Nuance

Not being fluent, I may not understand every single word that is spoken to me, but I tend to get the gist.

Eye contact, gestures, and body language count for a lot.

But when it comes to sensitive or complex subjects, though I may understand the message being conveyed to me, I don't necessarily have the capacity to respond. Particularly as I would prefer to be diplomatic, and get my point accross without being offensive, especially when speaking to someone I have only just met.

So when my landlady's father creates a standoff after five minutes of meeting me over my nationality and my choice of reading material, I smile, tilt my head, look quizical, and try to pretend like I don't quite understand what an aggressive bigot he has just shown himself to be.

If the conversation had been in English, I would probably have already moved out.

I leave Manchester tomorrow.

People keep asking if I am excited about going. They have been asking this for weeks now, and I have been telling them that no, I'm not really excited, but I am sure I will be when it gets closer to it.

But in little over 48 hours I will be in my new home in Buenos Aires, and I continue to be in an almost surreal state of calm. I am looking forward to it, of course. I am happy that I have a nice place to stay while I do my course, with friendly housemates that are my own age, and have made contact with the varied group that will be my classmates. I am looking forward to going to classes, to feeling the pressure of learning and assignments that need to be done. I have been looking at yoga classes online and am planning on taking up tango, as well. And after many months of virtually meat free living, I salivate at the thought of an Argentinian grill.

But excited? No. To be excited you have to be a bit nervous, I suppose, and I am taking it all in my stride. This is in stark contrast to how I was before I left for Ecuador, those who have been reading since then will remember. Then, I was terrified that something bad would happen. I was desperate to escape, but wanting an itinerary, a formula perhaps, that would make everything alright.

Now, I have a one way ticket, and people say 'how brave' to not have a plan, or 'what an adventure it will be'. Well, it may be adventure. It will be what I make of it, just as my time in Manchester has been. But I am not scared, and not brave either. To me, this is just the next leg of a journey that I have already begun.

I came back to Manchester because my money ran out, and all the time since then I have been getting ready to go off again, saving money and getting ideas together. Originally I felt stifled to have returned. I felt that I had failed, taken a backward step even, and that I needed to get away again. To escape properly. But not now. I have enjoyed my time in Manchester; being welcomed back to the theatre, welcomed back by old friends, and making new friends. And I know that whatever happens and however long it takes, Manchester will always be a home for me.

I am not running away. I am just moving on.

I draw a lot of parallels between the behaviour of humans and other species, and I realised tonight that I might be slightly over egging it, to the effect that I am impressing my own impression of humanity onto animal behaviour to the detriment of my enjoyment of the wonder of 'creation'.

I had been listening to the sounds of the Capercaille. The recording I have is really magical, because it seems as if the bird is approaching and retreating from the microphone at exactly the right points in its call pattern to give an undulating sound. That, mixed with the gradual build up of other bird sounds in the background, creates a beautiful synphonic effect. It is almost like a piece of music in iteslf, if you discount the guy who talks in soft tones introducing a bird noise for a couple of seconds halfway into it.

I loved it so much I wanted to post it on here, but I couldn't, because I haven't quite figured out the audio file side of my new laptop (or how to do it on blogger). So I decided to look it up on youtube.

I found this instead, which (as with all of Attenborogh's stuff) is a great piece of footage. But you know what I was thinking as my mental picture was replaced by the image of the real battle/ courtship?

Cocking hell. They think that agressive behaviour and a bit of posturing will charm the ladies. What th.. not only do they get their pick of the hens, but they get a bloody harem? The bloody cocks!

I am sure that the Capercaillie hens do not mind, and that this pattern of behaviour has evolved to the benefit of most involved. So, why did it upset me so much?

Indecision is the father of obscurity.

It appears to me that projects and opportunities open up just when there really isn't enough time to fit everything in. But then again inactivity leads to stagnation, so that makes sense.

My problem is, that once an opportunity arises, I find it very difficult to admit that I may not have the time to commit to it. For example, I was offered some extra work today that would be something different, perhaps interesting, easily done and a little extra cash. The only snag is that I am already scheduled to work at the same times in my usual job, which is also easily done, mostly quite pleasant, and in which I get free time to read, think and write.

There is a lazy, selfish part of me that thinks it makes sense to stay doing what I usually do, even if it is just to spend my last few weeks in the country working with friends rather than acquaintances, while logic tells me that it would be foolhardy to reject picking up a new mini-skill for marginally better money.

I am a grown woman. If I can be this indecisive about a few weeks' casual work, no wonder I have been at such a loss juggling the rest of life's desires.

A Gentle Letdown

One of the sad things about going away is saying goodbye to the people that you care about.

One of the sadder things is going away because you never got to get to care about someone.

Not another false start.

Sorry, I've been gone a while.

There's a reason for that.

