Tikal

For a quick break from all the animal action, I took an overnight trip with a few friends to see the ancient Mayan ruins at Tikal. The ruins are only about an hour drive away from ARCAS.

We got to the little hotel late in the morning and followed the advice of our friends and switched from the general all day tour and split it up to the sunset and sunrise tour. We had a couple hours to chill and relax and finally at 3:30 met our tour guide. That's when things went sour.

Our tour guide seemed shy and quiet, not the best sign for someone supposed to speak loudly to geeky tourists who want to learn about the historical site. Then we realized that he barely spoke english, which you can imagine put a bit of a damper on the learning process. Worse, in my mind, was that he didn't seem to even want to be there or want to try. Well, I guess the worst part would be that he mentioned about three facts the entire few hours. After I still didn't know why the Mayans came to this location, what their daily life was like, why the empire fell, or anything along those lines.

The "highlight" of the evening had to be when he told us we could climb on this one corner on top of a temple, after which he proceeded to run away as he saw the security guard yell at us and try to confiscate our tickets. I was not please.

A couple of other guests in our group complained when we got back and the residential manager, Roxy, came out to talk to us all. She apologized and said she would personally take out our tour in the morning. And Roxy was incredible; she is a local and an archeologist, so she knows her stuff. One of the best tours I have ever had. Overloads of information, she just knew everything. The only bad part about the tour was the cloudy weather so we really couldn't see a sunrise. But the two tours were like night and day (no pun intended). Thank you Roxy.

Opps, I probably shouldn´t have done that Part ???

So I have no idea what number this post is in terms of all the stupid things that I have done and I have had happen to me over the past several months. But what happened last week may qualify as the best one yet.

I was working back in the isolation area where we have several types of birds. One cage contained the dove we have. It is perfectly healthy but totally dependant upon humans for food now and cannot be released. It also likes to land on your head when feeding it. Because it likes to land on your head I´m usually pretty quick with this bird. So I opened the cage, grabbed the water bowl in one hand and the food in the other and just as I turned to walk in the door the bird flies right into my face. Flustered I shake my head and find the bird now sitting on the door to the enclosure but outside the cage. Now I´m slightly panicing but I try to usher the bird back into the cage with one hand and trying to show it that I had the food in the other. No dice.

Then the really bad moment happened and the bird just took off. Freaking out and in horror, I saw the bird fly on top of its own cage, where there is a roof. Whew, it´s only a few feet away. Another volunteer near me tries to grab it but it flies away again! This time it has landed on top of other bird cages about 30 yeards away and about 25 feet up. Yet another volunteer has now gone and fetched a net and tries to sneak up on the bird from behind. You can imagine what happens. He throws the net out and just misses as the bird flies away into the forest.

I am now in an all out panic. Yes, this is a little dove that could never be released and isn´t some major bird that is normally trafficked for thousands of dollars. But still, a bird just got out on my watch. I run into the woods with a fellow volunteer and one of the men who works at ARCAS. We listen for the dove for a few minutes, and then finally spot it. I get excited, and suddenly it´s flying right at me! I throw up the net but I just barely miss it and it flies right into another tree. That´s now three times we were so close. The man who works here finds the bird and now tries to climb the tree it´s in. Slowly but surely he makes the way up the trunk about 20 feet while cooing and trying to lure the dove down. He´s inching closer to the bird and I´m about to freak out but ready to run in any direction the bird might flee. He gets to within range of grabbing the bird and goes for it. He gets it! Whew, ok, I´m safe. I look down to take a step to hand him the net and when I look up it´s flying away. It flapped it´s way out of his hands. You´ve got to be kidding me, right?

We follow the bird again for a few minutes but it is now so high in the branches there is nothing we can do. The day is over and we´re told to just wait and hope that it comes back tomorrow. I didn´t sleep well at all that night as you can imagine. I´m just praying in my head all night that it will want some food in the morning and appear suddenly. Breakfast comes, no bird. Lunch comes, no bird again. Last shift, and after five minutes the helpful volunteer goes Alexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx!!! The bird is back!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, I have life again. The bird is in range of being captured and I see a friend walking by about 100 feet away. The bird takes off and I just know it´s going to land on her head. It does, and she freezes. I yell not to move and that we are on the way. My other friend goes over, sneaks up, and nets the bird. I make sure to give him a towel to hold the bird in his hand, and we put the dove back in its cage.

