Laguna Blogca

Community Spirits

2010-11-23T20:03:00.000-03:00

Since the season changed and the building started, Malvina (the landowner and my landlady) has been showing up every weekend. The warmer weather and development of the tourist housing and our office is a good thing, but the downside is that the people who work for her have to actually work and can’t hang out with us anymore. We used to go to parties most Saturday nights, football matches most Sundays and eat dinner or drink with them any other time we fancied. Now they are so hard at work running the tourist business and whatever other oddjobs need doing around the “ranch” that we hardly ever even see them. I had been enjoying getting out into the community and it was always something the volunteers liked too, adding to their experience.

We had started to build some real relationships with some of the locals including the young people who go to the dance parties, the guys who sell beer and the women who run the shops. We are well respected by many, extremely interesting to others and to some we are just a bit of an annoyance. Maybe those people think we are Brazilian, here to steal their land. There are probably a few reasons we get respect and special treatment. For a start we are white and therefore rich, we have strange colours of hair including yellow and orange, we have pale eyes and legs, we are tall, curly, freckly, loud, pierced and vegetarian. We are also walking around with Rosario – friend, bodyguard and problem solver. He is the man about town yet he doesn’t even live there. When Rosario walks into a shop everyone takes notice. I don’t know why, but it seems like he is just the man to know. Everyone seems to come to him for advice and when they need something fixed – as do I. The people in town who know we are with him make sure we are taken care of wherever we are. It’s very useful. But now he has to work and so our social whirl came to an end. Until yesterday.

Our new cook, Griselda, has been wonderful so far. She cooks and cleans but is also fast becoming my friend. Yesterday she invited us to a gathering. I wouldn’t call it a party, just a bunch of people sitting around in the garden talking and drinking. We were the first people to arrive although we were over an hour late as usual. We went in blind not knowing what to expect but it seemed that we were the guests of honour and after we arrived everyone else was called to come. There was some drinking and sitting followed by football for the boys and bingo for the girls. It was the first time I have socialised with the women since getting here. Normally I tag along with Rosario and do as the men do, but this time I was included in the women’s circle of activities along with Loraine and Emma. It was quite boring if I’m honest, as there is nothing much involved in bingo except translating numbers, but nice all the same to be a part of it. They walked me around the property while I asked silly questions about growing things and animals and they tried to sell me pigs, chickens, corn and a few of their spare children (too expensive though at about $500 each). It seems the boys were a hit on the football field, mostly because they lost and this meant they/I had to pay for all the beer and cokes. As is always the case with these things, once you go to one, you get invited to more and we ended up being invited to 2 more parties and a birthday dinner.

Three of us went to the birthday dinner as it was the closest to our house. We ate chicken and rice with the men while the women served us (back to being treated as a male in the society again). I really wouldn’t like to be a female in this place. They are expected to do all the cooking cleaning, serving, fetching and general pleasing. When we asked the host of the party for beers and he would pass the message on to his daughter (whose birthday it was) to fetch them even though he was closer to the fridge. Seemed weird to me.

The night was really nice though. After we ate, one of the guests played guitar very very well and sang even better. He sang about 30 mariachi songs, all pitch perfect. I have known the singer, Elias, for a while now, although don’t really like him as he calls me all the time and even though I never pick up the phone, he doesn’t take a hint. Cheesy as it sounds though, there is something about a guy playing a guitar and singing love songs in Spanish that seems to get me. For some reason it seems more believable than The Kooks with their easy English accents, and even though I watched Elias pull a knife on one of my friends one night back in June, I kind of forgave him for a few hours. I guess that’s just how it goes here. Even in this tiny forgotten corner of South America where dirt tracks connect them to the world, they love and fight with the same passion as you would expect from any Argentinean, Brazilian or Latin American. One of the interns said to me, “this is what I expected Paraguay to be like”.

So for the day we were a part of the community again. While we sit in our house on the top of the hill, looking weird and doing strange things they have a community complete with spirit. It’s something I want to be a part of much more often.

Politik Kills

2010-11-18T14:31:00.000-03:00

I just stepped out of an amazing shower. Wish I had realised 6 months ago all I had to do was clean the shower head. Tonight, instead of standing under a sort of drip, switching at regular intervals between scalding hot and sharp inhale cold, I had a full lukewarm shower. Like showers should be. I can’t describe how happy it makes me that showers can be an enjoyable experience again instead of a daily inconvenience.