Mostly it's because there are enough blogs out there documenting people's self perpetuating sense of failure and feelings of isolation, and also because I have had so very little worthy of discussion.

Who cares that I have returned to my old place of work, having climbed down the career ladder, to a job that I actually rather enjoy, despite the pitying looks from old colleagues and concerned questions about how the 'job search' was going (I wasn't searching for a job)? Who cares that I was involved in a couple of creative projects that were lots of fun but could hardly be considered a concerted effort at a career change? And who really gives a fig that I still haven't written that book?

Except for me, of course. Hence the self perpetuating sense of failure and feeling of isolation. *Cue violins*

But all that is about to change, because I am going exploring (read "running away") again. This time I am going to Buenos Aires, and I have bought a one-way ticket. This doesn't mean that I will be gone forever, though in theory it might. I have a very loose plan, which involves training to teach English and then looking for work, and travelling when I have no work, until my savings dry up. This may not take very long, or (if I find a job, or any sort of genuine direction, really) it could be a journey that doesn't stop.

Teaching is, I have always said, the last job I would ever want to do. In the sense that my parents were both teachers (and my sister, for a while), and I witnessed through my childhood a great deal of stress and a very small amount of free time. Now I realise this is involved in most jobs, and I know that in theory teaching can be very rewarding. It is an honorable profession. Even so, I do have a deep set aversion to the idea. But I imagine teaching adults who actually want to learn is less stressful than a class of thirty-one teenagers that would rather be out shagging than learning a foreign language. It has to be worth a shot, and it's better than treading water back in Manchester, I suppose.

It will be amazing, I am sure. Whatever happens, it will inform my future and I will have seen something new of the world. And I miss the rainforest with a longing that can't be written, and this may bring me closer to it again.

Wabbits

In the cartoons that I watched as a kid there was always a stupid character; one that acts big and then fails on the delivery. He is the coyote who gets blasted by his own dynamite or the hunter who falls into his own trap. The one we love to see thwarted by his own arrogance.

He chases his prey with a foolhardy zeal. Leaning forward into the run, snarling determinedly, his feet are a blurred circle of animated urgency. In the background the scenery rolls past, unaffected.

He doesn't even notice that his target has hidden behind a rock. He just keeps running until the ground beneath his feet runs out. He has been running on sheer air and despiration, but it's too late now. He claws at the sky but there's only one way to go, and it isn't up. And so he falls off the edge of the screen with a high pitched whistle, followed by a crash and a mushroom of dust.

There he is, lying in a made-to-measure depression in the dry earth; legs splayed, taunted by the chirping of cute little birds circling his bruised body, and struggling to raise his head.

We can almost feel sorry for him. We know the futility of his ambition. His plans are never as ingenious as he thinks. He is pathetic, but we do just love to see him fall.

They always manage to get up and start the chase afresh though, these characters. They can be beaten to a pulp with a frying pan or get flattened by a grand piano, but there's always still just a bit more chase left in them. And sometimes, just sometimes, it looks like they might just get what they're after.

......And then they don't.


The dust is beginning to clear now, but I still can't pull myself up out of the earth far enough to figure out what it was I was chasing. It could have been just the long shadow cast by a cartoon cactus, after all.

Re-awakenings

I am hoping that anyone who has been reading this will not be surprised by amonth of so's lull in updates.

Yes, I know that I have been out of the rainforest for about five weeks now, and strictly speaking it should have been easy to get on the internet and recount a little of how it has been since coming into a familiar runway after a long journey and walking out of Picadilly station towards Canal Street, laden with a backpack on each side and a mule sack of six months' belongings on alternating shoulders.

It should have been easier than the race against time of internet cafes with sleepy connections from occasional vacations from the forest, it should have been a full run-through of everything I hadn't had the chance to say before.

Naivite had me believe that life would take some sort of shape within a short space after arrival, but of course I had been living at a pace different to the rush and expectation of the life I had left, and it would take some time before a type of clarity could be reached....

Some things I did in my last week in Ecuador

Friday: Sowed Sangre de Gallina seeds for reforestation in the daytime, and went to the ecuavolly court in the evening to watch Verena and Antonio make a fire show.

It was Antonios first time with fire, and I think he was crapping himself (I would have been), but he did a really good job. Especially since just before he started he was stung twice in the back by a Devil´s Horse wasp. Not as bad as for Jonas, though, who was stung directly on lip, drew blood, and gave him a boxer´s pout.




Saturday: Antonio took us on mine and the Verenas last hike, along sendero verde to dos bocas and along the river to come back on sendero mono. He tested us on the phenology of the forest, betting beers on right answers. I knew a few patchy bits of information, but never the whole set of scientific name, family name, and common name. I could, however, identify and sort the seeds that we needed to collect along the way for future reforestation projects.


