Guiding at Wasai Lodge

Hi everyone! Sorry it has been a while since i emailed, but we have been SOOO busy. We have finally started guiding, which is great, so at least now we are earning some money again instead of spending it!!! Well, we STILL havent seen a jaguar yet, although our eyes get sore staring at the river banks each time we go up to the national park!!! No new animals so far, but rich did get to see a razorbilled currassow ( big bird!) which he really wanted to see! We also got to se some more giant otters can u believe it..they swam right past the lodge on their way upriver!!! We have also got to see loads of kapybaras (some baby ones too..really cute..never thought id be calling a rodent "cute", but anyway!). We had a bit of trouble with getting our guide identification though..the government has decided he only wants guides who are peruvian and have done a 3 year guiding course, so we couldnt get permission to be guides, only permission to be "helpers". But the lodge helped us out (seens as we have come all this way!) and they found us each a peruvian assistant who each have their "carnet" (guide identification from doing the three year course)..so they come with us to act as the "guide" when we go through control points along the river..and in turn, they get work experience by learning from rich and I when we are guiding. So it all worked out fine! The only catch is that rich and i have to spend extra time in our day, training them on how to be a good guide which includes giving them english lessons, cos their english is SOOO bad!... Rather like my spanish, but anyway! no, just jokes, my spanish is really improving now that i have to speak it more cos i am in town so often.Otherwise, richs first group was a young couple from america..the guy was really weird though..he had cut holes in his ear lobes, so that the skin just hung from his ears, rather like some of the tribes in africa, and he had tatoos and piercings all over his body..but they were really nice people, the girl was a really intelligent chemist. My first group was a group of 6 middleaged americans, who were a really awesome group..they were just fascinated by everything and they were really cheerful people and so the guiding was easy, we had loads of fun, i took them swimming in sandoval lake which they really enjoyed. But i didnt tell them that a guy got bitten by a 7m anaconda there recently!!!! maybe i should have, but oh well..the guy was messing with it anyway, so its his fault! Another 5m one was also seen there 2 days ago, so i hope i get to see a really big one soon! Richs group that he has now is a father and son from the uk who look like they have literally been dragged through the bush backwards..all they do is drink beer from morning till the morning..like for breakfast, lunch and dinner (they hardly eat!!!)..if beer is available, they have one in their hands!!! They kept rich up till late the one night which he wasnt too happy about seens as he had to get up at 3:30am the next morning to take them up to the macaw lick! Richs other tourist came to do the ayuhuasca tour..where the lodge basically finds u a shaman (medicine man) and you take ayuhuasca which is a plant which gives u strong hallucinations..it allows u to apparently connect with the spirit world and face inner problems. the shamans use it to contact the ancestors to find a cure for a disease or to diagnose your disease. So this guy (the guest), and the shaman basically spent 2 days passed out in the cabin after drinking ayuhuasca!!! Cos it can sometimes make u really sick, vomiting etc. So rich hasnt seen the guy for 2 days, buy anyway! A lot of tourists come to the jungle to try ayahuasca, and sometimes the local people say that the tourists get so scared sometimes from the hallucinations that they go running off into the jungle!! crazy! On the days we havent had groups, we have been helping out in the kitchen, sweeping the trails etc, and rich has been doing a lot of machete work to help clear some of the paths. They say that august is going to be really busy with tourists, so we will hopefully get lots of work. I am getting a new group 2moro and rich is getting one in about 2 days. He is at sandoval lake now with his permanently drunk guests!!! (oh yes, they took beer with them..!). Anyway, not much news from this side, will hopefully will hopefully be able to write with some more exciting news soon! Hope everyone is well!! Chao for now! Lots of love, us

Razorbilled Currasow, Giant otters