So I´m safe, we got the bird back, and I don´t have to worry about knowing that I let one of the animals go. That would have been terrible to say the least. But now whenever I have to feed this bird I make sure to have another person with me of I poke the broom through the fence to make sure it is on the other side of the cage before I go in. Crazy thing.

Tortillas and beans

So everyone said to me before I left that I better get ready to eat a lot of beans. All they have is rice and beans, beans and rice, and leftovers. I heard it left and right. For the most part my friends were correct, but they definitely forgot about the tortillas.

We do have beans at about every meal. Black beans. Gross. Most of the volunteers said when I arrived that I´ll have to eat them eventually or I will starve. Well I´ve managed to not eat them so far and I´m definitely doing fine. In fact I´m doing more than fine, I might have even put on a pound or two. The reason is that I love eating tortillas. We had pasta one of the first meals after I arrived and one of the volunteers was eating tortillas filled with pasta. Seemed obsurd, but now I do it all the time. Eating is just more fun with tortillas. And the hot sauce they sell here and it´s awesome. I eat about 10 tortillas a day, it´s bad. But pasta with tortillas is not only tasty but fun.

The food in general is pretty good. Fresh fruit most days, pasta, lots of rice and chicken, and we even get pancakes sometimes. Banana pancakes. So tasty. And we have honey instead of syrup. I suggest everyone tries that idea.

But besides the food things are alright here in Guatemala. We´ve unfortunately had a couple of birds die this week due to various reasons, and I´ve been peed and crapped on by the baby monkey Milo. Oh well.

Oh, and this weekend I am heading to the ruins at Tekal. Should be a fun journey and I will definitely update everyone on the trip next Monday after I return.

ARCAS

For my next trick, I will be performing the magical monkey feeding! Actually, that picture you see is of an 11 month old spider monkey. His name is Milo, and he is my responsibility at the moment at ARCAS.

ARCAS is an animal refuge center here in Guatemala, and it is the largest one in the country. Whenever the government confiscates an animal for being trapped and/or illegally smuggled, it is then delivered to us at the center to hopefully once again be released back into the wild. This place is absolutely incredible and the work being done here is fantastic.

There is lots of work to do here with only six full time staff members working with the animals. A typical day is:

6:15 Wake up
6:30-8 Morning shift of cleaning enclosures and feeding the animals
8-9 "Human Breakfast"
9-11 Chores, which include daily towel cleaning from the baby monkey cages and many other tasks such as landscaping or bringing up the druit delivery to the kitchen
11-1 Midday shift of cleaning and feeding the animals
1-2 Lunch
2-3 Final shift of working with the animals

At three each day we are done, but man is it exhausting work. I then get to take my relaxing cold shower--there is no hot water here, so every shower is just nice and cool, but refreshing after a long day in the 80 degree and humid heat--and we all get to chill until dinner at 6. Afternoons and evenings include book reading, movie watching, game playing, dock swimming, you get the idea.

ARCAS currently has about 550 animals. Some animals can never be released due to injury or dependency on humans, but the goal is always to get them back into nature. We have spider and howler monkeys, macaws and other parrots, a deer breeding program because they are endangered here, turtles, and almost any animal that lives in Guatemala. There is a Jaguar here as well. She is five, but she cannot be released because her habitat was destroyed when she was found nearly dead at three months. Releasing these animals in another country just isn't feasable, so she has been here for five years now. She is incredible, gorgeous, and just plain stunning when you watch her yawn and display all those teeth.

The work has been hard but very rewarding thus far. After only a week I feel like one of the leaders and that I know what is going on everywhere. We have volunteers from the US, England, Australia, Germany, and Canada. An eclectic mix, but great thus far.

Happy New Year

I'm alive! Happy New Year everyone. It was a crazy holiday season and I've fallen behind on my posts. But now I have caught up and updated the posts in reverse order so you readers can just work your way down the page instead of trying to figure things out backwards. Enjoy.

I am also in Guatemala now. I was supposed to head up to the animal work site today, but because some major snafu my name was not on the volunteer list and I had to spend another day in Guatemala City. But the family that owns the Bed and Breakfast here is incredible. The father is American and now lives here, they have two adorable children, and I had a great day hanging out with them all. Things could definitely have been worse. But tomorrow I have a 6:30am flight to Flores and hopefully my work with the animals will begin soon enough. Internet will probably be scarce, but I will update y'all as soon as I can.