The Colorado Party (right wing) won the local election on Sunday. I have no idea what that means. Probably that no one cares about politics. We went to a party a few weeks ago which had a live band and a lot of liberal party people talking about change, progress, children, money, jobs etc. Well, that part wasn’t much of a party, but the messages were good, if very boring. A few of my friends were working for the Liberales which is encouraging, but the Colorados still won. I really think though the people here just don’t care and sometimes I think why should they? What benefits do they ever see? They don’t even have a proper road to their town. Many of the houses are still without electricity and the ones that do have it have probably stolen it off the main power line at great risk. The government have been promising a better road since I arrived here and probably for longer than that. From their point of view all I can see is broken promises so they must do too.

The road to get to Laguna Blanca from the main Routa 3 in Santa Rosa is 30km of dirt which changes to sand about halfway down. It has 3 bends, 6 hills and 4 bridges. The bridges are made up of a row of planks parallel to the streams they cross with two or three more planks running perpendicular which you can line up your wheels with. Much of the time (depending on the weather), the edge of the bridge is a few feet away from the road so your wheels kind of fall into a hole and come back up onto the planks. It’s fine in a camionetta like the one I drive which has huge wheels or for the trucks transporting wood and coal to Brazil but not so great for the motorbikes with their wee wheels which is what most of the local people drive. A few months ago Jeni and I were called on to bring life jackets (which they have here for people hiring kayaks) to one of the bridges. A woman and a girl had fallen in the stream after her motorbike had fallen down the hole and she lost control. Unfortunately, they went into the fastest flowing and deepest of the four. When Jeni and I arrived, the whole community was there. The girl had been found and rushed to hospital with some injuries and the woman was still missing. Some men had gone out on a boat to look for her and shortly after they returned with her body. She was found 80m downstream of the bridge and turned out to be the Aunt of Concep - one of the guys I work with. Jeni was quite upset but Rosario made her feel “better” by saying that this happens all the time and you just accept it and move on – asi nomas. Explains why the Paraguayans in the country here have 10 brothers and sisters.

To compensate for the loss, the municipality pledged to build proper bridges over the streams. So far they have drilled about 25 30ft concrete blocks into the mud near the existing bridge. Each one is a different height and at least 20ft above the road. Every time we drive by there, the volunteers and I speculate on how exactly this bridge will work. Will it have a lift into the sky? Is it a suspension bridge? Who knows, but they would have been better hiring ants or termites to build the thing. It’s been nearly 6 months of putting concrete posts in the ground. In the meantime they put little pieces of wood at either side of the bridges, perhaps to help the motorbikes catch some extra air as they soar off the edges. Probably luckily, these have since fallen off and never been replaced.

The local government has done some good things though. The most notable is the new bus terminal which is excellent. The buses used to stop (a bit dangerously) at the side of the road in Santa Rosa. There was a row of cassitas or little huts selling barbequed meat and mandioca at the opposite side of the road. To get to the houses you had to climb a sort of muddy hill, and they had no running water, no electricity, holes between the planks in the floor and the playground for the workers kids was the main road. I liked going there but Paul always refused stating he really wasn’t up for getting dysentery. Now they have built an actual terminal with a sign that says so and everything. The huts are now concrete houses around a central square complete with a statue of the Virgin Mary in the middle. Each house has light and water with seating etc. while the kids have a safe place to play. There is even a place where you can wait for a bus. There is still no ticket stand – you just have to know the right guy to talk to, and there is still a healthy quota of drunk, homeless people hanging around, but it feels better.

What started out as me being happy about a shower turned into quite a morbid blog. Maybe next time I’ll write something a bit happier – after a few more decent showers perhaps.

Clutter, cooking and compost

2010-11-03T19:55:00.000-03:00

So last week I finally got around to doing the rearranging I had been threatening since the start of September. The start of September was the time when Jeni left, Loraine came, we renegotiated our housing situation, the fire destroyed everything and I said goodbye to the last of our winter volunteers. It was a pretty sad time for me, watching everything change as I stood still in the middle and just waited. At the time I had the urge to tip the whole house upside down and start again, instead of having to look at the empty spaces and ash. This week it finally happened, and I managed to rope Emma and Loraine into helping me. Turns out the boys are no good at heavy lifting and ran away at the first sniff of hard work.

After a lot of talking and meeting over several months it was decided we would stay in the house we are in now, and Malvina would build a new house for her tourists. The new house is right next to the camp ground where visitors stay and we were supposed to be moving there in November. The tourist season is about to hit and I’m really not looking forward to it. They are noisy and disruptive, disrespectful to the forest, drop rubbish, and sometimes interfere with our traps. It’s a bit of a shock to the system after the peaceful quiet of winter and having sole use of all the land for so long. I told Malvina one night (after some beers) that I was really excited for the tourists to come. Since we would be so close to them. I was keen to be able to talk to all the people and enjoy the forest with them, party with them and tell them all about biology. Shortly afterwards she decided we should stay at the other side of the stream, in the house we are already in, as far away as possible! If I wasn’t so happy about this decision I might be offended, but my secret plan worked.

