Finished at ARCAS

We both finished our week volunteering at ARCAS a few days ago and have been enjoying the benefits of civilisation for a bit.

Even though we were mainly cleaning up and feeding the animals its been a great experience, its not everyday you get to be so close to wild animals. Our favourites were the toucans, tayra (like a big ferret) and a baby spider monkey called Mona.

The tayra was a real handful and took both of us armed with brushes and raw chicken to coax him into not biting us as we got into the cage to clean up. The toucans were a lot of fun too, always giving us sideways looks when we came in with food and would even take little pieces of fruit out of our hands.

The baby monkey, Mona, was very unsure of me at first and much preferred Amy. Initially she wouldn't even come out of her cage until I hid around the corner then shed cautiously climb onto Amy for a bit of exercise. After a while she got more used to me, but always seemed a little suspicious of me. I must smell like a bad monkey or something.

We had a lot of free time too, so we mainly hung out with everyone else playing cards and drinking a little rum from time to time. We were right next to a beautiful lake too, so we could swim whenever we liked.

All in all, we had a brilliant time and were both pretty sad to leave, but it was a relief to get away from the mosquitoes and freezing cold showers.