8/12/10, Day 12: Animals in the Zoo

This morning was again an early rise in order to catch a plane. This time, Ginger and I flew out to Puerto Maldonado, one of the Amazon’s most visited regions. When we arrived at the airport, it was as if we were royalty. There were tons of indigenous people screaming, waving, and blasting air horns at us… I now understand what animals in the zoo must feel like. I did NOT want to go out of the airport into the mass of people. Later, we found out that they were expecting a presidential candidate to be on our plane and that all the chaos was not actually just for the arrival of Ginger and I.

Thankfully, we found our tour guide and headed on the journey to Tambopata Natural Reserve, a three hour boat ride upstream. On our way, we saw many species of birds, caiman (both black and white), red howler monkeys, and capybaras (like gigantic gerbils). We learned that the majority of the Amazonian people either mine gold or farm near the riverside for their income.

A sort of chicken fried rice lunch was served wrapped in palm leaves on the boat… it was very good and fit well into the nuance of the place. All the fruits and vegetables here are small and home-grown, so they were juicy and flavorful.

Once we arrived to Wasai lodge, we were assigned cabins and sent off to make ourselves at home. At 7, we were to reconvene and head out into the jungle (at dark I might add) for a night walk. On this walk we were to look for birds, reptiles and insects. Among the highlights were three tarantulas, a butterfly, a couple birds, and a huge gray spider (that I found) that is one of the most poisonous spiders in the region (15x more poisonous than a black widow.)

8/11/10, Day 11: Off to Peru

I woke up startled to a 4:30am knock at the door. I wasn’t to catch a taxi to the airport until 5:15am and was planning on sleeping until 4:45, but Gabi’s father wanted me to get up so I could get dressed and have coffee with him. Then he called me a taxi, hugged me again, and sent me on my way.

A $4 cab ride later (I’m still amazed it was only $4) I was at the airport and terribly confused. Where the heck am I supposed to go? I see no check-in counters and no one with suitcases. No one speaks English, and the signs are confusing. So, I decide to wander around and finally found the part where I walk through security. Eventually I figured it out and found the counter to check my bags. They then sent me to pay my $41 airport fee. I couldn’t believe it! I hadn’t spent $41 in the 10 days I have been here… that includes food, travel, and incidentals.

I soon arrived at the Lima airport and easily found the SAS travel man to take me to the hotel. I knocked at the hotel door and woke up Ginger, my high school friend who is traveling with me for this portion of the trip. We grabbed the Lonely Planet Peru book and decided to head into the Miraflores division of Lima for the day.

First off, we headed for lunch (of course, thankfully Ginger loves food as much as I do). This was the BEST meal ever. We had stuffed red peppers (Relleno) and a steak stir fry dish (Lomo Saltado) that was to die for. Peruvian food kicks Ecuador food’s butt. Next, we wandered to Huaca Pucullana, which are ruins in the midst of the city. The ruins were cool, but they are being re-created by the Peruvian government and would have been even better if left in their original state. We learned that the ruins were part of the ceremonial grounds and that they found many bodies, both human and animal, buried within the property.

Next, we perused the street markets for trinkets and spent much time haggling with the local people. Most Peruvians are very nice and speak some English in this section of town. All of the vendors tried to lure us into their stores saying “this price for you miss” and “rare Peruvian objects for you…” Needless to say, we spent the majority of the day in this jungle of treasures and junk.

Once again hungry, we wandered back to the food alley, grabbed some dinner (not nearly as good as the lunch), and headed back to the hotel for a bit of shut eye. Off to the Amazon tomorrow!

8/9/10 & 8/10/10, Days 9 & 10: La Campaigna de Esterillization

8/9/10, Day 9: Chaos Ensues

The prior night Diego told me to be ready to go at 7:30am… I awoke at 6:45am to knocking at my door and “VAMOS! Carrie VAMOS!” spoken by a voice that I don’t recognize. Apparently over the night Diego had a friend come into town and they decided they needed me at the campaign earlier than 8. I literally rolled out of bed, put scrubs on, and was hurled (by Diego’s driving) across the city to the shelter for the spay/neuter campaign.