I hung back on my own for a little while at the river, knowing that I would not be seeing this now familiar beauty again, or hearing the rippling waters and the birds in the trees.


We went to La Yecita in the evening, and everyone danced, even the gringo men. We found some coputating scarabs, which distracted us from dancing for a little while.

When we got back to Bilsa at around 4am six of us went down to the rio duche to take a candle lit shower, and as I headed back with kleine Verena I saw an armadillo cross my path right next to the house.

Sunday: Made pancakes with Julieta, did laundry.
Gave an English lesson to Alejandro in La Yecita. Community members were beginning to gather to play and watch football, and some of the women came and were interested in taking part. If only I had started doing this sooner, I thought, or if I had a real knowledge of a teaching technique, I could have come and given casual lessons to whoever in the community wanted to learn. I came back to Bilsa on a real high, for the first time in my life actually wanting to be a teacher, and then set off with the others to head to the waterfall in rio duche and have a shower in bikinis.
In the evening I took a break from playing fiero to go to the outhouse, and when I was washing my hands I heard an awful noise that sounded like a small pig screaming, and some hurried shuffling of earth and leaves. Suddenly the armadillo rushed out from under the house, shortly followed by Baloo, who managed to catch it and was grabbing it with his mouth when I shouted him to stop. We got Baloo away and inspected the poor creature. It had a deep wound in its back that we suspected had come from something other than Baloo, and it didn´t look like it was going to survive. We weren´t going to kill it, on the off chance that it would survive, so Verena and Edwardo took it deeper into the jungle so that at least Baloo wouldn´t be able to bother it. I finally managed to fulfil my promise of sending a picture of a real life armadillo to Stuart, but I am sorry that it had to be this way.


Monday: Machete work and barbed wire. Fixing the perimiters of the reserve. Mixing compost. I went down to take a shower in the river, and just as I was about to step under the stream that pours down from the river above, I saw some movement up in the river and there were various commonbirds, and one motmot sat on a branch waving its bizarre pendanted tail from side to side about 3m in front of me. I stood in the river watching it for about ten minutes until it moved a little out of view, and I was getting cold so I rushed the shower and lifted myself up the steep steps back to the house to get the bird book.

In the evening I played fiero for the last time, and won about a dollar. It would have been more I I hadn´t bet 2 dollars on a fiero of 3, only to find that Julieta had fiero of 7, but that´s the way the game evens things out.

Tuesday: Finished reading Cumanda in the morning. Antonio,when explaining some details of Spanish that I didn´t understand, had also told me the ending of the story. Thanks, I said, now can you tell me what is going to happen in my story? No I can´t, I haven´t read that one, he said.

Planted around 450 seeds of Sangre de Gallina and 100 of Billiar Colombiano in the reforestation platabandas on sendero piscinas, and then took a detour to cavort in the waterfalls with the Verenas. Took some photos and fell over alot. Got bruised, but not as much as Verena Grande, who fell from a height when we were climbing off trail to get down to the pozo, and tore up her bottom and thigh quite impressively. Made ´jungle bikinis´out of palm and acracia leaves and bits of fern, and arrived back at the station two hours late for lunch.

Did some final bits of laundry to clean some clothes to leave behind, showered in the river and then went to sit in the medicinal plant garden for the last time, watching the silouhettes of the cecropia deepen above me into the black of the last night in the jungle.

After dinner there was cake to share around and songs were sung before setting off to La Yecita, where we played pool and joked and danced as usual, except for the that on this night the clouds and the fog cleared for us to see the stars. Antonio and Verena Grande did a fire show.

My last dance was with Antonio, a dance of the sierra with raised knees and him dancing around me and coralling me with my scarf. The last of us headed back to Bilsa at around 4.30am. After everyone else was in bed I spent a few minutes of pensive shuffling at the doorway of the volunteer house, and at one point I almost opened the metal shutter to go out and head to the carpenteria, but eventually decided that it was probably best not to take that risk, and went upstairs instead.

Wednesday: After about two hours of sleep took my bags downstairs to wait for the mule to arrive. Hugged everyone goodbye, and only welled up when it got to Winter and Antonio, at which point I turned and headed up the path with the sack on my back and without looking back.
Rode half the journey from Bilsa to La Ye chatting to Alejandro and glad that the plastic bag I was sitting on might provide a barrier to catching ticks from the horse with no name. Walking the rest of the journey through the mud, chatting to the Verenas about triangles of rejection and affirmation at the Bilsa biological station.
I finally got to see the Subcentro de Salud (Health Centre), and smiled at how fitting this moment of departure was - to meet Andy, the medical volunteer I met at the Lagoon on my first evening before hiking into the jungle, to see the best view of the whole lagoon from the subcentro terrace, and to climb to the top of the unfinished water tower to look back on the hills of Bilsa in the distance.
This is a picture of La Ye, the gateway to Bilsa (a 31/2 hike away). It has electricity and mobile phone signal, and trucks can reach it from the road.