It was also the perfect excuse to turn the house inside out. I had to buy all new beds anyway, so I made a deal with the furniture salesman and got 4 shelves thrown in plus some big tables for eating at. I am going to borrow some more items from the ‘TTU list of everything you could ever need’ including a new sofa, chairs and a freezer which was installed at the weekend. The office is moving out of my room and into the bigger area across from Conception’s room and the museum will go with it. In two weeks time I will have my own space with a door I can close without people walking in and out of it at all times of day - can’t wait. The kitchen has been reordered with a whole table as a preparation area for our new cook, space made for the new freezer and a kind of wall art mural thing to hide the ugly wall on the outside of the boys bathroom. Looks nice and I felt like a Carol Smiley/Rolf Harris combo.

We cleared out the garden and planted watermelons, yellow melons, yellow peppers and cucumber. We also tried experimenting with raised beds so we will see how that works out. Apparently when it rains heavily, it won’t uncover the roots as much. The new bed is composed of the compost from our compost bin, horse manure and sand. I weeded the whole of the vegetable patch, so now it looks like there is nothing growing – but there is! We have picked squash for soup and the first tomatoes are turning red. The garlic is sprouting well and the onions and beetroot are still powering through. Every time I go in there I think of Rosemary and Derek. Thanks so much for the garden guys. If you two ever come back I will have a thousand questions for you on how to grow things – I have no idea what I’m doing.

The new cook started yesterday, but about ten minutes into our conversation about her duties in the house, she told me she doesn’t know how to cook. I asked her to do something simple for lunch – egg mayonnaise (egg salad) sandwiches. I gave her the instructions so she boiled the water then said “now what?” We each ended up with a plate of sliced up egg with some mayonnaise squirted on top. Seems the concept of a sandwich is also a tricky one. Today though I went for something even easier – ham and cheese sandwiches. I was expecting a bag of bread, bag of ham and bag of cheese put on the table which is what we normally do, in a do-it-yourself sandwich type way. Instead we got neatly stacked, perfectly square sandwiches with one slice of ham and cheese in each and all the crusts cut off. She is a fast learner. Tonight we are having guiso de arroz which kind of loosely resembles risotto. She is preparing it now and hasn’t asked me any questions yet so fingers crossed she knows what she’s doing!

So I guess the transformation is nearly complete. Once the office goes, the house will no longer be a work space, but a new improved living area. Para La Tierra is about to become a beautiful butterfly – hopefully one of the really rare ones.

Humans and Traffic

2010-10-17T15:36:00.000-03:00

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.

And it burns, burns, burns and burns and burns

2010-09-28T10:44:00.000-04:00

I think something of Paraguay and the fires finally hit the international news this week. As I said in my last blog, the fires have had a huge impact on San Pedro, the department we live in, with 20,000 people now homeless. And that was only last week, before the rains came. It has had quite a significant impact on us too.

Apparently August is always a very dry month, in which people get sick, crops die and it’s said that if old people survive August one year, they will live to see the next one. According to the mechanic who fixes my car (more regularly than I would like), at the start of the month you are supposed to drink a mix of 6 types of yerba (the tea made from a plant grown in Paraguay) which all have different remedial properties with a lot of rum to prevent yourself from getting sick. I wish I had known that beforehand. I ended up ill in the middle of the month and at one point lost my voice from smoke inhalation. I asked several people what causes the fires and got a whole range of different answers. They can start naturally, perhaps by the magnifying glass effect of intense sun hitting the due on the ground or by lightning strike. Other fires might be started by people who are burning rubbish and have made a small fire which got out of control, or on purpose to clear away the old grass and bring up the new shoots that the cattle and horses can eat. Another reason is that after the dry period, all the vegetation dies and turns brown, making it difficult to see snakes, so people might burn to kill the snakes. Then there are the usual reasons like a carelessly flicked cigarette butt or match. Whatever the reason is, the bottom line is that once it’s started, it’s very difficult to stop and we watched several sweep through the habitat around us for a week and a half until everything was burned and there was nothing left.