The campaign staff was mind-boggling, I never expected so many Americans to come help with surgery in Ecuador. But, we had a staff of almost 15 Americans and another 20 Ecuadorians. The Americans were well organized and have worked together previously on Animal Balance projects. Liz, their tech, is kind of a Nazi, and all of the Ecuadorians feared her. Personally, I respect her, she knows how to get stuff done (she’s just like my mom) Anyhow, they decide I am going to perform tech work for 2 surgeons and I start inducing dogs and cats to meet the surgical demand.

Within the first four hours of opening, we had 167 surgeries lined up. We drew the cutoff point at 84 surgeries today and told the others to come back tomorrow. Holy cow, I never expected so many people so fast. There were TV crews, newspaper reporters, and government officials everywhere watching us work. Every time I turned around there was a different person watching me or taking my picture. I’m not going to lie, it was a little daunting. I was intubating, putting in IV catheters, monitoring anesthesia, and trying not to kill all my patients in the middle of it all.

By the time surgery was done it was 7pm and we all decided to meet at 8:30pm in downtown Ambato for dinner at a local restaurant. Everyone was so exhausted that we didn’t stay long and I’m finally home settling in for the night.

8/10/10, Day 10: Campaign Day 2

This morning was MUCH more organized than the last. We got up at the time Diego told us, actually ate breakfast, and headed out to the shelter. They gave me a real veterinary technician to work with today, so induction and anesthesia ran very smoothly… No more running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Her name was Cindy and she is from Fairfax, Virginia. She runs a shelter herself and is part of the Animal Balance program that does spay/neuter campaigns all over the world. Most of the Americans that joined us for the campaign were also part of that program and they invited me to join them from their next trip. It was an honor, it means I was actually very useful to them. I was a little flattered J

87 surgeries later it was 6:30pm and time for me to leave Ambato. The bus picked me up on the side of the road and I headed into Quito, Ecuador’s capital. A new friend Gabi offered for me to stay with her parents for the night so that I would be close to the airport for my flight very early in the morning. They were waiting at the window for me when I arrived and were extremely hospitable. Neither of them spoke English, but they made me dinner, got me a shower, and put me to bed anyway. They were some of the nicest people on my trip and smiled a lot. We joked even though we only partially understood one-another, but both parents gave me a huge hug before bed and just kept saying “we happy”.

8/8/10, Day 8: Progress Finally Made

Sunday, the day of rest, turned out to be the busiest day yet. I didn’t awake until 8:30 this morning because the barking dogs and car horns didn’t begin until then… Lew and I finally cornered Diego to do some real work today, not just talking about work like we usually do. We inventoried all the drugs and put together a kit of things needed for the spay/neuter campaign to begin tomorrow. This took a few hours, but by noon we were ready to go to PAE to pick up the last of the things needed and then head over to the municipal shelter for some last minute rearrangement of furniture.

We finally got the chance to get home to pick up Sandy for lunch around 2:30 and headed over for another local meal. I played it safe today and got chicken soup (again, a cilantro based soup with an entire chicken leg in it). Lew, on the other hand, let Diego order for him and ended up with cow foot soup. It didn’t look very appealing… I did find out what stomach soup was called though, caldo 31. Caldo means soup, but no one has any idea why the 31... I suggested maybe 31 parts of the cow that no one else in the world eats? Who knows. We also tried jugo naturale, which is a juice made of corn. Here everything is made of corn or has corn in it. The juice tasted like it was fermented and was just shy of becoming moonshine.

After lunch, Sandy, Ali, Emma, Manu, Danny, and I went to the pool. Between the pool, sauna, steam room, and the hot tub, we were there for hours. Manu, Sandy, and I swam and played for a significant portion of the time.

