Inti Wara Yassi - First Impression

So, after lots of talk about this animal sanctuary to friends and family, I am finally here. Working at the Inti Wara Yassi Wildlife Sanctuary.

I arrive here on Sunday, after a 15 hours bus ride from Sucre (via Cochabamba). However I have been feeling ill. And that night had a hard time trying to keep warm, I was shivering even after wearing a thermal, sweater, beanie, socks and sleeping in a down sleeping bag! In the end dropping the panadol helped. But the next day I had diarrhea.

So not a great start.

But that is not all. I was told at the sanctuary that I cannot work with monkeys, instead I got the aviary as they were desperate for volunteers. Of course my first reaction was, I came here FOR the MOOONKEEEEEYS! However I thought to myself, why not, since my reason for coming was to help. So I signed up for 2 weeks.

Starting at 8am on Monday I was shown along with another new girl the stuff to do out at the aviary. There was feeding, cleaning, sweeping the grounds, walking the birds, gathering new tree branches and toys for the birds and explanation to the tourist about it all. I was also shown the snake cage, where I was to handle 2 snakes, an anaconda and a boar constructor. I thought "Now we´re bloody talking!" I had to walk the snake and clean their cages. But the bonus for me is that throughout the day the monkeys comes to visit. The ones which visit are the Spider monkeys and the Capuchin monkeys. I love the spider monkeys the most as they are so friendly! They would sit on my shoulders or cuddle in my lap and make soft chirping sounds. Sometimes they would wrap their long tail around my arm and "walk" me where-ever! And on more then one occasion the mum would sit on my lap whilst milking the baby.

However we are not allowed camera into the compound for the first week. Or I would have got lots of cool photo to post. That will have to wait till next week!

So the first impression has been ok, not as great as I would have liked i.e solely working with monkeys, but at least I got to play with them whilst doing the "bird" thing!

The community at Inti Wassi are huge though, there are around 55 foreigners volunteering currently. The minimum time of volunteering is 15 days and some stay for as long as 6 months! There is a real hippie commune feel to this place as everyone gets put in the guesthouse owned by the sanctuary and everyone eat at the same place. For me I am still feeling my way around the place and the people.

Currently I find there are too many young people around, or that I am feeling my age. LOL! For example, a girl was telling me how she scratch at her scar as she wanted the scar to remain coz she think it is cool. Her mate did the same thing, can you believe it! To me that is just naff! And I told her so, that she will most probably regret it when she turns... 25! LOL!

But speaking about scars, everybody here are walking wounded. One has stitches in her head after being bitten by a monkey, another´s finger was chomped by her monkey, another was maul by her puma, another twisted his ankle after landing wrong whilst running with his puma, and finally everyone else are covered with sand fly bites. It´s hilarious to see! As for me, I haven´t gotten anything yet as my birds and snakes are better behaved, and I wear long sleeve 2nd hand clothing to avoid the sand flies. :)