Happy Belated Christmas

A VERY MERRY BELATED CHRISTMAS TO ONE AND ALL FROM BOLIVIA,

AND

WISHING THAT THE NEW YEAR BRINGS YOU

PEACE, JOY AND MUCH HAPPINESS

ALL OUR LOVE,

SARAH & MATT

Christmas with monkeys!

So, here it is, the Christmas edition.

I apologise to those of you following this, as Sarah has drafted me in to throw the latest instalment together, and as many of you already know, I'm not always the most patient of people, the internet is so poor here that I'm ready to put my head through the screen after almost half an hour of waiting to get to this one page!!!
So please forgive if this offering is not quite as eloquent as what Sarah normally offers up.

We have almost been a month in the park now and we are both still really enjoying it.
As followers will know, Sarah is working with the spider monkeys and has spent the last week (or two) as acting 'Alpha male' in the absence of a suitable man to do the role. The monkeys have been getting more problematic up there so a man has been drafted in from tomorrow. Although Sarha will still be the boss.
I had a fantastic month with Roy and actually starting receiving some affection from him - something he gives out very sparingly. However the call of duty beckoned and from yesterday I have been working on the park accounts - it's like 1998 all over again! They have 7 lever arch files FULL of unrecorded receipts that I have to go from and input. Why someone couldn't have started it before now baffles me, but it needs to be completed by the end of the year, so my nose is to the grindstone.

We do still have big plans for Christmas festivities though and as we speak Sarah and a few others are out buying materials for a Cottage pie, Roast chicken, a number of salads and some deserts, one of which I beleive includes Apple crumble! Yum.
We are having a large meal tomorrow (Bolivians traditionally celebrate on Christmas Eve) and are doing our secret santa then. Then on the day itself we will be working and are trying to organise some sort of pool party for the afternoon/evening, although considering it has started raining at around 4 or 5 every afternoon for the last few days, I'm not sure how much of a success it will be! But then we did chose to be here in the rainy season.

We do miss you all loads, especially at this time of year and hope that you have a fantastic time over the Christmas break. We send you lots of love and goodwishes.
Have a wonderful Christmas period,

Lots of love,

Matt, Sarah, Roy and the Monkeys
x x x x x x

Work & Home Pics

This is the view from the spider monkey park where I work.


This is the ´Master´bedroom. Nicest room out of all three Volunteers accomodations!

Inti Warra Yassi Animal Refuge

Alfito the gorgeous spider monkey

So after a month of fun, the hard work has begun and we have now been at the animal refuge for 2 and a half weeks. Apologies for the lack of contact but since we are working from 7:30am until often 20:30 in Matts case (19:00 usually for me, until tomorrow when I am supposed to become Volunteer Accommodation Manager - eek, and then will have to work most evenings), we have been poretty tired and the internet connection here is pretty bad.


Matt has been working with a puma called Roy who he ´walks´ (mainly runs) for about 3 hours every morning and 3 hours every afternoon. He has also taken on the position of Volunteer Coordinator so the little time we had left to enjoy together of an evening has come to an end! Basically Matt assigns every new volunteer with an animal to work with and sorts out all the issues that current volunteers have with their animals.


Roy The Puma


I am working with a group of 32 spider monkeys, most of which are totally barmy. They all sleep in a cage at night so there is a lot of cleaning and feeding and 8 of them are on runner systems as they are prone to running off and turning up in random villages where they run the risk of being recaptured and sold into captivity. The others are free to roam around the park as they wish all day. They really are gorgeous animals, and getting a hug with all arms, legs and tails from a spider monkey is an expoerience that really everyuone should be entitled to in life - boy do they know how to hug! I promise more park news will follow sooner rather than later.


Much love to all and big monkey hugs xxxxx

Brimbles Bolivian Blog Begins

Another episode... another fun bus journey. This time we boarded a ´direct´ bus from Cusco to La Paz, which confusingly ended up involving 3 buses, a ´combi´(mini-bus) and a boat, as well as a 3 hour breakfast stop, and an hour and a half for lunch. I am slowly starting to remember that when quoted lines such as ´you will definitely arrive in La Paz by 1:00´ actually means ´you will be very lucky if you have crossed the border from Peru to Bolivia in time for supper´.