Oh, and of course, go Stanford football!!!

The little kiddies of Peru

For the final two weeks of my time in Cusco I volunteering in the afternoons with young kids at a local after school program. In reality it'd hard to call it such a program because most of these kids really didn't go to school. They were very poor, wore the same clothes every day, and had rotting teeth already. They generally were between the ages of 3-10. But despite all their hardships at such a young age, they all were adorable and I fell in love with them immediately.

Getting to the volunteer location was an adventure in and of itself. I had to take the local El Dorado bus, and that involved hopping onto a bus made for ten people with about twenty-five people already sitting and standing. We drove through back alleys and cobblestone streets, and about half an hour later I would hop off with my lungs filled with exhaust. But it's always fun experiencing a new adventure.

I knew working with these kids would be tough because kids can always be that way, but you cannot forget about the language barrier. I have a hard time understanding little kids when they speak english, and now I had to try and figure out what these kids were mumbling in spanish. Half the time I had no idea what they were saying, and there was plenty of head nodding and saying yes. Lord knows I probably said "Yes, I love putting yogurt in my ears while dancing on hot coals." Oh well.

Each afternoon I worked with a friend of mine who also volunteered at this site to prepare the day's activity for the kids in the arts and crafts room. We had to choose a project and set everything up for the 30 or so kids that would come into our room. There was also the homework and sports room, but we were the most popular place to be. We had projects such as making masks and hats, origami and making cootie catchers, and decorating ornaments to put on xmas trees and hang from the ceiling.

The first day the kids asked what my name was and I told them Alex. They looked at me very confused, but I wasn't sure why. The asked again the next day, and when I responded Alejandro they all knew exactly what I was talking about. Ale really isn't a shorthand way to say Alex, so I just went by my full name the rest of the time. Luckily for me they actually called us--the volunteers--professor most days, or profe for short. It was insanely cute, I loved it.

Some of the kids even expressed an interest to learn english (why it isn't taught in their schools I have no idea). So for the second week I was there we took some of the kids each day to another room to teach them the alphabet, typical greetings, colors, fruits, and other random words they thought up ("How do I say ugly?".....then they would point to someone and say "You're ugly."...maybe I shouldn't have told them the answer).

Despite the language barrier and the one or two meltdowns kids had with fighting and screaming, the experience with these little boys and girls was nothing short of incredible. Even with all the adversity they faced they showed up with smiles on their faces and energy to create something to show a parent; each day they created something they were very proud of. They truly were inspiring children.

Lake Titicaca

The final week of my program in Peru lead me to a week spent at Lake Titicaca (yes it sounds silly, but it's still fun to say a million times). A friend of mine who had taken spanish classes with me in Cusco was also on this trip, and in typical Peruvian fashion things started out eerily. We were told to show up at the school by 7 to make sure we got to our 7:30 bus on time. Come 7:45 the volunteer coordinator at the school finally shows up to take us to the bus. But about ten minutes into the drive I realize we are too far outside the city to be heading to a bus station. 45 minutes later we arrive at the first stop on the 8 hour bus tour to Lake Titicaca. Our coordinator had shown up so late that he was forced to drive us to the first stop of this bus ride, almost an hour outside the city. Classic Peru.

Lake Titicaca, as they told us about a gazillion times, is the highest navigable lake in the world. Basically it's just at a really high altitude, and it plays with your head when you get down to the water thinking it's sea level but you're still at 12,000 feet. Our first day we had a quick trip to the floating islands of the lake, a small community of people who literally live on floating little islands made of tightly bound straw. They float about 100ft above the sea floor, and there are about twenty people per little island. These people also never brush their teeth, but because they chew on the local brush (taste like celery) they have the cleanest teeth 'Ive ever seen.

That night we arrived at one of the small islands within the lake, and each set of friends in our group was placed with a local family where we would spend the night. They made us soup and cooked dinner, and after we all took a hike to the highest point of the island. The views were incredible, mountains for the entire 360 degree view; from this point you could see so far across the lake the mountains we saw were a part of Bolivia (60% of Lake Titicaca belongs to Peru, the other 40% to Bolivia).

