Greetings from Senda Verde!

​Written on June second- Today has been my first full day living and working here in SendaVerde, the official title for the Bolivia Wildlife Sanctuary. The volunteers are placed in groups of which animals to work with, that rotates every three days. Today was the second day on the bird rotation for my group. After meeting up for breakfast at 7:30, we took off at about eight to the aviaries. The volunteers are definitely busiest around meal times for the animals- my first couple of hours this morning were spent sweeping out the aviaries, cleaning out and refilling food and water bowls, and meeting the many birds that live at Senda Verde. There are several species of South American parrots, some very beautiful macaws, and two very friendly toucans living here. There were five volunteers scheduled with birds, so we got done cleaning and feeding everything before ten. After some down time, we met up again at noon to give the toucans their snack, which was a lot of fun. We tossed some sliced up pieces of banana and papaya and watched them expertly catch it in their huge beaks. 

​After I finished giving the snack to the toucans, which took about half an hour, I met up with Nadine by the food prep room, another volunteer here from the Netherlands. She was about to go give the spectacled bears their snack and, since they were pretty much the only animal I haven’t seen yet and I had some free time before lunch, I tagged along. They have pretty big enclosures that give them some space to climb up into the mountainous area of the sanctuary, as well as a creek running through them. Nadine told me that the female often hung out up on the side of the mountain, so we didn’t see her. The male was very visible, though, and as we were tossing his snack into his enclosure, he came right up to the fence to explore this new person. I put my hand just slightly into the enclosure, which he sniffed and licked in a greeting. The spectacled bears were a species that I’ve been particularly excited about working with, and that was a pretty cool way to meet this bear. 

​After lunch was served at one, I walked back to my room, since birds didn’t have another job until 3:30, when we would clean and refill all the food trays again. I began to write this post and explored the forest area right around the bungalow before walking back up to the main area of SendaVerde to do the birds’ last shift of the day. On my last shift, as I was picking up some of the older food in an enclosure, a bee decided to greet my thumb by digging its stinger nice in deep into it (my thumb is still pretty swollen and a bit sore). With the help of Sabastian, a fellow volunteer from Argentina, we got the stinger out and went back to work. 

​Some of the other volunteers went out to Corioco, the nearby town, to hang out after dinner, but I opted to stay in tonight to finish this post and shower. Tomorrow I have another day of working with the birds, before moving on to another group- I’m not sure yet what that group will be. I can assure everyone that I am writing down just about everything that happens to me here- I’ve written stuff down every day. However, to avoid my blog posts being ten pages long, everything I actually post will probably focus on one specific day. I’m writing this on June second, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to publish it- hopefully within the next couple of days. 

​That’s all for now! This post’s food for thought: “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.”-Roman Payne