Upon leaving, we grabbed a glass of morocho (again, this is corn, but it tastes like cornbread in a drink) and headed to the pizzeria to pick up vegan pizzas for the arrival of the vegan americans who were recruited to help with the campaign. We quickly ate some pizza also, but ours was a real pizza with cheese.

8/7/10, Day 7: LLanganates National Park

Today is Saturday, but it began like every other day except for the fact that we got to have breakfast this morning. Lew and I headed over to PAE as usual and worked on all the animals for the morning. Sandy came to pick me up and we, along with Diego’s brother Dani and his family (Ali, Manu, and Emma), headed up the mountainside for a day at the national park.

In the car, Sandy informs me that we are going to make a BBQ lunch and that they have never done it before. Do I know how? Of course I do, but not with the things they have brought for me to start a fire at 14,000 ft in the wind, rain, and below freezing cold. They give me straight black carbon (like our charcoal, but no lighter fluid), a few drops of gas, and some tiny little matches that make matchbook matches look like giant brutes. There is no small grill for the charcoal, so it lays on the ground between two logs we found. An oven rack (from Sandy’s new oven) bridges the logs for food. It took us 2 hours to get the fire going enough to cook on and even then it was pretty weak. Finally, around 4:30 pm (we started making our fire around 1:30), we get to eat. We cooked potatoes (cut in half over the fire), chorizo sausage, small steaks, and a huge slice of pork fat. We ended up eating the potatoes raw, due to the lack of heat put out by the fire… it was fairly comical.

The park was pretty spectacular. It offers wonderful views of the valley below and has several large lakes. There are streams and waterfalls, and the mountain ranges here are nothing like those in California or Colorado. These are lush, green, and extremely high elevation. We spent most of our time above 13,000ft, and I could feel it in my energy level as we hiked around after the meal. Their parks are not like ours… there is a fee, but that is the only similarity. There are many abandoned houses and no “real” roads. The roads we drove would be considered primitive at best in the US. Many people have food animals that roam in the park and they walk the 10 miles straight uphill from town to tend to them on a daily basis.

Around 6:00 the fog and rain roll in and we decide to get going, but we can’t find Dani. Finally someone spots him fishing down at the lake and it takes another 30 minutes to get him back to the car. He caught 2 fish and had them in his pocket when he returned. We slowly made our way back down the mountain and headed home for the night.

8/6/10, Day 6: Banos

Much to my surprise, I wake up around 6:30 am and cannot go back to bed. The girls have invited me to go to Banos today and I need to tell Diego before he gets too far into the day’s plans. Lew had told me the night before that “sleep was overrated,” so I assumed he was already up when I headed out of my room for a shower. I get ready for the day and walk over to Diego’s apartment to see what is going on. At 7:15 I end up waking him up, even though he has an 8am meeting across town. We chat a bit and then I let him finish his morning preparations.

Lew finally wakes up around 8:30 and once he gets ready for the morning we inventory all the drugs for the spay/neuter campaign. At 9, we head to the shelter for our daily duties, which are now becoming part of my routine. Sandy comes to pick us up around 12 and we head into the downtown area of the city to pick up an employee of the HIS (humane shelter international) from Washington DC. She is here to see if PAE is a potential recipient of humane shelter funds. We all go to lunch and discuss the possible venture over smoked pork and mote (corn), one of the best local food meals yet.

On the way back to the PAE shelter from lunch, the girls call and tell me that they are coming to pick me up for a trip to Banos. Banos is a town built at the base of a volcano. It is a very nice area that is hugely populated by tourists. Banos is called banos because there are baths filled with hot water warmed by the volcano. The volcano had an eruption just 2 years ago and the devastation can still be seen on the hillside. However, the place is wonderfully beautiful. It is lush and green and mountainous. We drive through the town and go to the zoo first. The first zoo we enter (for free I might add because the girls talk the front boy into letting us in) consists of many types of boa constrictors, anacondas, and vipers, along with some fish. The second zoo (also free, thank you girls!) had many species of monkeys and birds, but the real attraction was the condors. These are the biggest birds I have seen in real life, they were sleeping, but still totally awesome.

