At 05:30 I get up to go to the loo. I try to be quiet for the sake of my two room-mates: Belinda is jet-lagged from flying via New Zealand from Australia and Irina is just tired. The latter is only 19 yet can speak excellent Spanish having only learned it for 4 weeks in Peru and Quito, German, fluent English and her native Swiss-German.
I shower at 6 am and it is bloody freezing. I want to yell but am conscious of the sleeping volunteers metres away from me. So I am brave. It´s probably the quickest shower I have ever had.
The water comes out of a hose pipe at a height of about 6 feet and it splashes everywhere so there is no escape.
Water comes from about 5 rivers, 3 of which are currently dry. Because we are in the Highlands, it is plentiful and because of this people are wasteful. There are signs everywhere to turn off the tap when soaping in the shower or scrubbing dishes or cleaning teeth. Amazingly, people still leave the water running - even in the shower!
I dress in what I think are suitable clothes for the day but I really have no idea. When my room-mates awake they tell me, when asked, I do still snore but only a little (though I have to say they were sleeping like dead people)! I am relieved nobody was disturbed by me. Unless you are a snorer, you have no idea what this means!
Breakfast is supposed to be at 7 am but because of, yes, you guessed it, the American students, we eat at 8 - fried egg, potato and fresh orange juice and coffee made from beans grown at the project. The best coffee I´ve had in a long time.
The Americans leave the station forever just after breakfast and we move out of our room to go upstairs. Irina and I decide to share and Belinda wants to move in with the newbies who have spent the night in Port.
We meet in the dining area to be given jobs to do for the morning and although everyone else has the chance to volunteer for something they would prefer to do, us 5 newbies HAVE to do reforestation, whatever that is. Guess I´ll soon find out!
During breakfast, the rest of the newbies arrive from town, including Kate. Me and the others feel like old hands already and as they are shown to their rooms they look as bewildered as we probably did yesterday. They have orientation with Matt.
We head off with Miguel to have our machetes sharpened. We are doing tree cutting with old-hands Simon (England) and Stacey (Scotland).
Cutting a tree with a machete is a daunting task but we spend the next 4 hours doing just that. It´s actually quite rewarding. We have to clear the area so the baby native plants can be planted.It is extremely hard work and hot. When each tree is cut, you have pull it out and chop it into small lengths in order to add it to a pile which makes a natural barrier down the length of the forest.
As my first tree is felled, all the teeny tiny insects living in the canopy also come down to try and find a new home on top of my head and shoulders. When I say tiny, they are no bigger than a piece of dust and bite like crazy, feeling like a localised burn. The locals call them fire ants because that´s what they feel like. The worse thing is they keep biting until you squish them.
The hotter and sweatier you get the harder it is to find and squish the fire ants as they are swept down your body with your sweat. Those of us working in vests (not me, she says a little smugly) get bitten a lot. I have a hat, sunglasses, a Buff and a Paramo long sleeved shirt and trousers (yes, of course I have to mention Paramo again because I love it so much), wellies, sunscreen and insect repellant. I am relatively unbitten but only because I´m covered. The repellant does nothing as when they drop on you, they have no choice. I´m still very uncomfortable.
As a group we work well together and we fell a lot of trees to clear a visible space. We get through a lot of water and because 3 of the group didn´t bring water bottles on the plane yesterday, I share mine with them. By 12 noon, we stop for lunch.
Picture of Lion ant, highly magnified (this is what I think it is, not the fire ant...but what do I know!)
Over the meal, we share horror stories of how many bites we have. I just eat. I´m so hungry I could eat a pile of fire ants. We have 2 hours for siesta then we meet for our next job.
We are cutting mora. 15 of us in a line hacking away at them. It´s amazing how much can be done when everyone pitches in. This is the first experience of machete work for the other newbies but we feel like old hands now.
It´s very different to this morning´s work. We use a different action - cutting trees is a chopping action, cutting mora is slashing downwards. We have a break to eat fresh oranges off the tree, and after 2 hours hard graft we stop work.
There is a queue for the showers and by the time I get in, I´ve cooled down, so it is cold, very cold. Tomorrow, I´ll get in there quicker.
From the balcony of the Casa Neuva I see one of the staff carrying a dead pig across his shoulders heading for the kitchen. Wild pigs are a terrible nuisance here as they dig up the plants and the paths rooting for food and do a lot of damage. Pigs with special cuts in their ears belong to the neighbours so are left alone, although the neighbours are warned to keep their pigs under control. However, if a pig with no ear marks is caught, it is killed and eaten. Looks like we´ve got pork for supper tomorrow!
We have a couple of hours free before supper but by the time I´ve sorted myself out in my new room, the time has gone. It´s good now the American students have gone; the place is much more empty and quieter!
As it gets dark by 18:30, there´s not much to do after our meal, so we light another fire, mainly because it´s Matt´s last day tomorrow. We also have another cake because most of the Germans are leaving too.
I spend some time talking to Cesar, the station director sitting round the fire. He is a very interesting man.
I invent the "what´s the time" game...nobody in our group has a watch except me so as I get sick of telling everybody the time when asked, I ask them to tell me what time they think it is. The closest guesser wins and gets a point. It´s amazing how far out some people are and also how they measure the time - mostly by how long since they last ate!
I also cause havoc: I was looking for a piece of charcoal so Kaylee can draw a funny face on the sleeping Miguel. Somehow, my torch falls to pieces so I put the batteries in my pocket, except one, which I still have in my hand. I find a couple of charcoal sticks and Kaylee chooses one so I throw the excess sticks from one hand back into the fire...then the other "stick" I have in my other hand. As I throw it, too late I realise it's the other battery. I shout I have thrown the battery in the fire and everyone is immediately on their feet looking for it. A battery in the fire is really not a good thing. After reconstructing the throw, amazingly, somebody sees it in the ashes and we manage to retrieve it. I think Cesar is not going to forget my name in a hurry!
We raid the kitchen as the pig is now cooked. Miguel cuts some of the meat for us. It´s soooo good!
Tomorrow, Friday, is a day already off as the weekend starts here, so we have to get our bags ready for our trip into town - we´ll be leaving after lunch after our hike to the Miconia forest.
I decide I don´t like my new bed - I´m on the bottom bunk by choice but it´s very claustrophobic as the mozzie net hangs quite close to me and the foam mattress is sunken. And everything´s damp. It´s so humid here. I´ll need to get used to it as it´s going to be my bed for the next nearly 2 weeks.
The newbie girls next door are being extremely girlie about the spiders and moths and they make so much noise the "older" volunteers shout at them to shut the f--k up (that's "older" as they've been here longer, rather than "older" i.e. me). The rooms are divided only at wall level so sound and light carries across the whole top floor.
I go to bed at 22:00 and fall asleep quickly despite the noise from next door.
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