We got on the top of the ranchero with our bags, and laughed and bounced along the unsteady camino from La Ye to the main road, and the arrived in Quininde tired and late and hungry. Got an amuerzo from the regular place and then sat on the curb resting our eyes until it was time to meet Pato, chatting to the man and girl whos family owned the dressmakers there, who brought us iced water and dulces de manabi.

We met Pato and shared cervezas on the patio furniture outside his hostel. He told us about his bus heist, and we told him what to expect in Bilsa. We played a very sleepy game of cuarenta. Actually, I woke up to play my turns while the others chatted, so exhausted I was that I could literally not keep my eyes open for three seconds.
Caught the 1am bus to Quito, and slept instantly and uncomfortably balancing myself against two bags, a hat, a large woman with elbows and a seat that refused to recline.

Thursday: Arrived in Quito at 6am and went straight to bed. Then walked around Quito alone without fear for the first time, and bought the most repulsive gift imaginable for someone who will be only just a little disappointed it isn´t a tsantza.
Met a Luis and went for a chinese, then went back to bed for the afternoon and night, still exhausted.

I am ready and happy and looking forward to coming home.

Now I am planning to pretty much sleep until I arrive in Manchester, because there are too many things that I want to do when I get there for rest to be on the agenda.

Buesnos noches, y hasta muy pronto.xx.

Home

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With mixed feelings, I will be back in Manchester on September 7th.

I am truly excited to see my friends and family again, and am looking forward to taking a long hot bath with a glass of Cotes du Rhone and the Guardian Weekend magazine. I want to see a play and walk in the great hall of the theatre in the dark. I want to play scrabble and eat a 16" pizza.

Some things, some people, I can always rely on. But still I am very nervous. Aside from the fact that I will be swapping the mist, mud and monkeys for cars and concrete, some other things will have changed for certain. More to the point, I have changed. Just how much I don´t yet know, but some things are already different, and make my stomach flip in anticipation.

The first major difference is that I will not be moving back into my appartment. That epoch is now over. When I first arrive I will be hosted by one of my favourite people in the world, so it´s not that bad, but neither is it long term or secure. I need to find a new place, which leads to another worry.

I have no money. Galapagos wiped me out completely. I need to pay back some money (rather a lot of money, as it happens), and I also need to make some money rather sharpish to be able to live and to be able to get back to Ecuador.

There are three points to consider. One, I have no job. Two, I don´t really want to get a serious career job if I am heading back to the jungle to write a book and make my future happen. Three, I want to get back to the jungle in time to observe the mating season, and that will not be possible on minimum wage.

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What do I do? Will Ebay cope? Make mine an agua, por favor.

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Suggestions are welcome.

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The other concern is physical. My body is now a temple, don´t you know, and I don´t want to desecrate it. Seriously though, except for the skin fungus, scars, and parasites, working in the jungle does wonders for the health.

I will not be surprised if many of my clothes no longer fit. Without consciously making it so, my body has changed. Less for the aesthetics of it all, and more for the way I feel, I don´t want to get slack again. Will walking to town from Chorlton and back every day be sufficient substitute to hiking up to six hours in a day or working with a machete from 8 to 12 and 2 to 4?

Also, I have not smoked one single drag for almost a month. Here, I don´t feel any need to pick up a cigarette, but will I fall back into bad habits in Manchester?

The blog will change too. It will have to document how I cope with this new life. To explain how I find my way back to the forest and how the book is going.

I am looking forward to finding out.

But for now I think all that I need is just to make the most of the beach while I am still here.

Hasta pronto!

Footsteps fading in the moonlit sand

Last night was a full moon, and the clouds above the Montanita beach parted at times to light up the sea like daytime.

We shared a bottle of Castillo del Diablo with glass cups borrowed from the hostal, took self timed photos balancing the camera on Antonio´s flip flops, and chatted round in circles, about silly things and about life, until just before dawn.

It was my last night on the beach in Ecuador, my last evening of vacations before the final stint in the jungle. It could not pass without a hint of sadness.

I don´t want to leave, I said.

You have to get used to the fact that you are going home, he said.

I know, that´s why I ´m thinking about it. And I am happy to go and see my friends and family, but it will be so difficult to come back. I want to be here in December, when the season is different in the jungle and the birds are mating, but the flight is so expensive I don´t know how I can do it.

Why don´t you extend your visa? You could get a job here. There was a volunteer from Germany who did the same thing last year. It´s possible.

Perhaps it is possible, but it would be very difficult. And now I don´t have any money, I wouldn´t be able to live. I could get a job here in Montanita, but I don´t want to live here. I want to live in Bilsa, and I can´t earn money there. I have to go back and work, at least until I have enough money to come back.

