Happy New Year!

Heather:
The local New Year's custom is for men to dress in drag and set up road blocks, then refuse to let anyone pass until they've paid them some money to feed their "baby" (nasty doll under their arm)! How strange. All the kids run around in masks asking for money too. We all headed to Banos, in masks of our own, and joined the huge street party. For us it was the usual drunken affair, with a little bit of Ecuadorian danger, in the form of out of control fires and fireworks, thrown in for good measure! There was much drinking and dancing in the street - much to the amusement of the locals. To be honest it's all a bit of a blur, unfortunately I foolishly video-recorded most of our antics, so I can't just pretend it never happened!



New Year's day was spent wondering if I'll ever be grown up enough to spend the first day of a new year without my head down a toilet!!! Which meant I completely let the side down and was too sick to get back to the centre in time to help with the animals. In fact we were all so late back that Gary (who had stayed behind to look after the place) had already done nearly all the work -what a hero!

Other notable happenings in our last week at the centre include; releasing the owl, having to round up the pig that kept escaping (don't picture a scene from 'Babe', these are wild pigs with massive teeth!), Ben completing the rubic's cube he had in his secret santa stocking (yep, still a geek!) and we almost couldn't leave on time as a three-legged monkey was loose in our room! We nearly managed to complete our time at the centre without any major animal bites, illnesses, injuries or accidents, until our final few hours, when Ben did a fairly spectacular twisting-fall, whilst trying to sit down (?!) resulting in a huge gash to his side.



So that's it -sob, sob! Our time in the jungle is over and we're back on the road. I'm really pleased to have had the opportunity to work at the centre, I've always wanted to do something like that and don't know if I'll ever get the chance again. I'll miss the animals, and yeah I suppose the people too, but I'm also quite excited about carrying on our explorations. Bolivia - here we come!

Ben:
Again we have a video of the above but it will have to wait until we have more time!