the most repose. Especially after a day of work. It feels so soothing. That and the water is so clear and fresh. You can even drink from it and I often do. It's kinda sad that I have to come this far to find natural water that hasn't been polluted.

I feel 24 hours more comfortable here. That's a weird sentence but I know what I mean. It feels more and more like 2 weeks won't be that hard to manage. Oh yea, in the middle of the night last night it just started pouring. The sky opened up and unleashed a deluge that didn't stop until late morning. It went on for hours and made waking up at 7:30 quite challenging.'

This is a much shorter entry than the last. My writing betrays my intentions of trying to cheer myself up. If I write it, it MUST be what I'm feeling, right? Not that anything I wrote is untrue. I did feel more comfortable after the first day, but much of my unease remained, all of which is omitted in my entries.

To this day thinking about those jungle rains I can almost summon its sound in my ears, its scent in my nose. It's ethereal. Allow me to contrast that with having to wake up at 7am, though in reality you've been up for a couple hours because the sound is deafening, and putting on clothes that haven't dried from the day before and trudging out amidst the deluge. To be fair, there was only one morning when it was raining when we awoke. It did rain every day, multiple times.


Lying in that river was reverie; our reprieve. It was running so fast that there were very few spots to even sit down and swimming was basically out of the question. The clarity of the water and the alignment of the rocks belied its natural creation as it looked as if this was something to be found at a lavish fountain in las vegas. This must have been melt water or something originating from higher elevations in the hills because it was very cold.

We did find sitting spots and did little more than sit there and let the water rush past us. In these minutes we were engulfed in where we were. Sitting in a beautiful river in the middle of the jungle. The toils of the day as well as thoughts of the next days work rushed past us with the water.

This last picture is me with Oscar, the baby kinkajou. They are from the same family as raccoons. Think: nocturnal, furry and vicious. This little guy is adorable and although they are nocturnal he had to be given medicine each day. He was kept in a separate cage adjacent to the main kinkajou cage and the 7 adults. I believe he now resides in with the other adults which is progress for him. Yay!