Anyway we made it to Bolivia and are thoroughly enjoying the return to Mineragua, bowler hats and the sheer chaos that La Paz is so prompt to provide. However, the closer we get to the animal refuge, the more we are longing to be there, and after dinner with Nena, the park director who told us how desperate they are for volunteers we have decided to cut our stay in La Paz short. So it is that tonight (after we FINALLY get to spend a cultural afternoon watching the Quantam of Solace, and recovering from a hangover which I am also remembering is not a lot of fun at 3700m altitude) we are catching our very last night bus - for the near future - (will you miss our bus stories? Or are they just getting a bit tedious now?!!) from La Paz to the animal refuge to embark on our true bolivian adventure.

For any of you that have even more free time on your hands than just to read the blog, and fancy writing to us (or sending christmas presents / packages / telegrams / well wishes) then please write to

Address:
Matt & Sarah Brimble
c/o Comunidad Inti Wara Yassi
Casilla 1600
Cochabamba
Bolivia

Mobile Phone

Sarah: 00591 70160131

Matt: 0059170160173

Lots and lots of love to all,

Sarah & Matt

Apurimac

Controversially claimed to be the source of the Amazon, the Apurimac is located in Peru´s second deepest canyon, and is claimed to be one of the top 10 white water rafting spots in the world. Although I had rafted the apurimac once in 2005, I have been going on and on and on about it to Matt ever since and so it seemed only fair to give him a taste of it too!

The Group

There were 18 of us on the trip, and although it seemed hard to believe that we had gone over 2 weeks of travel in South America without much interraction with Israelis, this was obviously not to last and 11 of the 18 were those wonderfully responsible, friendly and interractive nationals - note the subtle sarcasm. For those of you that have not encountered Israelis on your travels then maybe I should take a moment to explain, before you think I am the ultimate racist: I have never been to Israel or encountered an Israeli in their home land and therefore have no idea what the ´true´Israeli is like, however whilst travelling they have a distinctly... ´unique´shall we say, reputation. Israelis, unlike most other travellers who are generally quite keen to stear clear of people from their home nation (hence why they are travelling), appear to have a particular need to meet and travel only with other Israelis. It is therfore not possible to encounter just one or two israelis in any one place, there must always be in a group of a dozen or more, and whilst I appreciate that when many people from any one nation meet with one another, they will talk in the common language - hebrew in this case - it must be said that Hebrew is not exactly the most INclusive of languages, and therfore one can feel somewhat EXcluded when amongst such a large group. Oh, and whilst I am complaining about them, they smoke too much. Is it really necessary to have a cigarette between rapids whilst on the raft? I don´t think so. OK, enough complaining. Anyway, unfortunately the 11 Israelis on this trip were no different and so it was that we had one raft of 6 ´extranjeros´(german, suiss, french, dutch and english) and 2 rafts of isrealis during our three day trip.

The ´extranjero´ raft

After a hair raising 5 hour bus journey along unpaved, narrow, hairpin roads (class V roads), the first day consisted of practising all the commands, as well as plenty of raft flipping and swimming, and some low grade rapids, in order for prepare us for day 2. Just as well, as on day 2 we spent 7 hours on the water and it was A LOT of fun but very very tiring. We rafted rapids upto class 4 and managed to avoid flipping, although Matt chose to swim or ´body raft´ most of the rest of the river and quickly became known as ´la sirena´(the mermaid!). Once we got to our camp site the guides set up a zip wire from the opposite side of the river to the campsite, where we climbed up some very slippery rocks and then slid down and dropped into the river. After almost an hour of setting the zip wire up and a lot of shouting at each other across the river, I tentatively asked one of the guides if it was the first time that they had done this, to which I received a very half hearted and mumbled ´no´, which I instinctively took as a ýes´, however despite Matt´s risk assessment coming out as red (how do you spell L.O.S.E.R?), we safely dropped into the river and it was brilliant fun. Definitely one to try at home (just joking mum). Finally we dried off and had an amazing dinner infront of a camp fire. Extranjeros on one side, Israelis on the other. Much like a school dance .

