Dschungelblog!

…this is what we imagine in our daydreams while relaxing in a hammock! But so far we haven´t sold the flight tickets to Germany yet ;-)

After moving to the Rumi Wilco nature reserve in the outskirts of Vilcabamba we started working there the same day. Waking up the next morning we both realized that volunteering equals muscle aches the next day. No wonder, considering the fact that we were throwing stones in the river and carried arround huge bamboo roots and trees. Even though, motivation was still up on the following days and we had a nice time working with co-volunteer Pedro and the owners Alicia and Orlando. Typically we would be waked up by the screams of the neighbours cocks and those of some donkeys in the distance, get up, work for a few hours, relax, go to town for foodshopping, and then cook and have a very relaxed evening with Pedro in our shared kitchen watching the stars at night. The desert would be either homemade crepes or the cinnamon rolls brought to us (still oven-warm) by the neighbour - you see, nothing better than volunteering in Vilcabamba! And after a few days even the hard-working German personality changed and we stuck to Pedro´s motto: “Hey, you are volunteers, don´t work so fast! Otherwise they give you more things to do.� and were happy when we got some tasks like translating texts or helping out with the computer that could be done in the shade.

The last weekend we went for a nine hour hike with Pedro to some waterfall in the National Parque - and actually found it although in between we didn´t think we would. The hiking was definitely worth it and as you can take from the pictures we had a lot of breaks! Next day: more muscle aches and mosquito bites though…

A few days ago then our hosts had the brilliant idea to offer Heiko and me to stay in the Pole house for the same price. You can´t imagine how fast the backpacks were packed and we were ready to move in there! It´s just great and the photos don´t do it justice! You have to come and stay there if you really want to get the feeling of living in the wood with the river passing by just 6 meters away. Had a bonfire and were watching the stars with loads of strange noises in the wood around us - veeery nice!

However, if we don´t leave tomorrow, we´ll never do and that would upset at least some of the people at home so we´ll pack our stuff and leave Vilcabamba with only the best memories!

That´s all for now. We´ll be back soon with news from the coast (where it is supposed to be even hotter with more mosquitos…).

Take care!

Romy & Heiko

Hi everybody,

here some slightly late news brought to you via Vilcabamba-net which is as slow as the tortoises on Galapagos…

After a sad “good bye” to the Galapagos we boarded the plane and later the bus in Guayaquil that was supposed to bring us to Cuenca, a town in the south Andes. We did arrive but sometimes didn´t believe we would. Going over the Andes is one thing but going over with a mad busdriver, really bad roads with holes in them that would hide a whole car, and loads of steep descends into the valley is another thing!! However, the ones who were still able to look out of the windows witnessed one of the most beautiful sunsets of their entire lives.

Arrived in Cuenca we enjoyed the fiesta that was going on and were annoyed by bad hostels. The first one featured the famous bed bugs that bit us allover and when we moved to the second one we were to “enjoy” their eighties-dance-trance-techno party at night in the courtyard until 4.30 a.m.! You can imagine… But except from that the town was nice especially if you´re interested in the mixture between colonial and indian art and architecture. Even though we did not sleep much we managed to go to a Sunday market in one of the nearby villages (see the photo with the pile of huge papayas!). We saw sweet old grandmas selling even sweeter fruits we didn´t even have names for sometimes. Also some lazy men who got drunk after they´d just been to church (a big event still with a lot of singing and praying) and hung around on the central plaza to relax and chat with their pals.

After a few days in Cuenca we hit the road again and arrived in Vilcabamba where we still are. We cannot imagine that time went by so fast and it is already two weeks we´re here! You get sucked into the tranquility and relaxed atmosphere so that it is hard to leave! People here are said to get far over 100 years old and it seems no wonder if you look at their lifestyle: loads of fresh fruit, no stress, and total disinterest for what is going on in the rest of the world! Everything here goes very slow. Even the internet … The town is tiny and doesn´t even have an own bank but it is a great place with many foreigners who settled here because it is such a pleasant area. They have their own bars and restaurants or craft shops and make a living. Also Vilcabamba is a great place for hikes into the area. We had some great experiences here.

