A View from the Hammock

Well Reader,

Another update from Posadas where I am sitting in my new winter hat as the temperature plummeted to 5.c in the last couple of days. Though it´s now warmed up to 12.c. Stupidly I posted my fleece hat back home when I arrived in Posadas and the temperature was 39.c.

This week the placement at the nursery continued as normal.... I am not integrating into the community as much as I thought on my project as I am left to look after the toddlers mostly en solo. The children (all 2 years old) are lovely, and I´m building up relationships (you know what I mean!!) with them easily, but the adults are less easy to mix with and consequently I might have a richer experience by paying someone else to do my job...one pound 50p per day....... whilst I hang out with the locals (getting good at that!).


Last week we had to fumigate the class room so we moved everything out, including the babies in their cots in order to deal with the infestation. I still don´t know what the room was infested with but for the staff to bother about it, it must have been bad. Hygiene remains terrible but seemingly children grow up to be healthy here and will be able to read, write and send their own children to the nursery in only 14 years´time.

On Friday I intervened in a wee punch up...more cloth traumas...one of the boys had a nasty bleeding nose and mouth but I didn´t want to use the revolting nappy change brillo pad or the floor cloth, and since there is never any toilet roll I decided that some bread would do the job. It did, but wee kiddie was a bit confused! The girls´ home is now on in the afternoons, which is much more rewarding, but equally filthy and germ infested....more on that next time.

Anyway, that was weekdays, now on last weekend. I had a visitor. Woo-hoo! And not just any visitor...Alastair B (from Church) and I had been trying to work out how to meet up somewhere on this continent. Bariloche was 2-3,000km away from Antofagasta whereas Posadas is a mere 1,500km away (3 flights and 5 airports or 35 bus hours or apparently 3 days on a motorbike). Due to my timetabling I was going to struggle to get to Antofagasta in the Atacama desert so I am delighted to say Antofagasta came to visit me..

There isn´t much in for visitors to Posadas, unless you are visiting for the famed, a-hem, Love Motels, and I have been craving to get to countryside ever since I finished the cycling holiday. So we arranged to go to Ibera, which is one of the World´s biggest wetlands, home to Caimen, Monkeys and over 350 species of birds...and a really nice Estancia (hotel/lodge). Ibera is maybe 300km+ from here, of which 120km requires a 4*4.

It was my first real 4*4 experience, and was a complete baptism of fire. It was dark the entire journey but that didn´t matter because the windows were frequently mud-caked. The lights kept needing to be washed though. It had been raining and the track was terrible. The driver of our long wheel base Defender (important detail for my little bro) Maurico was very capable as well as very good looking.....bit of a shock though when he called me Senora (not Senorita) and I realised I was old enough to be his mother!

It took us 5 hours to reach the Estancia during which time we skidded and spun all over the track but thankfully didn´t get stuck or roll, yet I was left wishing my water bottle was Vodka. Mum would have loved it!! We later learned that Maurico and the Landrover, who returned to Posadas immediately after dropping us off, ended up in the Laguna, Maurico swimming out to escape the sunken vehicle. He´s lost his pride and his CD collection, but he was fine despite a very long wet walk home. The submerged landrover was recovered and is now drying out. It was his Uncle who transfered us back to Posadas on Monday, giving Maurico a driving lesson at the same time.

The first morning we woke up and realised what an incredible place we were in. It was perfect. We could watch the humming birds at the flowers from the lounge/dining room/patio, the wading birds from the poolside and everything else from the comfort of the hammocks. Alastair took this hummingbird picture...very difficult to get!! Credit to Alastair for most of the other pictures too....thanks! We were there for 2.5 days and managed 3 boat rides, mostly at sunset, swimming, horse riding (a cabalgata) and a monkey spotting stroll through the forest. I wouldn´t have missed those experiences for the world, bar the cabalgata where the horses bolted*, but I was also happy just to sit in the hammock, and just, well, be. When I said that to the other volunteers they said "What? You never sit still for more than a few minutes." After some thought I realised they were right. However I hadn´t been to Ibera before and I really felt like I was in the right place at the right time with the right friend. We made some new friends too...Renata and Gunter from Germany.

There were kayaks at our disposal but unfortunately they were located 100 metres from the hammock.... too far away to bother about when the hammock was just sooooooooo comfortable. I´ll have to make the effort to use those next time!

After a hard day´s relaxing on Sunday we did manage to drag ourselves to an evening show: a spectacular Son et lumière effort put on by Mother Nature herself. A tin roof to hear the rain on, a window to watch the lightening from and a good bottle of Chilean wine (imported by Alastair for a special occasion), shared with Renata and Gunter along with some good stories. Absolutely perfect.

Here are a few of Alastair's photos from the wetlands....the spider metropolis (each blob is a spider in a mass of cobwebs), the Carpincho, the world´s biggest rodent at over 1m long, the Caimen, woodpeckers, federal, etc. Loads!


It was very hard to leave Ibera, partly because I´d had such a good time and the place was so beautiful, but also because it had been raining hard which meant the 4*4 transfer would be even more hairy than the outward journey. And it was! Our driver was incredibly skilled but I still had to keep my eyes shut for quite a chunk of the voyage....too scared to look!

On arrival back in Posadas the welcoming committee (other volunteers) spied us from the cafe as we walked past so we headed in for beers.

Salud!