So it’s 12.51 here and everyone is still in bed. Well, everyone except me and Emma our intern who probably has insomnia. Emma is from England and was here to study leaf-cutter ants, but since we killed all the ones around the house because they were munching our organic garden, she has moved on. She is about to begin a study of the bird species which feed on a particular fruiting tree in the cerrado. Emma is to be our only female visitor for the rest of the year and she does a good job of it. Her giggly excitable personality puts a smile on my face every morning. For some reason, it’s a male heavy project, and the next females won’t arrive until January and even then still be outnumbered about 10-3. Just as well Loraine and I are here.
The others living with us just now are Jonny, who arrived last week while we were in Asuncion and Stuart who arrived 2 days ago. Jonny is a huge snake fanatic and wants to try to find as many different snakes as possible in the next 2.5 months. His idea is to sample 4 of the habitats here at dawn and dusk everyday. Should be very interesting, although I’m letting Loraine deal with that one because I hate snakes. Stuart is a volunteer which means he doesn’t have to write a project and can get involved in anything he wants. So far he is enjoying the moth light trap and catching butterflies, although yesterday he learned that catching butterflies isn’t as easy as it looks. He and Jonny also had a go at fishing in the lake, but returned after about 20 minutes realising that rowing is hard work and that you need bait to fish. I was glad – don’t really like piranha anyway.
So last weeks trip to Asuncion was fun. I spent almost a whole week away from the reserve and 4 days of it on my own. It was amazing. I really enjoyed the peace of the people and awful traffic noises. There were no squawking roosters, no screaming cicadas, no gargling toads and no questions. Just smelly smoky buses, the TV on too loud from someone else’s room, and metal shuttered windows you can’t open to see out of because the mechanism broke. It was great to get back to the reserve though, to my own horrendously uncomfortable bed on top of the world. I am a little bit bored of Asuncion now. I much prefer Ciudad del Este, but unfortunately, there is almost never a good reason to go there.
Inspired by one of Jeni’s last blog posts, (and because it was necessary) I also got a hair cut while I was in town. I asked her what one she went to, and I don’t like that place, so just picked the first one I saw on the first street corner I got to. It cost me £3 in total. I asked her to take an inch off the bottom and make it thinner. I now have what I would call short hair. She was cutting without even looking and having a conversation with someone at the other side of the room. She also kept asking me if I wanted “brushing” while she was actually brushing my hair. It clearly didn’t mean the same as brushing in English, so I had no idea how to translate it and she looked at me like I was an idiot. Anyway I think the last time had a hair cut like this was when I was about 9 years old.
So back to today and its now after 1pm and still no-one is up. According to Shane and his new bible, it’s the lord’s day and nothing should be done. I think it’s got more to do with us being lazy and the fact that it’s raining very heavily outside, but perhaps not as heavily as the drinking we did last night.