But we´re not only hiking and lying in the hammocks all day as you might probably think. For a week now we´re working in a private nature reserve to help the family there. But more on this in the next blog entry…

This is us back from the best trip EVER! The “enchanted islands”, as the Galapagos are also called, are truly the most startling experience in our lives so far! Now we’re convinced that evolution really works in the way Charles Darwin proposed. But let´s begin at the start.

The journey set of in the Charles Darwin Research Station where the Giant Tortoises (that give the islands their name) are reared and then reintroduced to the wild when they´re about four years old. So we could se hatchlings of all ages as well as some of their mums and dads - they´re so tiny when new-born but can easily weigh about 500 pounds when they´re grown-ups!! There is a different kind of tortoises on each island and they all adjusted to the special environment and the food available which makes each subspecies unique! Our great guide could instantly name each turtle we saw and told us all about their heritage. There is also one totiose in the station which is called “lonesome George” because he is the only one left from his subspecies - how sad is that? He refuses to mate with any of the ladies they´ve brought into the area where he lives… The best thing about the tortoises is that they´re so relaxed. Not even a crowd of tourists with the clicking of their cameras right in the face of a tortoise could make it move or even blink!

From the station we departed with our luxury catamaran which was our home for the next seven days. We visited various islands with one highlight after the other! To name just a few:

• we went snorkeling with sea lions that are so nosey that they touch you and make bubbles right in your face
• we also saw a white tipped reef shark (Bry that´s for you ;-)) which was quite uninterested in us… and some people from our boat dived with hammerhead sharks
• we saw a number of different rays with a 10 ft (3.5 meters) manta ray being the biggest (honestly, the beast was bigger than the boat that we used to go out snorkeling!!!)

Of course there were loads of colored fish and many different starfish, sometimes the sea bottom looked like an inversed sky!!! So for the snorkeling alone it was just great!

However, during our landings there was an abundance of birds to be found nowhere else (Darwin’s finches, flightless cormorans, bluefooted boobies,…), also marine iguanas (reminded us of Jurassic Park), again sea lions (with the cutest pups ever!), and loads of weird plants such as the Palosanto trees that look totally dead right now but our guide promised us that they would be entirely green in a few months time or the variety of opuntia cacti that look different on each island according ot the type of turtle that lives there and eats them (or the turtles look different because the cacti are different on each island - this is the question with the hen and the egg which neither we nor our guide could answer to our satisfaction).

It is unbelievable how tame all the animals are, they just come towards you and don´t move away even if you pass by right next to them. You really don´t need a camera with a big focus, just go there and take pictures! Further we saw the currently active volcano while passing by with our boat at night - also an unusual sight. By the way, all the islands are volcanic so we were walking on lava, lava sand or lava rocks all the time. And in between the landings and snorkeling we had time to relax on the sun deck or enjoy the delicious food prepared by the very relaxed crew!

The trip found the best end to be imagined with the invitation to our guide’s birthday party. We were the only Europeans in the small pub and after a few original Havana Club rum on ice we had no problems making ourselves understood and having fun with the locals! I had to prove that even German girls can swing their ass to south american music (even though the size of the ass could not keep up with the local´s ones). We had such a great night and the way back to the boat with a taxi-boat through the dark harbour was an adventure in itself!

Yeah, that was just a short impression of our trip and we hope the pictures bring it to live a bit more! Right now we´re enjoying Cuenca, a nice colonial town in the south Andes. A big fiesta is going on all weekend so we have some party again and wander around the crafts markets where they sell so nice stuff that we could already been packed with presents if we wouldn´t have to lug them around all the remaining time…

Bye for now, Romy & Heiko