Finally Some Time to Share

I'm sorry I haven't been updating this as muchas I'd hoped. We keep pretty busy and it can be hard to find time to come up here and type. I should have enough time now if the weather holds out. It poured most of the night and day but just a few drops are falling now. We actually took about a two hour hike to the little town of Agua Santa today to buy a few veggies. It was a neat experience. There were roughly 20 shops selling variuos items. Please don't envision shops like we have at home. They were very open with palm leaves for the roofs. We were the only gringos in the town.

I guess I should tell you guys a little about my everyday life here. I am staying at the field station on the Yachana Reserve along the Napo River. It's actually really nice here despite the lack of electricity. We have cold running water pumped directly from the stream and power for equipment comes from the solar panels when possible but there is a gas powered generator for backup. We have a propane stove in the kitchen. Breakfast is at 6:30, lunch at 12:00, and dinner at 6:00 with a few exceptions to accomodate night/early morning studies and Sundays. We have a snack at 10:00ish. Breakfast is porridge (it's actually oatmeal but since Americans are the minority here I am learning to use words like "porridge" and "wellies"). Lunch is typically some type of veggie soup and dinner typically has some beans or rice. Meat really doesn't exist here. We have tuna and a bit of soy meat but they are used sparingly. Essentially we eat lots of carbs and starches.

There are 12 Expedition Members (EMs), 1 intern, 3 staff members, and 1 student from the Yachana Technical School. The breakdown of nationalities is 4 Americans, 3 Canadians, 2 Australians, 1 Irish, 2 Ecuadorians, and the rest are British.

***note: originally this post contained a considerable amount more but due to irratic communication signals, I lost it all***