Dear Friends,

I hope this letter finds you all well. A couple more weeks have past, and unbelievably it’s been a whole month since I left the UK. Time certainly flies here, probably because it gets dark at 6pm everyday and I’m in bed by 9pm 😅

In the evenings we are starting to do more social things, I ran a D&D campaign over a couple of nights, we set up a projector and watched a couple of films (I introduced a few people to Paddington), we have a night walk in the jungle planned for a couple of days and the arcade games are supposed to be up and running soon. Other than work, sleep and socialising, I spend my days off doing washing (we have a washing machine, but with a jungle twist… if you get the outside of it wet, it electrocutes you, as I found out today. You also have to go back to it half way through and manually fill it back up with water) and reading. However, last week I went to Allpahuayo Mishana National Reserve, just up the road.

As mentioned in my last letter, there’s not much wildlife here, according to our guide in the national reserve the last howler monkey was seen about 4 years ago, and they rarely find animal tracks through the forest now. As I write this a colleague is going through camera trap footage and has just seen a hunter with a shotgun walking through the rescue centre’s reserve (30 min trek from base, don’t panic), other than that, the camera trap picked up a rat. The camera trap was out for a week. I’m surprised they find it worthwhile hunting anymore. In the national reserve, although magical to see in the wild, “all” we saw on our walk were some tamarin monkeys, which chirped and called jumping from tree to tree (both times we saw them, first thing and last thing on the walk, I didn’t have my binoculars out!), we saw a tiny leaf frog and the blur of 3 leaf lizards as they ran away. I used my binoculars for some birdwatching, which is pretty hard to do in the jungle because of all the foliage, but I saw some glimpses of 2 species of ant eater birds. We came across a snake skeleton, evidence of a white eagle. I’m hoping it was a harpy eagle, but feel that would be too good too be true. But something that was pretty cool was that I spotted a spider on the path, with a red spot on its abdomen, the guide said it as venomous so when it started moving we quickly ran away… but turns out it was only discovered in Peru recently and has only ever been found in that national park!

Other than animals the quide pointed out medicinal trees and got us to try a few. I can’t remember the name of most of them, but I remember “sangre de grado”, which is a tree that bleeds and the sap is used to heal wounds and cure skin lesions. The sticky sap below was used to make bouyant bags in the past. I wanted to ask about poisonous plants but I didn’t know the word for poison so, disturbingly, ended up asking what plants I could use to kill people…

On a similarly depressing wildlife note (there’s a happy ending, don’t worry), we got a message saying someone had brought a snake in, so we all run to the vet clinic and find a massive white sack, which weighed in at 11.6kg! Turned out to be a nearly 3m red tailed boa. The guys had “found” it in the forest, caught it and thought we would buy it off them. The director of the center was there and very persuasively got them to leave the snake with us for release. So the next morning the vet team and I (part of my job is getting footage for social media, so I get to be part of all the interesting things) trek half an hour out into the jungle in a “feels like” temperature of 43 degrees, taking it in turns to carry the enormous load. The release was beautiful though, watching the giant boa constrictor slowly move out of the crate and immediately straight into the stream, where she cooled off, all of us, watching in silence, were awe-struck. Once we couldn’t see her anymore, worried she’d sneak up on us, we quickly retreated and sweated the slightly quicker trek back to base.

You might have seen on RAREC’s or my social media about the confiscation of 32 animals from Iquitos airport, while being illegally trafficked to Dubai. 19 of which, consisting of sloths and tamanduas, came to RAREC. It has all gone quiet because of the ongoing police investigation, and frustratingly the animals cannot be released until it is over. Unfortunately 5 died in the 5 days we had them (sloths have incredibly slow metabolisms, so they will have died from the conditions and illnesses they came into contact with before they got to us), we do not have the facilities to look after such a number and only accepted them on the condition they could be released after 3 days. Now the remainder have been transferred to the local zoo, that has a natural sloth enclosure (fenced forest), where they can await release.

That’s all the exciting news, but I can tell you a bit more about the centre. I have made a walk around video, so you can all see where I live (see below). We have spider, woolly, capuchins, saki and titi monkeys here, all ex pets. Along with 2 sloths, a jaguarundi, kinkajou, giant anteater, tamandua, parrot, ocelots, oncilla and a manatee (there are also 3 manatees in a pre-release lake). The vast majority of the animals here are ex-pets. Those that aren’t were caught in fishing nets or abandoned by their mother. Most of them, due to being pets can never be released, because they would seek out humans, or in the case of Lucas the parrot teach the wild population bad habits… Lucas is my spirit animal here, because when the 5 rescue dogs start barking (usually at 6am) you can hear Lucas screeching “Fuck off” ❤️. There are a few that have a brighter future. It’s my job to update and rejuvenate the website, so I will let you all know when it’s ready and you can read all our resident’s stories.

A few of you have asked about mosquitoes. When I first arrived it wasn’t that bad, but the word has spread that I’m tasty now, at least I’m not reacting to them. The worst bite I’ve had is from an ant – which will likely scar (I should of used some sangre de grado). Some of other insects are beautiful though, I’ve seen so many amazing moths, I need an Amazon moth ID book, for sure! There are frogs and cane toads everywhere (including the shower) I have had 2 huntsman spiders in my bedroom (that I know of…), both evicted, after a chase (not by me), and there are cockroaches and ants everywhere too. I’ve had two roaches in my bed, one in my toiletries bag, which gave me a bit of a surprise. Every night I check under the covers… Sweet dreams!

Love,

Joss