Well, that´s life. Now stop moaning and lets dance.

Hasta luego

Sorry, I did warn you that I wouldn´t have time to detail everything before I run off into the trees again.

So here are some edited highlights from the last couple of weeks...

• Eating an Argentinian grill in a Chinese run restaraunt in Loja
• Consumption - coffee, cakes and clothes
• Consumption - Sexo en la Ciudad
• The colonial influence - Ecuador with a European flavour
• The hippest hostal in Cuenca
• Inca ruins and alpaca socks
• Sharing a box of wine on the steps to the river, double dating Cuenca style
• Talking philosophy and phonetics with a fairy
• Classic cinema and sign language
• The best laid plans - communication problems, the social politics of guide searching and tension amongst travel companions
• Trying to break a spell without breaking a heart

And now I have a few things to do here in Quito before leaving for Quininde in the morning. Not very interesting.

So tomorrow morning Felica and I will part ways, for good this time, which might be a bit strange. Then I will head to La Ye from Quininde (hopefully without livestock in the camionetta this time) and look for Winter, who is hanging around with a broken foot unable to work at the moment. He says he is waiting for me there with ´una de ron´ (a bottle of rum). After a night in La Ye, probably staying in the house that Winter is building for himself, Don Armardo says he´ll be there in the morning with a mule for me. For my bags, rather, because I am hiking the 3 1/2 hour muddy road to Bilsa in my faithful rubber boots.

When I get there, after I have said hello and dropped my bags in my room, the first thing I plan to do is to go down to the river for a shower. Then I will wash the city off, wash away the dirt and smoke and dry air, and breathe only the sounds and smells of the forest.

Ciao for now.

Snow holiday

When I first flew into Ecuador it was such a clear morning that I was able to take phorographs of the mountains from the plane window. One of them was Cotopaxi, the third highest active volcanic mountain in the world, at just under 6,000m.

After having lots of practice hiking the muddy trails of Bilsa, a while ago Felicia and I decided that to climb the mountain would be a fitting achievment to seal our time in Ecuador. This became the primary goal of our travels together. Everything else was flexible, but making this climb was a detirmination, and so yesterday was the last opportunity to head to the mountain.

The altitude got to me straight away. We had driven up to the last access point and hiked an hour up to the refuge. My breath was thin and laboured throughout, and I was weak and light headed when we arrived. I put it down to the fact that we had not had chance to get breakfast before meeting our guide at 7am, and any worries seemed to clear that afternoon after we had had some lunch and gone out into the snow for an hour to learn how to walk in crampons.

After dinner we went to bed at 6pm. Felicia had a headache and was given some coca tea by our guide, and I sipped what she didn´t want more out of curiosity of trying the coca than as a precaution. I was relieved that I seemed to have gotten over that strange patch earlier.

But I was confident too soon. Between 7 and 11pm, while the forty or so other people in the room relaxed before the climb, and while I could hear Felicia sleep in the bunk next to me, I fought with a new headache and a weight on my chest that felt like my lungs were crushed to a third of their size. My heart raced like it was about to flutter its last. I tossed and turned in my sleeping bag, trying to find a balance between maintaining some body heat and being able to breathe.

I slept for maybe 20 minutes before it was time to don our gear and eat a little midnight breakfast. I told the guide about my chest pains, and he said that I needed to decide whether I would be able to make it or not. After a few minutes I decided that the headache had retreated enough, and I didn´t want to give up at this point.

So we went out onto the cold midnight mountain. We went slowly, and though I was tired my chest felt alright so I was happy to continue. And so we did, for four hours.

And so it was that I was to be found at 4am this morning, crying weak tears of frustration and exhaustion on a dark and windy mountain, as my guide clipped my harness onto another couple heading back down to the refuge, so that he and Felicia could continue to the summit without me.

I didn´t look back.

Being led by a rope down a mountain, stumbling in the snow like a toddler on reins, I was relieved to see the train of headlamps down the mountain ahead of me, of people who also couldn´t make it throught the cold and wind, and who had turned back even before I did. I had made it to 5,400m before my jelly legs could lift no more, and am happy that I made it that far.

What a fool I was to compare mountain climbing to hiking in the jungle, and to underestimate the effects of altitude on the body*. Jungle hiking has its own challenges, of course, but for me they are overriden by the benefits of being able to watch the wildlife and smell the flora. Lugging myself up the mountain in the dark, only able to see the snow directly in front of me and to smell my own laboured breath inside my balaclava, there were times that I really did wonder why people bothered to put themselves through this, for a hobby? Of course the mountain was beautiful when it could be seen, and when Felicia returned to the refuge later that morning with photos from after the sun had risen, I was so pleased that she at least got to see the true magnificance of the mountain.

