The situations we find ourselves in on this trip of ours never ceases to amaze us. There we were, all geared up for a leisurely ride round Central America only to find that within a week of actually entering the first of the 7 Central America countries we find ourselves being hijacked by a conservation organisation called Wildtracks. Upon arriving here we found ourselves reeling somewhat from the abrupt change in our situation but it hasn't taken us long to settle in and feel at home. Wildtracks consists of a select motley crew of volunteers and staff. See photo below of just how motley they are!

Liz and I have gone from discussing oil changes and carburetors to transacts and gene pools. It feels like a somewhat schizophrenic life for us in some ways. Romantic in an 'Out of Africa' kind of way but also tough in a sort of 'Temple of Doom' kind of way. Not to mention the amalgamation of being a desk jockey/pen pusher and Indiana Jones/Lara Croft on a daily basis.
The romantic side of life consists of working with the manatees, walking through the jungles looking at and photographing orchids and pumas, sitting outside the cabana in a hammock while writing bids and business plans. The tough side of life is wading through swamps filed with crocodiles and creepy crawlies, picking off ticks and digging out bott-fly larva from various parts of the body, and then the nightly ritual of dealing with fungal infections. Just the basics of day to day living are a million miles away from what we're used to. Wildlife is a part of everyday life. We now share our cabana with a 6 foot tropical rat snake we've names Patsy (no idea why!). It took a few nights to get used to having a large snake slithering about the cabana all night long and wondering if we were going to wake up sharing our bed with her but now we've come to an understanding. We leave each other alone and all get on, although we do have to fish her out of our panniers from time to time.

Then there's the armadillo which lives below our window. Looking and moving like a tank with a tail he's less than quiet and frequently wakes us up in the night. Wildtracks also has a selection of livestock consisting of a pig called Gremlin, two dogs, a horse and 3, no 2 sheep. There were 3 until the night before last (called Malcolm, Monkey and Matilda) but Matilda had a run in with a Puma and is no more. At 2:00am I was up and about to take my shift in heating the isolation pool for Buttons (the manatee) and heard Gremlin and the dogs going wild. I went off to investigate what the noise was all about but couldn't see anything. The sheep seemed happy enough and the dogs settled back down. The following morning Matilda was lying not 30 feet from the back of our cabana with her heart, lungs and kidneys missing. All the tell tell signs of a puma kill. They always eat those parts of the body first as they have the highest calorific content so if they are disturbed while feeding they've got the best bits first. Belizean pumas have never been known to take a human but I'm glad it didn't bump into it at 2:00am to test the fact. Matilda didn't die in vain though. The following day we set up camera traps to get some photos of the puma feeding on the remains of the carcass which will contribute to the research being carried out here. (The film has yet to be developed though so no photos of it here!). However, today we're off to track down the pumas layer and tonight a couple of us will be spending the night up a tree nearby to watch its activities. Not something you get to do everyday.

One of the stranger things we've found ourselves involved in while here (for us anyway) was getting roped into a kids weekend for orphans from Belize City. The orphanage there is designed to take 20 or so kids but currently has somewhere around 55. The kids sleep 2 or 3 to a bed, have to share everything from clothes to medicines and never have their own space or really get to do what they want to do. To help make life a little more bareable for them a number of organisations, Wildtracks included, host weekends away for them where they can simply do what they want to do when they want to do it. This means all the adults here regress by about 20 years and start running round like headless chickens entertaining the kids. It was 3 days of exhaustion on top of the work we should be doing but even I, not really being one for kids enjoyed it. They deserve to get more out of life than they've been given so a little exhaustion is a small price to pay for them.

To a degree our time here so far has been all work and no play. Although mornings like this make it worthwhile.

Being a small outfit there's always far more to do than there are hours in the day. We're up at between 4:30 and 6:00am. Work starts as soon as we get some breakfast down us and non of us stop until we go to bed at around 9:30am. Then the night shift starts. Of late there has been a strong northerly wind which has lowered the lagoon from a comfortable 28 degrees C to below 22 degrees C. Unfortunately the minimum temperature for the smaller manatee is 24 degrees C so she's been moved to the isolation pool where we can heat the water for her. This means that we each have to take it in turns to get up at one and a half hour intervals to top the pool up with hot water. Non of us have had a full nights sleep in 12 days now and we're all starting to feel it. Luckily everyone gets on really well so the irritability factor has been kept in check (so far). It all sounds like hard work and much of it is but the knowledge that Liz and I are getting to do and see things that we never dreamt that we would is great. We've seen things just in the last two weeks that many people dream of seeing their whole lives but never do. As Mr. Grant Johnson would say: "It is not the unknown, but the fear of it, that prevents us from doing what we want." With that in mind, we find our strength and resolve is tested every day in a new environment full of things not good for the human constitution but the rewards are beyond our dreams. How long we'll be here we don't know but we're enjoying it so far so there's no rush to be anywhere else right now and with a sunset beer like this who cares!