A couple of times it came very close to our wooden house. The closest we let it get to us was when it took out all of the reedbeds by the lake about 15 meters from our porch. Fortunately, there is a sand road between the reeds and the house with some overhanging trees. Jeni and I spent a part of our night swinging from the overhanging trees like Tarzan and Jane (not sure which was which) to make sure none of them caught on fire and transferred the burning to our side of the road. It was spectacular to watch, as fire is anyway, but to see it moving systematically from one clump of grass to the next in a line that stretched out to the water was amazing. There were some scary moments too, like when the sky was orange in three directions around the house and the fire too big to stop, or when we couldn’t see each other properly when standing inside the house because the smoke was clouding up our air. That night we all slept in surgical masks.

The whole of the cerrado was destroyed in a matter of days - from bright green to black ash in minutes. The same happened to the forest, only it took a bit longer. All the places where we had traps out or had been studying were destroyed. We went for 26 days without rain and on the 27^th day, it rained for about 3 minutes. I think on about the 33^rd day, we had proper, useful rain and it hasn’t really stopped since. The cerrado is already recovering well and looks much prettier than before. We have seen a significant increase in the variety and quantity of wildlife we catch ad see on a daily basis and the frogs are all out singing every night. Now there are lizards, birds, frogs, snakes, mice, armadillos etc. It seems that the habitat is well adapted to the fire and rain even if the people aren’t. We have already endured a 4 day storm and right now I can hear the thunder coming our way again. Here it comes, the sound of drums (Rogue Traders) – the rain is so loud on the metal roof. In Britain, people complain all the time about the weather, but I can now appreciate that living in a predictable environment is much more comfortable and safe than this country with its wild extremes.

Back to Blog

2010-09-23T18:31:00.000-04:00

I have been awake most of the night due to the intense heat that at one point made me think I might have been going mad, followed by the rolling and sometimes cracking of thunder not too far from the end of my bed. Much of the night was spent waiting for the tree to come crashing through the roof. Even now at 11.30am, 7 and a half hours after the start of the storm it hasn’t moved away as such, but now seems to have surrounded us. Outside, it may as well be night time, even the frogs are confused. So without power, light, more than one volunteer or any food, it seems like a perfect time to write the first blog I have written since May. I have to apologise to the people who were actually reading it, I hadn’t realised.

One of the problems with trying to write a blog is that so much happens, then when I don’t write it quickly, more stuff happens and when I don’t write that either, I eventually just think screw it. It’s too much stuff. I have more free time these days, but up until the start of this month my time spent in front of a computer has been minimal. It’s basically as quick as I can get through the emails I have to write and onto the next thing, as my job now involves a lot more being awake and active than I ever thought it would. I guess that’s a good thing though. So the last 3 and a half months have been action packed to say the least. I have met some great people, said goodbye to some great people, been invited to parties and football games, stayed up all night, watched the skinning and preparation of one of our pigs for the bbq, been on a rescue mission (failed unfortunately), travelled to Asuncion and to Ciudad del Este, built a garden, broken the car, slept all night on a bench in Santa Rosa, removed fleas from under the skin, witnessed the burning of the cerrado, bought a pet syriama off the back of a motorbike, woken up to an owl flying around my room, but most importantly, watched Para La Tierra grow into a success, both scientifically and as an organisation and for that I am very proud.

One of the things that have helped to make that happen are our excellent volunteers. First came Allyn, the quiet (‘til he gets a drink in him) Californian who probably knows this place as well as the people who have lived here all their lives. Joe, the loud guy from somewhere on the East Coast with his Ugg slippers and New York Times puzzles who taught me more American slang than it’s possible to keep up with. Derek (one) and Rosemary, the Kiwi’s who caught and drew the birds, directed the garden project and generally kept us right. Shane, “the Chancellor” from Virginia with a sensible head and practical hands whose main accomplishment was the Chill Spot, destined to be used by all future visitors to PLT (he has also ended up being a bit more important to me too). Derek (zero) and Victoria the other Kiwi’s who saved me from an eternity of fighting with ArcGIS and made sure we knew all the rules to shithead. Then finally there was Mike, whose hunger for activity and to see all he could see made him one of the most productive of our volunteers. Having to say goodbye to people is one thing I hate most in the world, although I seem to have set myself up in a job where I have to do it regularly. I really think it’s worth it though for the time spent in between.

Our projects are booming and I have written about them on facebook and on the website if anyone is interested so I won’t talk about them here. We also have a few new ones in the pipe-line I am very excited about including a high-flying bats survey. It’s all going to be very labour intensive and although I frequently complain about having no time to sit down or to catch up on work, I love it really. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else now. There are down times, like in the wake of someone’s departure, or when we catch nothing in the traps for 7 days in a row, but the next brilliant thing always comes along sooner rather than later and keeps things moving and changing just enough to keep everyone in high spirits and looking forward. As for the place, I know I have said it a hundred times before but I still wake up every morning and can’t believe my luck to live somewhere this stunning and interesting and important.