The next day lead us to another small island, but that night my friend and I were the only two people to stay the night. Definitely worth not be able to shower for another 24 hours. We walked down to the beach and along the rocks, had some incredible food, and watched one of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen.

Our final day we went back to the mainland, but not before our final decent to the dock--walking down 500 stairs. It wasn't bad at all going down, but there were locals carrying 50lbs sacks of sugar and flour up those stairs. God help them, I could never do that. We got back to the hostel for the night, finally were able to take a shower, and then headed back to Lima the next day out of the sketchiest airport in the world (just google Juliaca airport). And with that my Peruvian adventures ended, only to bring more fun as I headed off to Argentina.

Buenos Aires

Since my mother came to visit me in New Zealand, my father and I came up with a plan to meet up in Buenos Aires for a week in Argentina. I had heard many great things about this city, so I was anxious to get there and see what all the fuss was about. The best way to sum up our week in one word would be "steak." Breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I felt like I gained ten pounds in a week I ate so much of it, but it was all so good!

We spent 5 days in BA and did quite a bit of touring. We had a general tour of the city and the many diverse neighborhoods including Palermo Soho and Palermo Hollywood. We visited cemeteries and monuments while learning the (corrupt) history of the country. One day we were lucky enough to visit the studio of an artist and have a personal discussion with him about his work.

One of the highlights included taking a cooking class at a local restaurant. Argentina is very well known for its meat, and one reason is the country's cooking method: the asado grill. While in America we use a flame grill, asado grills involve heating wood and coals and then placing the hot coals underneath the grill to cook the meat. It does take much longer to cook, but the meat is so tender and juicy. Our chef taught us where different cuts of the meat came from on the cow, local specialties, and even made us try some local favorites. We were forced to try cow kidneys, and I can certainly say it is one of my two most hated foods in the world (along with vegemite). Just nasty. Looked gross, tasted worse. But later the chef made us the prime cut of this cow just for us, and it might have been the tastiest piece of steak I've ever eaten.

We even got to take polo lessons one day (after having watched a match...more on that later). I have only ridden western saddles in horses; so not only was I supposed to figure out how to stay on this horse while standing in my stirrups (instead of sitting in the saddle) and with no horn to hold on to, but I was also expected to swing this six-foot long mallet, hit a tiny little ball, and not hit the horse all at the same time. Needless to say, I spent most of the time on the horse walking.

After BA my dad and I flew down to Patagonia to do some fly fishing. My father has loved fly fishing for a long time, but I had never had the pleasure. I set my expectations low, figuring I might catch a fish or two. The first one I caught was about five inches long, I don't even know how it got hooked. I did not feel any better at this moment. But by the end of the trip I had caught 12 fish to my father's ten. Woot woot (to be fair, he did catch the biggest fish, a 21inch brown trout while my biggest was a 20 inch rainbow trout).

The scenery was incredible: mountains in every direction with the bending river at our feet. The lodge we stayed at was great: a long history of returning guests with fantastic food and the nicest owners you'll ever meet. Our guides were also so helpful, teaching me everything I needed to know for a quick three day experience while proving to be pretty funny. And my philosophy on fish--that they're stupid--still hasn't changed.

The Polo Match

So while in BA my dad got tickets for a polo match. Just something he thought would be fun. We thought it was going to just be another match. Turns out it was the grand final of the year, their Super Bowl. Ok then, lucky us.

I knew the basic rules of polo, but nothing special. I had no idea the field was 300 years long, and most of the times there was a foul I had no idea what was going on. But the match was incredibly entertaining. (By the way, this all took place the day after the match was originally scheduled to take place because the first day it poured rain starting five minutes into the match, the forecast called for that, and they tried to get it in anyway).

I learned shortly thereafter that there are approximately nine 10 handicap players in the world. Seven of those players were in this match. Insane. These guys so fast on the horses that I would be scared just to ride that fast let alone swing at a ball on the ground or ride in front of said ball when it is traveling 40 mph towards you as you try and block the shot.

Even more, it was an incredible match. These two teams had played each other in the final 3 our of the previous 5 years. They had gone to overtime before, and this match was going back and forth. There were little kids going nuts in front of us, and there was tension in the air. Blah blah blah, but the match was great, it really was. The underdog team, Ellestina, took the match. People stormed the field like it was a 1920s baseball game. In the end I had gone to one polo match, a match some locals called on of the greatest matches they had ever seen.