Animals, Sickness, and Cable TV

Hi Faithfull Bloglets,

It has been an interesting few weeks in Bolvia. Since we left Ginger´s we had a few change of plans around our travels. Basically we had a great week in a small little town called Semaipata, where you can base a whole bunch of nature tours etc, but mainly we just relaxed, ate well and enjoyed ourselves... nice huh. We also did the ´Routa Del Che´(following the last few days of Che Guevara´s life in bolivia where he died- more later)

But just prior to getting back to Ginger´s Paradise, our beloved organic farm, we realised that we only had about 5 weeks to see the rest of boliva, do a 2 week volunteering stint at Inti Wara Yassu and make it all the way to Cuzco to acclimatize for Machu Pichu. So instead of being able to hang out at gingers for a week or so we could only stay 2 days before we had to bail for the Animal Refuge Inti Wara Yassu, which was a bit sad, especially saying goodbye to everyone there, who was so loverly.

Anyway so we made it to Inti Wara Yassu, which is about 6 hours from Santa Cruz in a small Village called Villa Tunari, on a day of torrential rain. It literally flooded the place in about one hour; i dont know about rain measurements but it was alot. Anyway we finally paid, got assigned to our different working areas and retired for the night. I (steve) was working with Small Animals, which is Tejons, Tyras and Turtles, and Cam was working in one of the big Avaries. The animals were crazy, Tejons are a bit like racoons crossed with ant eaters (with huge teeth) and Tyras are like mini bears on 4 legs and are meant to be one of the most powerful animals pound for pound in the world... Im not sure what birds cam was working with im sure she will explain sometime. But basically for the next few days it rained constantly, taking out the entire villages water supply and flooding everyones mould infested rooms. But basically cami and i got quite sick after the first day and spent the majority of 3 days in our room vomiting etc etc.. So much fun. But after a bunch of days like this we decided it wasnt worth staying and being sick the whole time, and there were also some other issues with the park that we werent quite sure of, so we ended up leaving a bit early and heading to Cochabumba so we could get better. Which is where we are now, and im mostly better, but cami is still a bit on the green side.

Anyhoooo we are leaving all this a bit dissapointed that we didnt get to have a great time at I.W.Y and heading off to Sucre to study a bit of Spanish. And as such we now have a bit more time to explore Bolivia and see some things we thought we were going to miss out on.. which is a plus at least.

So for now i will go back to looking after cami and trying to find some food that isnt fried chicken or Almuezo.

Steve and Cami.