I guess anyone who has been keeping up with Jeni’s blog will know that she has recently left PLT. I guess it was the right thing for her to do, as she had tried and seen and done and got what she wanted from this section of her life. Now she is in Bolivia working with lettuces and seems to be enjoying it and happy. That has been a particularly hard adjustment for me going from having my best friend to share a room with and who always understood and laughed with me when things went wrong ...again. Now it’s a bit lonely to say the least but it’s different now and I am getting used to it. My new employee Loraine is great and is settling in well to life at Laguna Blanca. Unfortunately though for the foreseeable future we will have an employee/employer relationship which I never had with Jeni who was my co-pilot.

I am really looking forward to the arrival of more people. I like it a lot when the house is busy, everyone doing their own thing and moving at different times in different combinations, but all coming together to eat and compare notes at the end of it. By next month we will be busy again and the house will be alive with activity. Right now it’s just me, Loraine and Emma, our new intern, in this space big enough for 15.

The storm is deafening. While we are inside this big house with all this space, the Departmento (State) around us of San Pedro has been declared in a state of emergency due to fire and heavy rains leaving 20,000 people homeless. Paraguay ticks on as a third world country around us and we hardly even notice. Was that in the news in any other country? My laptop battery is about to die now but I will take the time to write some good stories later when we have power again. As Joe would say and tell me never to say because my Scottish accent can’t pull it off – peace.

Day off fun

2010-05-16T12:03:00.000-04:00

Today is Sunday so its my "day off". So far I have done the dishes, the washing, made the tea and have to start making the lunch in about ten minutes. I feel I have mis-sold myself on this job. Since money is tight, we can't afford a cook/cleaner, only one member of staff, which isn't me or Jen, and the light has gone in the our bathroom so Jeni and I are having to wash by candle light. I really thought this whole setting up my own business thing was going to be a breeze. Its more like a harsh wind with sandy bits in.

Things are looking up though. Jen and I have finally managed to put together most of the volunteer documents, mastered the shopping and have constructed a menu and rota for everyone to chip in and help. We are surprisingly good at cooking Paraguayan food and have even been baking our own bread...in an oven!

There have been a few teething problems too which I hope I will be able to share later. They are really the most interesting thing that has been happening here.The volunteers seem happy enough, even though they will leave earlier than they were intending to, and have been a great help to us getting things sorted. One of them has been working on a map of the area for us to put on the wall complete with tracks and trails, soil variation and vegetation changes. Jen and I have been working on a moth and butterfly project (among a hundred other things) and we are hoping to set up some small mammal traps this week to see what we can find. There may even be a new species of burrowing mammal in the cerrado! This time next week, we could be describing a new species.

OK, my ten minutes is up. I have to go put the soup on. I will try and get better at writing this and making time for myself to do so. Hasta la proxima....

Obviously, this was a while ago.

2010-05-16T11:48:00.000-04:00

I last posted from a comfortable bed in the middle of Asunción with everything I needed around me. Since then I have been stranded in a small town for two days, bumping along the dirt roads and cleaning the hell out of the new house and the stuff we have to put in it. Things don't keep well with chickens.

On Saturday we wanted to leave, on Sunday the rain started (but we left anyway) and we got stuck, on Monday we stayed stuck (but had a good dinner) and on Tuesday we arrived.

Robert Owen, the scientific coordinator of Para La Tierra, has loaned me a 4x4. It's kind of a beast. I managed to negotiate my way from Asunción to Santa Rosa with only a few minor mishaps. The worst was when we drove the wrong way down a one way bit of road on a corner in the middle of Asunción. Half way there we got a phonecall advising us not to try to reach Laguna Blanca because there were trucks blocking the road.

Being stranded is bad enough, but being stranded in Santa Rosa is worse. It is a dead town. It has one road lined with shops....and that's it. We found the nicest hotel in the area and holed up until the rain went away, drinking beer and watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That part at least was good. We were like aliens from space in town. We couldn't find anywhere to eat on Sunday night, as most things are closed, but stumbled upon a woman and her daughter with a stand and a bbq selling kebabs, sausages and mandioca. They invited us to sit down and proceeded to watch us intently until we left. We had to stay in Santa Rosa for two nights while the rain continued. In the end, one of the guys who works at Laguna Blanca had to come and look for us on his motorbike and take us to the reserve via a much longer alternative route. We almost didn't even get through.