But I know that it is not the climate for me. The jungle beckons.

* As a measure of how the mountain messes with your body, one American girl who came down before me was taken to hospital from the refuge because of all the fainting and nose bleeding, and a Swiss woman from our group (who had already climbed Ecuador´s other peaks), came down from the summit without her sight. When we last saw her she could see light and bright colours, but no definition. Hopefully it will be better in the next day or so.

So I feel no shame that I didn´t make it, just really proud that Felicia managed to hoik herself all the way to the top without doing herself an injury.

Tilting at windmills

It happens sometimes that you bump in to the person you were only just thinking about, but how bizarre that I had an encounter with Quixote in Loja?

Perhaps I too am tilting at windmills, and the dream of an idyll from former times is seen as little more than eccentricity. Perhaps my perception of what is real life is different now, and perhaps I prefer it that way.

Of course, I am looking forward to coming home.

I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends and having a long hot bath with a glass of wine and the Guardian magazine. I am looking forward to going to the theatre and having free reign in the kitchen again. My mouth waters for a pint of Guinness and some Marmite on toast (not necessarily at the same time), and I can´t wait to prance about in a selection of pretty clothes. I am looking forward to Radio 4 and Sackville Park, and I am looking forward to my books.

But I will still be aiming at that distant windmill on the horizon.

The flight to Cuenca

The flight took around about an hour. It cost $68.

And for that we travelled over the Andes, down from Quito towards the south of Ecuador.

Between the sun and the clouds and the earth; the mountains sprawling accross the horizon like a rumpled sheet, we could see every town, every pueblito, every casa along the way.

Update: Galapagos photos

I have managed to get my pictures up onto a computer, so if you want to see some pictures from Galapagos, scroll down to Now this is Galapagos.

Disclaimer

As some of you who have continued to read despide prolonged absences and incoherent ramblings may be aware, my itinerary and access to internet are rather unpredictable.

There is a column to the left of this blog that details my itinerary down to the exact date. Scrap it. After Tsuraku all that went to pot. Thank the stars, because that is when it got even more interesting (for me, anyway).

For you, however, it means that I just don´t have the time or facility to explain all that I am doing, so I apologise that between Tsuraku and now (and from now on, I am afraid) the reportage is bitty at best.

I assure you that I am writing constantly, and will be posting outtakes when I am able to.

So, a quick update of my movements before I take off....

I arrived in Quito from San Cristobal the day before yesterday. It took me a while to settle into Galapagos, but I did finally get to enjoy myself and see some of the sights.

As well as macheteing blackberries and being bitten to buggery by carmelitas (both invasive species that have taken over San Crisobal, brought over last century by a lady called Carmela - not hugely popular amongst the conservationists when she died last year) I got my scuba diving licence, snorkled amongst sea lions and penguins, almost stood up on a surf board, and got a tan.

I also found a shop on Santa Cruz that sold clothes that didn´t say ´Galapagos´, ´I love Boobies´ or diamantes on it, and got my hands on my first pretty clothes since march. Sigh.

I spent the night of my birthday wearing a dress and playing pool with some local guys, the only woman and the only non- local in the bar. I knew one of the guys from my scuba course, so it wasn´t as dangerous as it might sound. Although a couple were a bit flirty none of them were at all pushy, which is refreshing I can tell you after a month of being a little bit pestered.

And so to Quito. It may come as a surprise, but this time I have actually enjoyed myself here! As much as I can in a big noisy smelly dangerous city, anyway.

I flew in with Sacha, who was my partner in crime (and complaint) during our time on San Cris, and we met Felicia and Tomo from Bilsa before Sacha left to head towards Peru in the morning.

Felicia randomly bumped into a couple of volunteers who were at Bilsa while I was away. They were at San Cristobal just before I got there, and so they also know the other girl that flew back to the mainland with us. We all went out for dinner last night. A great Jatun Sacha reunion!

After dinner Felicia, Tomo and I met up with Pato (one of our scientist friends from Bilsa) and his cousin Augustin, for some drinks and dancing. Who would have thought that ´Holiday´by Madonna has a good beat for salsa dancing? Pato and I made it work, so it must be true.

We all got nicely merry and then went back to our hostal to play cuarenta in the courtyard until 4am.

What a difference it makes to have friendly faces around in a scary city!

Now I am in the airport waiting for check in time. Felicia and I are doing a little travelling before she heads back to Switzerland and I head back to Bilsa. We have some really exciting plans about what we want to do, but as we all know plans like this can never be set in stone....

Today we are flying into Cuenca and taking a bus to Loja in the south of Ecuador. The flights to Loja were full today, so we will arrive there by bus this evening. In Loja we are planning to go to Vilcabamba, which is a place where some of the oldest people in the world live, and to hike in the Parque Nacional Podocarpus, which is a biodiversity hotspot with much endemism of both plant and animal species.

