¡Que experiencia!

Hola chicos,

It was so much fun in the jungle. ARCAS is a rehabilitation centre for animals from Guatemala, who were found at the border or by the police. There were spider and howler monkeys, parrots, makauws (big red and blue beautiful parrots), turtles, crocodilles, and more.. The first few days we were with 7 volunteers and 6 workers. I cleaned a cage with 46 parrots and feed them bananas, corn and berries and a cage with 13 baby spidermonkeys, who I gave fruits, dogfood and leaves. I was lucky at the end of the week there were 21 volunteers and some of them only cleaned cages of parrots. It was forbidden to talk to the animals or let them sit on you, because when they get used to humans, they won`t be able to live in nature anymore.
The monkeys were the most fun, they were adorable. I have been shit-on and peed-on so many times in one week, but what the fuck!
Arcas is in the jungle at lake Peten. The work started at 7 and every morning I took a swim in the astonishing lake at 6h, with a sunrise. At 2.30 we were of duty and we could go for a swim or to the zoo for free or with a boat to Flores.
One morning I was very early and the vet Alejandro needed some help, so I followed the guy. One of the volunteers had forgotten to close the cage of the crocodiles and they were all escaped. Alejandro gave me a stick which I had to push on the neck of a young crocodile from about 30 or 40 cm. Very hard so he would close his big mouth. Then I had to put my hand just behind the stick and lift the crocodiles in the pond. Even if they were only 30 cm, they were pretty strong. After this adventure I asked if there were big crocodiles in the lake. Fortunately there were only small crocodilles in the lake, when they get bigger than 2 or 3 meters the people of the village throw stones at them and they go to another lake. I have to admit that the next morning I didn´t swim that far.
With 21 "only English speaking volunteers" I decided to move. At 8 tonight leaves my 24h busride to Quetzaltenango.