When we arrived we found the furniture we bought and had delivered last year being used as a chicken house. To get access to some of the things we had to carefully remove hens and their eggs from on top of tables and cushions. The whole lot was covered in a mingy kind of stoor which took Jen and I three days to clean off. With the house finally clean, or as clean as it's ever likely to get, we went shopping.

Jeni and I went all over Santa Rosa getting all the things we needed yesterday. It was great. We are known in all the shops now. I think they think we are a bit mad. As Jeni said, they have probably never seen girls shopping like this before! We came back with wire, cutters, a spade, 2 massive bits of polystyrene, rope, packs of beer and wine, loads of plastic containers and a whole car full of groceries. Just your standard stuff for life in the cerrado.

Today we went walking in the cerrado for the first time. We didn't set off early enough and before long it was just too hot to keep going. I think we will go in the morning in the car instead. Will be quicker and there is air conditioning. The first volunteers are arriving tomorrow with any luck. They spent an extra day in Puerto Iguazu so we got a spare prepare day. So far we have spent most of it sorting scientific equipment into boxes of things we can use, boxes of things we recognise as things and boxes of things that we have no idea what they are or what we are supposed to be doing with them. Now we are trying to draw a map of the area using google earth as a guide. Thank god for google.

Sabores Y Mas

2010-04-23T20:21:00.000-04:00

I promised an update on my first weekend so here it is.

We left Asunción last Friday morning with Malvina Duarte who is the land owner at Laguna Blanca and was going to visit for the weekend anyway. We also took some hungover Swedes who were touring around Paraguay, adding flavour to our multicultural soup.

I don't really know how to describe Laguna Blanca as a place. You really have to see it to believe it. It is like what you imagine paradise would be like. Clear blue water, pure white sand, wooden structures to hang your hammock from, volleyball nets, fans, brick BBQs, beer and internet.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and pretty much climbed straight onto the back of a horse. According to Jeni (who knows something about horses), horse riding in South America is very different to in Europe. Here you just kind of perch on the back of the horse and hope that he understands where you want to go. The men who work at Laguna Blanca expected that we knew what we were doing and didn't seem to think it was necessary to explain to us how you drive a horse. Me and my horse weren't talking the same language at all. He just wanted to walk slowly into the shade and stay there. The main problem with that was that the shade was most likely under a tree and he didn't understand that I didn't fit under the tree as well as he did, so I came out the other end with half the skin left on my arms.

Later on, after a bit of discussion, we decided to have another go and take the Swedes with us. My horse decided to just start walking along the beach and not stop. I thought I was doing really well until I realised I was completely out of control. Jeni's horse decided it wanted to take the scenic route along the beach and zigzagged through the trees and eventually headed straight into the Laguna. Nils's (one of the Swedes) horse wanted a drink, so went to stand in the stream for a while then went back into the stable, while Viktor (the other Swede)'s horse decided to start running towards the house, completely freaking him out and ensuring he would never get on a horse for the rest of his life. After some explaining, one of the stable guys came with Jeni and Nils along the trail with Nils' horse attached to his own until they eventually overtook me and my plodding beauty. I was so slow that the guy constructed a whip for me out of wood that I only used once, then showed it to the horse every time I wanted him to go faster and he obeyed! Success at last - to an extent. I then realised that going fast wasn't as much fun as the experts were making it look. Its very bouncy which I found ridiculously funny for about ten minutes, then realised my legs might be slowly snapping. You just have to hang on and hope you don't bounce right off. After 3 hours of horse riding its difficult to walk. That's why I was so glad when the locals challenged me, Nils, Viktor and another Paraguayan guy to a game of volleyball. I think I spent more time on my ass in the sand than I did on my feet. Maybe I am getting old, but its just so hard to move as fast as a ball in the sand! Needless to say, we lost the game (but not by much) and had to buy the beer.

The next day we woke up to a TV crew filming a cooking show at breakfast. The show is called Sabores Y Mas and stars a rather large chef called Julio and his hand puppet. I couldn't believe my eyes. Let me try and explain the scene. There was a puppet operated by a man speaking in a stupid voice being filmed talking to a chef cooking fish and mandioca advertising an electric back massager, which was going to be broadcast on normal TV in Paraguay at the table next to where I was eating breakfast. I had just got over this strange sight when the chef asked if he could use our table. I offered to move, but he said he wanted us to stay where we were so that he could interview Jeni and I as part of the program. I tried to explain that my Spanish isn't good enough for national TV, but he was insistent so I stayed and ended up answering questions. Some were easy questions like "where are you from?" and "why do you like Paraguay?". Some others I don't even know the answers to in English never mind in Spanish such as "why is it important to save habitats from destruction?" and "what will be the next stage of your scientific studies here after you have have created an inventory of all the species?" Bear in mind that this is a three way conversation between me, the chef and a puppet. The worst thing is, I think the puppet was actually making fun of me!

