Quest Project

Sorry for the lengthy delay in blogging - since the last entry the Quest group have completed their project work and we are now over half way through the expedition, so lets start with the project phase:

The team of 13 students plus Matt and a handful of both local and international volunteers worked extremely hard for their 10 days in Jacq Cuisi and after blood, sweat and tears managed to complete two puma enclosures, with only minor incidences (the wrong cage diametres being given so 60cm deep trenches had to be redug and softy students passing out on various occasions due to the humidity.)

After the hard toil of Jacq Cuisi the team headed over to Park Machia to spend two rewarding weeks working with animals. Although usually animals such as pumas require volunteers to commit to a minimum of one month of work (due to the lengthy procedure of building up trust with such animals), the park makes an exception for Quest students, and so Matt was held responsible for 13 hyperactive 18 year olds running around the jungle with pumas, ocelots, a variety of monkeys and even a speckled mountain bear.

The students worked well and appeared to have a great time, despite various monkey bites, twisted ankles and even the odd case of trench foot. Although Matt was apprehensive at first about what he would be doing in the park having been away for while and officially not being involved with the accounts, he was quickly sucked straight back infront of the computer, but also managed to fit in a few days of treking through the jungle with his boy, Roy. As for me, I continued cleaning up shit, getting weed on and being bitten by my babies in the Spider Monkey park. Sadly Cussi, Quillas baby who I previously wrote about, went missing on our last day of work. At only 5 weeks there was litle hope of finding her alive and she is now officially presumed dead . However, for every sad event that occurs in the park there generally appears to also be a positive, and so it was that we found out that one of my girls, Negra, is pregnant!

Hanging out with Negra