Rumble in the jungle

An update to let you know what we've been up to and that we haven't been taken out by a volcano...crazy though, as I write, I can hear the Volcano rumbling away in the background even though it's ages away...

We are still in Pucara in the Ecuadorian Andes and are now just getting into our last week here on the Bear Project. Alas, I have not seen a bear yet but I have come very close to seeing Frida the bear and her bear cub but she keeps just getting away from us (we can tell how close she is from the radio signal), but I have been her tracks, bits of eaten corn, scratchings she has made on a tree and a tree lookout that she has created which has been pretty cool. We also saw a puma footprint in the mud the other day. Only two of us have seen a bear so far - Sylvie and Remi - when they went away camping they saw a small female bear eating corn on the opposite hill.

The four weeks so far have been really fun though. We have got way better with our walking, and now walks that seemed horribly hard at the start seem pretty easy! Living at the house is cool too, and we have quite a bit of down time to play cards, read books, make camp fires, drink the local beer (which is pretty low percentage because of the altitude) and spirit - called pudo (which is made out of sugar cane, and also comes in handy for lighting the fires) - and hang out. On Sundays we always make up a big feast too (as its Celia's day off) and Stacey has made cakes each time which are really good - especially the pineapple one last night.

Claire