Then we went kayaking. The Laguna is 2km long and about 1km wide and we made it round the whole thing in 2 hours. I have no idea if that is fast or not, but it was too long and Nils and I got totally burnt which took care of the remaining skin on my arms. We left Laguna Blanca destroyed. I couldn't sit down from the hours I spent on the horse and couldn't stand up from the hours I spent in the kayak. It was a really fantastic weekend.

On the way home on Sunday, as part of a test run since I will have to drive up there next week, Malvina gave me a shot of her 4x4 on the dirt road. It was amazing, like a rally. I only messed up once and banked into a big sand pile because a second 4x4 was coming towards me on a one track bit of road and he was bigger than me, so I chickened out. We only had to push a bit to get going again, in the boiling heat, with sore, burnt bodies.

I really can't wait to go back. Bring on Sunday.

Good things and the bus

2010-04-21T22:47:00.000-04:00

After re-reading my last post, this one definitely needs to have a more positive spin. Someone said to me that it sounded like a 'boiling hot bureaucratic nightmare', which it is, but it is other things too so let me explain some of the aspects of Asunción that make me glad to be here.

The first thing has to be the view. This city is so green. Everywhere you look you can see big trees. They line every street and spill out onto the roads. They grow through the pavements and even through the buildings. You can walk through the door of a building and expect to find yourself indoors, only to walk into an open space with trees growing up from the floor, negating the need for any kind of roof. My second favourite thing is the practicality of it all. The people who live in this country seem to be much better at adapting to things and inventing ways around problems or just generally making life easier than they are in the UK because things are much less controlled here. A couple of my favourites are a shopping basket that you pull along behind you on wheels and diners where you go in and pick from a large range of food then take your plate to be weighed to determine the cost. The baskets on wheels aren't as clumsy as trolleys and don't break your arm as soon as you put a carton of milk in them. Buffet style meals where you can eat as much, or more importantly, as little as you like and only pay for what you have seems like a perfect idea. It reduces waste generated by people trying to put all they can fit on one plate to make sure they get their moneys worth.

I also feel the need to say something about buses. It's a wonderful experience taking the bus around the city. All the buses seem to be so old that its some kind of miracle that they are still even moving. Every time you step on one, (which is a feat in itself as the drivers tend to think that stopping to let people on is more of an inconvenience than a necessity) the bus driver looks at you as if to say 'what the hell are you doing on my bus?'. That always makes me smile. Knowing exactly how much it's going to cost you to get where you are going and having the exact money in your hand before you get on is recommended because there is little time for conversation. After you pull your second foot half way towards the step, the driver is likely to slam his foot on the accelerator, then perhaps on the brake shortly afterwards in an effort to throw you clean through the windscreen. If you make it past the driver in one piece, hanging onto the first thing you see is a good idea then just don't let go until you see where you have to get off and start making the equally traumatic journey to the back of the bus and jump off as fast as you can to avoid losing a leg. The Paraguayans are expert at the whole experience. Even old people and children manage to negotiate the buses, nimble as cats and standing without even holding on while they find their purses and make their way casually to their seat. I like getting the bus so much because once I am off and have reached my destination, I feel like I've really achieved something. The other thing that's great about buses is the people who jump on and off trying to sell you something in-between. They are the true masters of the bus. The range of things for sale is enormous too. You could almost do all your shopping just by taking the bus. You can buy all the common stuff like bread, juice, sweets, chocolate etc, but every so often, someone comes on the bus wearing a suit and you feel like he is a professional on-bus salesman. The other day, Jeni and I took the bus across town and one such man boarded. He began his sell by explaining that the item he was about to show us would change our lives and that it was the most important personal item we would ever own, before producing several multicoloured toothbrushes. Brilliant.

Dead slow and stop

2010-04-19T11:54:00.000-04:00

I left the UK on the 7th of April so it's taken me a whole 12 days to get around to writing this. Part of the reason for this is that the start of the trip was so unbelievably boring that I didn't really see the point in telling anyone about it. I'll try my best to start from the beginning though and just skip the really boring bits.

