Day 16: Zips, fly bites and birds

Irina´s Ipod has been playing all night. Not that it disturbed me. SOMEBODY next door was up very early zipping zips. It wasn´t even light. Then they zipped up the zips, then unzipped them and so it went on. I´d like to know who. I don´t like being woken up at any time before I´m ready but especially not by zipping zips. They were big zips too, not like the flies on trousers or on a wash bag or even a sleeping bag. It sounded like the big zip you get on a big cargo bag.

I know it isn´t Jesse. His stuff is strewn all over the floor of the room he shares with Marten. They´re both equally messy so that eliminates Marten too (who usually doesn´t get up until 10 minutes before breakfast, at 06:50.

I usually hear Jesse clomping downstairs at first light. He´s always the first up but I´m always awake when he goes off to the toilet block. Today, he´s on breakfast duty so is up before 05:30.

I´m wide awake now, so I get up to make the most of my penultimate sunrise and write some of my journal.

It´s pancakes for breakfast. It´s everyone´s favourite before our next fave, porridge. But I can only manage to eat two pancakes with no jam. We don´t have butter here, though if we did I wouldn´t have eaten it. The butter here is fab. It´s so yellow like I remember from childhood (I may have mentioned this before?)

I am still coughing from my first weekend. It´s getting really annoying now. Other people have got it too: Cesare and Steph.

I must sound like a right hypo and I have been taking a concoction of pills and more so now: something to decongess, something to bind me up, something for the horsefly bites especially as one has become infected as per usual and looks like a nipple on the back of my thigh, something for headache and glucosamine for my knee though I´ve not been taking the latter recently as I´ve been coping with that. Even my back´s been okay despite sleeping on a hollowed out thin foam mattress on wooden boards (don´t get me wrong, I´m really, really, really looking forward to my own bed)!

It´s raining really hard this morning so we have to work on a personal project. I don´t have one so decide to do bird observation with James.

We spend the morning reading up on birds and as James has got a better memory than me and an academic mind, I trust I can rely on him to do a good job and don´t worry if I can´t remember all the different finches. If Darwin struggled, what chance have I?

Belinda leaves at 10 am and I´m very sad to see her go but maybe we´ll cross paths on Santa Cruz as we may be there at the same time. She´s the first of us five newbies to leave, then it´s me tomorrow.

As we didn´t really work this morning, James and I forego out siesta and go out to watch birds at 12:30. There is sun in-between the rain and we see a LOT of finches in the re-forestation area. I take a LOT of photos and get as close as I can.

Then we walk into the production area and I lead the way over the makeshift fence of cut down logs from re-forestation. Of course, the next bit won´t come as a surprise to those who have been following my blog, but remember it´s been raining a LOT and the logs are wet. Well, I didn´t remember this and trod on one log and slipped on it and fell, straight down, chest down squashing my camera between logs and me, jamming/bending the zoom lense which was open of course as I´d been actively taking photos. At this point it can still take pictures but fixed on the same zoom setting, so that´s something.

Over the course of the next 3 hours, I take over 200 photos, some of which are really close up and this one of the warbler finch in flight which I don´t even realise I have captured.

We call it a day at 4 pm and James logs the times against the birds we have pictures for. The Canadians are in the kitchen having just finished chopping down the banana tree for its fruit by the camp fire. I ask if either of them are any good at fixing things. I should have just left it but, bless him, one of them did try his best. It wasn´t his fault that now my camera doesn´t even take photos. Completely my responsibility, Sam if you´re reading this!

Back in my room, feeling very upset, so upset I can´t even write how upset I was feeling, I notice the non-functioning light bulb had finally given up the ghost and fallen from it´s housing on the beam and crashed into a thousand pieces onto the floor. I had to find a dustpan and brush to clear it up.

Everything´s all going horribly wrong. I end up showering late and having rush to get to supper on time.

More coffee was made this morning so at least I´ll get enough to buy to bring home with me.

It rains again after dark. I´m so over the rain. I know it´s still officially the rainy season but I was hoping it might finish early just for me, what with global warming ´n all!

I go to bed at 9:30 for the last time on damp sheets. Cesare went to bed straight after supper at 7 pm, he´s coughing so much he´s really not well.

The wild pig is definately out there. The Canadian boys saw it on the way from the Old House.

I can´t believe my 2 weeks is almost over. It´s flown by. I have learned so much and there´s so much more to learn. I am really, really looking forward to the next stage of my trip to Galapagos, the cruise, but this has been so special. Without sounding sanctimonious I feel I have given a little bit back to the island of San Cristobal and if I can spread the word afterwards, then all the better.