After the zoo visits, we take the drive straight up the mountainside to one of the most coveted resorts in the area. The evening darkness and fog roll in as we walk to the resort’s restaurant for dinner. The restaurant has a full glass panel at the front of the room that affords an absolutely spectacular view of the city below (~3,000 ft below). In the US, this restaurant would be considered 5 star due to the ambience, view, and foreign cuisine. We eat a truly american dinner (I had a ham and swiss sandwich that was presented like it was an expensive steak dinner) and discuss the plans for the evening.

We decide to drive back down to Banos and check out the night life. After walking the city for a while, we pick a club and enter. We walk straight through the discotech and it appears that we are leaving through the back when I realize it is a tiki bar… This is the coolest bar I have ever been to. It has a massive fire pit directly in the middle and all sorts of live palm trees and tree-house looking things everywhere. I wish that we could pull off one of these in the states. We sit for a beer and chat, and I decide that I really enjoy the company of my new friends. I wish that I would have a little more time here to spend with them…

After a beer and lots of pictures, we all pile back into the car and make the hour journey home. Best day so far…

8/5/10, Day 5: Ladie’s Night

I awake this morning at what I think is 8am, but because my cell phone has no satellite connection, the time is totally messed up and it is actually only 5:30. I realize this when I turn on the computer to check my morning emails. So, I go back to bed until 8, get another warm shower (yay!), and head over to the shelter.

When I arrive, there is no one in the house or outside. I walk back to the surgical suite/grooming salon and start doing dishes from the night before so that the place is clean to begin the day. I soon realize that Dr. Lew has been sent to spend the day with me and I am grateful. Dr. Lew is a friend of Diego’s, and was actually the best man in his wedding. Lew is from Lake County, just northwest of Chicago and is an American. He’s 75 and has been practicing veterinary medicine for 40 years. I am very happy to have him here… he takes the burden of decision making off my shoulders and is happy to help me do whatever my duties are for the day.

We work on the dogs for the morning and then Sandy comes to pick us up for another lunch of local food. This one was a bit scary, and I can’t pronounce the name or even come close to spelling it. It was soup made with 3 parts of the ruminant stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum) and spleen of what I can only assume used to be a cow??? No clue. It was heavily seasoned with cilantro, and if any of you know me, cilantro tastes strongly like Palmolive dish soap smells. I have to say this is probably the worst food I have tried so far, but I get the feeling I may eventually try something even less edible…

Sandy brings Lew and I back to the shelter and we spend another few hours watching telenovela (Spanish soap operas) before Diego shows up. Thankfully he got there earlier than usual, around 6pm, and we end up being able to eat dinner shortly thereafter. Because Lew is an older American and has some stomach issues, Diego allows him to pick where we eat dinner and we have lasagna. It was a welcome change from the local food.

While at dinner, Diego received a call from Gonza insisting that I come out for a “ladies night.” I finish dinner quickly and run out of the restaurant in time to meet the girls. I initially thought we would go to a discotech, but instead the evening consisted of drinking beers in the car… something that is not frowned upon in the least bit here. The girls all drink pilsner beer and love the Black Eyed Peas. Everyone is wearing a scrunchie hairtie and an aeropostale sweatshirt (except me). I think I missed the memo. We stopped along the roadside to meet up with some of their friends and a one of the guys approached the car. All of the sudden I hear the Backstreet Boys “I want it that way” coming from his cell phone and I busted out laughing. They all inquire on what is so funny, so I explain to them that the Backstreet Boys are not acceptable for a grown man to have his ring tone set to in the US. Much more laughter ensues and I’m pretty sure the guy no longer wants to be my friend… oops! Glad to know that I can even intimidate men in a culture not even remotely similar to my own.

After a few hours the girls bring me home and we say goodbye for the night. I’m happy to have met such good friends so quickly, they’re already asking me when I will return.