So I left from Glasgow on the 7th which was every bit as horrible as I had expected it to be since I had to say bye to most of my family in one go. I also hadn't realised just how attached I had become to my new niece Ella. Anyway, the flight brought me into Heathrow terminal 5 (which is like a space station for anyone who hasn't seen it yet) where I had to wait 6 hours for my friend to arrive since I completely misjudged the flight times. When we finally got on the plane, the 7 and a half hour flight I was expecting turned out to be the most uncomfortable and boring 15 hours of my life. I am still sure the travel agent guy sold me the flight as 7 and a half hours. So we finally hit Buenos Aires the following morning and managed to talk passport control into letting us stay in their country long enough to get back out again. My passport is coated in Argentinian entry and exit stamps from the last time I was here which might look slightly suspicious to a suspicious person. I was still walking around with a European head on at that point but was quickly corrected by the taxi driver who took us to the bus stop. I had forgotten just how slow the pace of life is on this continent. Nobody is moving at any speed at all and sometimes it seems amazing that anything even gets done. This is perfect for me. This was the moment I realised that despite that fact I had just left all my family, quit my job and packed up my whole life, I had made the right choice. I have made the right choice.

The journey to from Buenos Aires to Paraguay was long and boring and after the discomfort of the plane, I slept through most of it anyway. The buses here are brilliant and perfectly designed for sleeping in. We stopped for a few days in Encarnacion, which is the southern most town in Paraguay, to see Paul Smith, the Liverpudlian, who has been working with us on the Para La Tierra project. I have just realised I should maybe explain what Para La Tierra is for anyone who doesn't know.

My friend Jeni and I met volunteering for a biological research station called Ecosara which was attached to a conservation organisation in San Rafael National Park in Paraguay. We both liked the project so much that we wanted to stay and work there, however, there were too many problems with the location and with the people who owned the land in San Rafael that we decided it would be best to move the program elsewhere. We had visited Laguna Blanca in July of 2008 and really liked it, so we talked to the land owner about setting up a research station and she was very keen to work with us. So we both returned to the UK and worked hard to set up the NGO at Laguna Blanca with a different group of people. We then decided we wanted to return to Paraguay to run the organisation ourselves and to live at Reserva Laguna Blanca. That's kind of the short version of the story anyway. So Para La Tierra is now a conservation NGO (non-governmental organisation) based at Laguna Blanca which runs a volunteer and internship program for international students, young scientists, travellers and people of all ages with a general interest in nature to come and work and live beside the naturaleza of Laguna Blanca. It has a council of 5 members, plus Jeni and I who run the project from the reserve and two professional scientists who we employ to help with the intern projects etc. And that's it. (More info here www.paralatierra.org)

After spending a couple of days with Paul in Encarnacion, last Sunday night we got on another bus to Asuncion (being on a bus all night is also good for saving money on hotels) where we stayed until Friday morning. To be honest, most of the week was hell. The city centre is hot and oppresive with hoards of traffic and people moving noisilly all the time. We stayed in a cheap crappy hotel we had never been in before for the first 2 nights before changing to a much much nicer one after negotiating the price to match the cheaper one. The main problem with being in the city though was that we had to run around collecting documents, making photocopies, getting pictures taken and partaking in general wild goose chases in order to get our residency visas. We still haven't finished getting all the things we need yet, but we have made a really good start on it. When we went to the migrations office on the first day, he gave us a list of about 20 things we needed to do to get our visas including several different types of police forms, a medical check, photographs and official translations of all of our UK documents we already had. Everything also has to be checked, rechecked, stamped, re-stamped and checked again only for them to then tell us that the thing we got in the first place was all wrong and even though 12 other people have checked it, we have to back to the beginning and start again. Bear in mind we are also paying for all these people's time and apparently their energy too although they don't really seem to be expending any. I don't understand why the people here don't complain more about how dismal the service is. If this was Britain, there would be national uproar. In the migration office itself there can be queues of tens of people, and there will be several staff just hanging out behind the desk talking to each other about the football. Unbelievable. So if you take away all of that frustration, I'm sure Asuncion would be quite good. I'm hoping to have the chance to explore it properly in a more relaxed manner at some point soon.

On Friday morning we left for Laguna Blanca. We just went for the weekend though unfortunately, now I am back in Asuncion and the heat is incredible in the city today. We haven't left the hotel room much because I we need to stay very close to the air conditioner, and because we have a lot of computer work to do. Tomorrow and Wednesday we are giving a talk to the English Conversation Club in Asuncion about Para La Tierra and what we are doing here in Paraguay. I'm not sure I really know the answer to that.

I think that's all the boring news out of the way. The weekend we spent in Laguna Blanca was far more interesting and strange and fantastic but I am suffering quite a lot today so I am going to leave writing about it until next time...