Zip wire

The Calm Before the Storm

So far everything was going smoothly. That night Matt and I romantically decided we wanted to sleep under the stars (cue: ahhhhhh), and decided not to bother with the outer of our tent - I mean what the worst that can happen? A thunderstorm? An avalanche? (I am aware that the outer of the tent would not have been great protection in this case!), Yup! Turns out both! I was having one of my first bouts of ´travel belly´ (first of many no doubt) and so was awake as I heard the first droplets of rain coming and so begrudgling (and ´accidentally´kicking matt on the way out but he didn´t get the hint) I got up and put the outer on and crawled back into the tent. The rain grew steadily heavier as I contemplated the joys of voming and diarreah in the rain, before the most ENORMOUS crack of thunder came - I´ve honestly never heard anything like it! Fair enough, I though to myself, even if lightning strikes, didn´t Matt say something about it hitting the high places? So I am sure being in a canyon is the safest place we could be. These were my somewhat naive contemplations as I fought another wave of nausea. Very soon after an equally loud sound came which sounded remarkably like stones falling... yup it was an avalanche. As numerous heads popped out of tents wondering if it was on our side of the valley, our rafting guide exploded out of his tent so quickly that he broke the tent door, only to find that the avalanche, which repeated itself a few hours later was fortunately on the other side of the valley.

The rain continued on well into the next morning and so the ´rafting games´which were to be played that morning were abandoned for a few more hours sleep, or in many cases, to ring out sleeping bags and clother which had become drenched (turns out we weren´t the only ones with romantic notions of sleeping without an outer!). Feeling somewhat worse for wear we navigated throught the hardest of our rapids - class 4+. However, the stuning surroundings, as well as spotting otters, condors and seeing the first locals we had seen in 3 days - 2 guys who had walked 5 hours from the nearest village and were panning for gold at the river side - made it easy to forget about the previous night, and enjoy an amazing end to a fantastic trip.

Back in Cusco now and we have decided that if we leave for Bolivia tomorrow night we may just have time for one last trecking or biking adventure in La Paz before heading to the park.

Lots of love to all, sarah & matt xxx

Cusco

We made it!

The buses weren't all that bad.... hold on, what are we saying? They were TERRIBLE!!!! The first bus left Huaraz promptly and also promptly began leaking! Sarah had the window and I had the aisle, unfortunately right underneath a roof-vent, which haemoraged water for the entire journey (despite it strangely, not raining!) at some points quite forcefully. Add to this our driver was going for a new personal best time along some quite uneven road surfaces, imagine any vehicle bouncing around in the middle of the night - bad enough - but being at the back of a huge double decker bus - not sleep enducing!

So we arrived in Lima slightly bleary eyed at 5:30 in the morning, wondering around Miraflores trying to find somewhere for breakfast and ending up playing two hours of ´s***-head´in a street cafe. After our breakfast we made a flying visit to Villa Maria, a shanty-town project that Quest run on the outskirts of Lima. The project provides a day-centre for underprivelidged children, where they can play and interract with other chilren in a safe and supportive environment. As soon as the kids saw us, we were immedately treated as a new novelty toy and we were swamped by dozens of kids. In Matts case boisterous boys who wanted to use him as a climbing frame, and in my case the more reserved girls who coyly wanted to hold my hand and play with my hair. As if I wasn´t broody enough before we arrived!!!

Villa Maria Shanty Town

After our fleeting visit we embarked on our mammoth bus journey of almost 20 hours! We had sweet seats, 'panoramico' at the front of the bus with lots of leg room and fortunately no water falling from above our heads! The bus was really good, we were served a hot meal of a staple favourite of chicken and rice! And got to see 6 films! We didn't get much sleep, but we were comfortable, which was just as well as the bus was 3 hours late arriving in Cusco.

Back in Cusco we are enjoying chilling out a little, reunions with old friends and some of our favourite Cusquenian restaurants. The benefits of having friends here include upgraded, free accomodation and not being able to pay for dinner no matter how much we insist! It's proving hard to spend our money here, so we are 'splashing out' and going on a 3 day rafting trip on Weds. We are rafting the Apurimac, the biggest most exciting river in the area. It will be my first time, but Sarah is an experienced pro, either way we're both really looking forward to it.

A small taste of our suite at the Fallen Angel.