Dear friends,

I hope this letter finds you well. Apologies for the delay, just over another month has gone by! I didn’t feel anything that exciting happened, worthy of writing it down. But see what you think…

I am having to use my diary to remember what I did a month ago… Just after my last letter, I accompanied a volunteer and one of the vets, called Laura, to the national reserve to act as translator. We were very lucky, as we saw toucans, a poison dart frog, squirrel monkeys and tamarins! You may now think my last letter, claiming there is no wildlife, a lie. However, even the guide claimed to never have seen toucans and the dart frog before, in all his years guiding, and was equally thrilled, taking photos and videos alongside us. Due to all the wildlife spotting the intended 3 hour walk, turned into 5 hours! I enjoyed it though as I was filling in the walk with bits of knowledge that the guide had told me last time, it’s definitely a perk of the job. I remembered to write it all down this time so I hopefully won’t forget it!

I then had a very challenging week, which I can’t explain on a public media, but believe me, what a week it was! After all that was over I started on my biggest project, improving the RAREC website. It wasn’t as easy as editing my own website, but I went through every page, deleting out of date images and updating the text, adding in new pages and deleting irrelevant ones. Now it looks much sleeker and a volunteer agency we are hoping to work with commented on how amazing it looked. I have launched an updated animal sponsorship fundraising campaign, written the RAREC newsletter and gained quite a few new subscribers, and developed fundraising resources for if people want to run a bake sale for RAREC. Not only that, but have been making videos to advertise the programs, as well as running most of the social media, so if anything interesting is happening on site, I need to be there to capture it. In between picking up and dropping off volunteers from the airport and the other project, hospital (2 separate occasions) and the police station (don’t ask…), I’ve been quite busy!

Halloween then came along, and we decided to have a little party. People made food, including toffee apples, and we played games. We even found some headbands to dress up in. Talking about Halloween I’ll take this opportunity to tell you about my jungle companions, some of which are beautiful, but one in particular is very creepy. Actually on Halloween, my roommate tells me she saw a tarantula in our room and although she tried to get it out, it ran away and is now hiding somewhere in the bedroom. She was away for the night and I couldn’t really be bothered to remove everything from the room to track it down, so as normal, I checked under my bed covers and as I had started to become a bit lax about checking in my shoes, I started that again, before attempting to put a foot in. But I slept, in denial, knowing that I had a new roommate… Time passed and a few weeks later my roommate is packing to go on holiday and she suddenly shouts “I’ve found it!” Me and a few colleagues run up to the bedroom to find that (see photo below) next to the wardrobe! Luckily for us, someone used my flip flop to usher it into a bowl and we released it into the jungle (it’s a flame rumped tree spider for anyone who is interested). I still check my shoes.

My other companions are much less scary, see two of my favourite moth buddies below and the cutest frog I’ve ever seen 💚

I still spend my days off reading and have devoured about 9 books so far, but sometimes I go out. Laura, Natalia and I, went to Itaya, a little village on the river Itaya, 10 minutes away by bus where there’s a little white sand river beach, which starkly contrasts the murky brown river water. We shared a local dish, to try it, called Juanes, which is chicken and olives wrapped up with rice and in a leaf, and even went for a dip in the river. And we’ve also now discovered a little house that sells beer within walking distance of the centre!

November progressed, I got mysteriously ill a week before my birthday, which I just about managed to work through (including helping with an education session of 25 odd children 😅🤢), but lost a kilo in 3 days (I’ve since made it up by eating lots of cake) and it took 7 days for me to feel 100% better, luckily in time for my birthday weekend. Although my plans were altered slightly because I was too ill to be bothered to book a hotel and arrange what I originally had planned, but I still had a great weekend.

Laura and I went to another rescue centre, open to the public, followed by a massive pizza and Bailey’s milkshake at the mall. Just what I needed. Then the next day I went back into the city with everyone who had their day off and we spent the day at a rooftop bar and pool, drinking fresh fruit juice, cocktails, beer and eating food that didn’t involve any rice! Getting into the pool was honestly the best feeling I’ve had in the 2 and a bit months I’ve been here 😅 I got free cake and then when I got back to the centre I was spoilt with another cake, ice-cream, coca cola and even some presents (beers, avocados and a £20 Amazon gift voucher for my kindle!) and a really sweet hand drawn card from everyone! I even had some birthday cards from home to open, which made me a bit teary, as although this is certainly an experience I’ll remember and I’m glad I’ve done it, I miss you all very much.

Lots of Love,

Joss x