Then we will get a bus up to Cuenca, Ecuador´s third city and the home of the Monticristi (the ´Panama´hat is a misnomer - they are made in Ecuador). There´s lots to do in Cuenca, but the one main plan is to take a day trip to see the Inca site Incapirca (and to buy a Monticristi, of course).

From Cuenca we head to Riobamba to meet Antonio´s friend the mountain guide, who is going to accompany us up to the top (fingers crossed) of the 6,000m Cotopaxi.

After climbing the mountain we are going to the volcanic spa town Baños for massages etc. After four months in wellies my feet are crying out for a pedicure. Then we head back to Quito to meet Winter on his vacations, perhaps go to a concert with August, and visit some museums and markets.

Phew. It´s going to be a busy ten days.

.........and then I go back into the jungle!

Now this is Galapagos

So my time at the San Cristobal station finished just as it was getting interesting. The music, the conversations, the passion and the understanding all arrived while I was readying to leave.

Asi es la vida.

But now, before I head back to the mainland, I am taking a four day tour of the islands, and I finally get to see why Galapagos is so special.

Yesterday I snorkled amongst miriad fish from the size of my finger nail to the size of me, in greys and blacks and pinks and blues and rainbows. I swam with sea lions amongst the waves crashing against the great craggy rocks around the small volcanic island. I said hello to a penguin guarding its nest in the rocks. I saw friggate birds and blue footed and masked boobies, and just missed the tail of a whale as it passed by the boat. I caught a tan lying on the front of the speedboat for an hour. And that was just the journey to Isabella.

Isabella is beautiful. Yesterday evening we went to look at the giant tortoises before dinner, and then drank cerveza on the beach front. This morning we went horseback riding up to the rim of the volcano, and then hiked along the crackled landscape. The crater of this volcano stretches 11km in diameter, which is the second largest in the world. The effect of the spewn lava is just incredible. Like the moon, some said, or a different planet. It reminded me of Beckett; of a post apocalyptic world where life has ceased to thrive except for a few survivers wandering aimlessly into the bleak horizon.

Then we rode back down the volcano, and got the horses into a gallop. I like to gallop, I have found; to have the wind whip by as you soar along is absolutely exhilerating. Then he broke into something faster than a gallop, and we were flying down the mountain. My right foot came out of my stirrup, and I held on with my leg against his neck, swerving vigorously from side to side on the saddle. I knew I was going to fall, because pulling the reins did nothing to slow him down and I had no hold on him as he careered along. So I saw an approaching area of grass, let my other foot out of its stirrup, and threw myself off to the right.

The horse jumped past me, inches away, as I rolled onto the grass.

Another thing to add to the list of near misses and daredevil stunts.

I am writing this on a computer set up on a table outside a house they have converted into an internet cafe. They actaully brought me coffee, so I rate the service even though I am being eated alive by tiny flies. I have just come back from surfing for the first time, but I don´t have time to describe it because I have to shower before dinner and then head to the beach again for a bit of night swimming.

Life´s tough, eh?

Familia

Last night, during a conversation with an ecuadorian whose opinion on volunteers is very much worth noting, I explained (politely) a little of my disappointment, and noted that the volunteers are much more touristy here, and less interested in the conservation work.

We had been talking about how it was necessary to demonstrate to volunteers the objectives of the conservation work, be it through experiencing the attractions of the locale rather than just seeing brambles all the time, or through explaining the history, politics, economics and science behind the work. This way, we were agreeing, people would be more motivated to continue the often monotanous and physically trying work.

However, my companion noted, this is often very difficult to do, because the volunteers are often here soley for a cheap means to get on Galapagos, and have no interest in hearing about the technicalities of reserve work.

Most of them are not like you, I was told. They are tourists, but you are a member of the family. The family? The Jatun Sacha family. You know how it really is.

Yes, we were both a little less than sober when I was told this. Even so, apart from the fact that it is an enormous compliment, it also illustrates what had been missing earlier and what had made my last week on the San Cristobal station so much more enjoyable than earlier.

It was not that I wanted to connect more with the other volunteers and other gringos, though of course it is nice to get along, but that I want to speak (in Spanish) to the Ecuadorians and the people who have more of a personal attachment to the work and the environment.

This week I got to converse about the reasons we are here, with people who care, and that makes all the difference.

Station to Station (updated)

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The difference in culture amongst the volunteers between reserves is as marked as the difference in physical location.

In Tsuraku we were few, and we struggled to find a balance between personal space and communication. We suffered from cabin fever in that small house amongst a community that kept to itself, yet although we were stressed and frustrated with each other we also in a sense developed a bond of mutual concern.

