Travel, Nature & Us

Very good coffee!!
Breakfast for the first day was rice and beans with scrambled eggs. We think fruit is available if we get there for the early breakfast, before work.

We completed registration, then had a tour of the site with 5 other new volunteers. It is quite a large site with many different native species, most of which we will try to introduce in the blog over the next few weeks.

What has been made very clear is when you can or cannot take photos of the animals. There is a law now in Costa Rica prohibiting selfies with wild animals. This includes taking photos of other people with the animals, even whilst working or when outside of the enclosure (less than 2m). That means any close-up photos of the animals are only permitted when you are outside of the enclosure and they are alone doing their own thing. This law has been introduced to try to help stop the awful practice of humans stealing young wildlife from their parents by killing the parents. The poachers would then use the young animals to charge tourists to have photographs and selfies with them and would then “discard” the animals when they were no longer “useful” to them.

Importantly the Rescue Center is working to allow the animals to return to the wild, and wherever possible to not get comfortable with (or dependant on) humans, the main aim here is “Rescue, Rehabilitate and Release” as quickly as possible. Some of the animals here can never be returned to the wild, but effort is made to keep them living as much of a natural life as possible – there are no pets here, so we need to keep that in mind whenever working with the animals. The only exception there could be Luna; a super chilled-out dog who lived here before the owners, and wanders around happily amongst us all.

Lunch is from 12, and today for example was pork, rice and mixed salad, with a little chocolate bunny for Easter Sunday.
In the afternoon, there is the daily meeting for everyone at 13:30 for any updates and to organise the work for the next 24 hrs. We were allocated to Coordinator Denise (Italian). She supervised our small group to feed the “Zone 3” animals.
A two-person job had our names on it… We went in with ‘Lil’Dahma’ (LD) – a very friendly and playful raccoon, who previously refused to be released back into the wild after becoming too familiar with humans. So, whilst Warwick distracted him playing with a broom (he loves to chase and catch a brush), Elizabeth collected the old food and distributed the fresh fruit and veg around the enclosure. Once he had eventually let go of the broom, Warwick scrubbed Lil’Dahma’s small pool/bath while Lil’Dahma then went to chase Elizabeth around the enclosure!

He was on the search for his favourite food – sweet potato. After checking each piece of lemon, melon, beetroot and corn, he was left disappointed, and returned to the broom – he will have sweet potato tomorrow. In the end we both had the (apparently usual) small scratches around our ankles – something we were used to from our equally playful cats.
(Note: all animals are checked and cleared for any diseases by the vets before any volunteers have access to them).

Then some veg prep for the next feeds of the animals in Zone 3; each animal has a mix of 3 or 4 different types of fruit and vegetables, alternated each day, and we chop them to a certain size depending on who they are for.

We finished for the day at 16.00, and had some time relaxing in the shade before going to dinner at 18:00.