The number of volunteers at Bilsa varied from five in my first week to over a dozen (plus a party of twenty or so students for one week).

When the scientists weren´t around the house was a little more sedate. There were less voices bubbling over each other in the evenings, the guitars hung still against the wall, and when we went to La Yecita there were less dancing partners.

But even when we were just volunteers, we were animated and enthused and concerned for the station and each other. We worked like mules, yet always had time to talk and laugh along the way. With few exceptions we wanted to learn, we wanted to help, and we wanted to take part.

The dynamic worked, is the end of what I will say about the Bilsa station. I couldn´t afford the internet time if I continued to write about it, even if I wasn´t saving my notes for the project.

It is now my ungrateful displeasure to write about my current station, while all the time my heart aches to think that I have to wait another month before I can feel the mud of the jungle beneath my booted feet again.
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Galapagos is famous. We have all heard of how Darwin found in the species variation of the islands the inspriration and examples to demonstrate his studies on evolution, and we imagine a wild and inhospitable terrain, rich with strange creatures and wild island noises. I suppose that when Darwin first arrived on San Cristobal it may have been so, but when I arrived I was surprised to find myself in a highly developed port filled with restaraunts, gift shops and internet cafes.

This is the smartest, wealthiest, most gringo friendly place I have seen since arriving in Ecuador. In fact, it barely feels like Ecuador. Many of the locals speak English to you, even when they know you speak Spanish, because it is second nature to them to speak English to gringos. The music in the bars is English or American (or Bob Marley) on most nights, and even the pool table is governed by American rules.

The horizon is sprinkled by American, European or Japanese owned yaghts that carry tourists from island to island without the hassle of having to interact with locals or put money into the local economy. Meanwhile the tourists (and volunteers) who do stay at port are astounded by how cheap the prices are. They don´t realise or care that the price of a meal on the sea front is often 5 times more expensive than a better meal on the mainland, because they have no interest in Ecuador proper.

This is tourist land. And this is reflected in the volunteer reserve. Firstly, it is significantly more popular and populated by volunteers than other Jatun Sacha stations. Many of these volunteers are motivated by the appeal of GALAPAGOS rather than an invested interest in ecology in general, which means that they may only stay for a week or so and not be overly interested in working. Few of the volunteers have any great interest in Ecuador proper, because they have come directly to Galapagos and will go home after they have done their own island tours. The majority are around 20- 21 years old, and mainly interested in meeting people of the same age and opposite sex.

For these, and various other reasons, I do not find myself on the same wavelength as most of the other volunteers. Obviously there are exceptions, and I am certainly not lonely, but on the most part they have no interest in me and I have no inclination to make myself socially available. They are a group of nice young people who are happy to be on the famous Galapagos, and I am a slightly jaded, travel worn woman who would rather be back in the jungle. I don´t want to criticise, only to explain that I can´t help but compare the difference.

Obviously, because there are so many young volunteers to manage, the working of the reserve has to be governed rather tightly. This means that the work is apportioned systematically, rather than according to inclination and/or experience, and that meal and social times are strictly regimented. It is like a rather expensive boot camp for young tourists. The work itself is hard, as it is on the other stations, but lacks the motivating sense of purpose and passion. Finally, there is no real research taking place, the environment around the station is largely uninspiring, and no one has time or inclination to discuss the ecology of the area in any depth.

In short, I feel as though at the station I work very hard, and get very little personal in return.

I am sure that if this had been my first station I would have loved the difference of station living; the spartan lifestyle would have been refreshing and I would not have known that there could be more to it. But I have suppose that now I have seen how it is elsewhere, I feel the difference between the dirty reality of the mainland and the golden egg of Galapagos, and I have experienced a genuine passion for conservation and a reserve that makes it work, that makes your work count.

I have been volunteering for almost four months now, and right now I do not feel the urge to throw myself into the volunteer work here as I have previously. It just doesn´t sit right with me. The reserve is the wealthiest of all under Jatun Sacha´s control, and my money is already in the bank. They have an overabundance of volunteers, and I don´t feel at all inclined to break my back on mundane chores and panic that I will be reprimanded for arriving minutes late for lunch.

And so I have decided to take every opportunity to escape the station.

This weekend I went scuba diving, and stayed at port until wednesday, which means I have one work day and one ´hike´day before another weekend at port. Then I have another full week of volunteering. I will work as hard as I ever do, which is pretty hard now that my strength and machete skills are honed. When I work, regardless of whether my heart is in it or not, I prefer to work hard. So they should have no reason to complain about me, even if after that week I am buggering off on a four day tour to see the islands, and flying back to Quito directly rather than returning to the station as I was originally supposed to. Ya me voy, para Bilsa trabajar. I am heading back to work at Bilsa, where I belong.

Galapagos, schmalapagos.