Life as an intern in Paraguay

The bus journey to Santa Rosa was no different to any other bus journey in South America. My ticket was brought with an allocated seat the night before, early doors I arrived at the designated terminal with time to spare but alas no bus arrived when expected. It was over an hour late when it arrived and as I tried to find my seat I realized that seat number 52 did not exist, I just sat down and hoped for the best. The bus stopped frequently and soon filled up, so much so, that people were standing on top of each other, there’s nothing like having a mans genitalia squashed up against the side of your arm for 5 hours but at least I still had my seat.

Leaving the bus in Santa Rosa I couldn’t get over the blanket of hot humid air that descended over me, carrying my backpack across the street left me a hot sticky mess. I haven’t felt heat like this before and it is going to take a bit of time to acclimatise. I guess that’s to be expected arriving at the height of the summer where it can easily reach temperature above 40 degrees. I was meet by the director of the organization that I was to do my internship with for the next 3 months. The drive to Laguna Blanca was along a red clay road with some patches of tarmac along the way; it’s a work in progress that is moving along at Paraguayan time. The reserve is nestled in on a unique patch of land where 3 major biomes exist, Atlantic forest, transitional forest and Cerrado. The property is nestled along the shores of a huge natural lake with a sandy beach. The house was a converted cattle shed with a quirky rustic feeling to it; I was to share a dorm room for the next 3 months with the other interns and volunteers. The first night when I got into bed I couldn’t be more aware of the rather large spider webs intertwined in the slates above my bed. The priority of jobs to be done the following day is to somehow figure out how to get a mosquito net over the bunk bed as a barrier to all the creepy things getting in over night.

I’m at Para La Tieria to doing an internship, PLT is a not for profit conservation organization that aims to protect habitats and species in Paraguay through science and community engagement. This is a great organization as interns develop their own project to help increase the scientific knowledge from the reserve. I had come to do a project about rodent burrows and herpetology but after nearly dying in the Cerrado (savannah type land) on the first day it was evident that after all my ups and downs through Peru and Bolivia it has left me completely unfit and unprepared for the work. I know this will come back but with only 3 months at the reserve I wasn’t going to have the privilege of waiting. So it was decided that I would help on an inventory project of butterflies of the reserve combining working in the museum and some fieldwork collecting butterflies for the collection. This would later turn out to be the best thing that could have happened in the whole time I was in South America. But more of the later.

Life on a field site is tough, there seems to be a romantic notion of the out of Africa life, David Attenborough discovering new species on every corner but in reality it’s hard. The field site at Laguna Blanca was in fact one of the most comfortable field sites I’ve been to though. There is little privacy or alone time but on the flip side you spend so much time with the staff and other interns and volunteers that friendships blossom quickly. Eating meals together has a huge sense of family that has been all to much forgotten in modern society, with little connection to the outside world I felt that I was able to reset and remember that checking Facebook, emails and the news every day, multiple times even is not the be all and end all in life. There needs to be some level of flexibility though it was not uncommon for the power to go out, there was no generator but a gas cooker, head tourches and candles. With the reserve being so remote if anything broke it would take a while for repairs to be done but we always made best we could. No water was a bit tough; having to use the woods to go to the toilet was all well and good until it was 3am. Venturing to a wooded area was scary especially as a rattlesnake had been seen in the vicinity not that long ago!

There are not many groups of people that are as comfortable with the additional houseguests as a group of biologists. Not only were we for the most part accepting of the creepy crawlies that would join us at the dinner table but we would actually get excited about the endless beetles, bugs and flies buzzing around. There are several incidents that particularly stick out for interesting diner shenanigans, I never thought a small dung beetle could actually lift my foot up but I was clearly in his way and he wanted to get passed. Obviously for any biologists a career aspiration to find a new species is pretty high up on the list, after movie night I was roiling the projector screen and noticed a small butterfly that had unfortunately been rolled up inside it. On inspection it was one I didn’t recognize from our collections, it wasn’t the golden ticket of a new species but it was new to the reserve so a big bonus. As well as the copious amounts of insects that would visit regularly we had a steady supply of amphibians. Going to the toilet in the middle of the night was risky business there were several bathroom frogs (not their scientific name) that when the light was turned on would leap around pretty much leap frogging each other to get away. If you were lucky you might get one stuck to you whilst using the facilities. The rococo toads often identifiable and did get named, particularly when we were getting them ready for toad races, often entered the house which was fine but they had a bad habit of defecating everywhere. One took exception to my boots and often when I was getting ready to go out in the field I would have to coax the little toad out to find another home for the day. Unfortunalty there was a very unfortunate incident involving a kettle and a bathroom frog, I wont go into details but I shall forever feel the deep guilt for the little frog.

Ok so apart from the above critters frequenting the house there was for me some very unwelcome visitors and this consisted of the legless slithering variety. My first encounter with snakes was whilst out late one night looking for scorpions. I quite literally nearly stepped on it, the reserve was home to 4 venomous snakes and I was none the wiser which ones wanted to kill me yet, thankfully this one was quite harmless. Eating lunch one day, the jays where quick frankly losing their s*$@t , there was only one thing that creates that sort of frenzy with the birds and that’s snakes. So instead of running for cover we went to explore and found a big rattle snake curled up under a bromeliad all of about 10m from the house. The next incidence and there were many, was going out to the Atlantic forest one morning minding my own business and enjoying the birds and butterflies when my foot came down very closely to a coral snake. A small but highly venomous snake that conveniently there is no anti venom for. The only saving grace its mouth is quite small and is pretty difficult to get bitten by one.

Sitting in the museum with the beautiful air conditioning and music playing you could almost forget that you were on the reserve but when you get rudely disturb by being informed a nest of Bothrops have hatched it can ruin your day. Bothrops belong to the viper family and are generally quite grumpy, you would think a baby snake would be harmless, but you would be wrong as they are unable to control the venom gland so if you get bitten you are going to get a big dose of venom. To my dismay when looking for them one of the guards walked over with a carrier bag with one of the snakes in it. Once in a box, with trepidation I headed over to take its photo. The scary thing is knowing there could be up to 20 of these guys very close to living quarters. Coming from the UK and not having much contact with snakes I was unaware that I wasn’t particularly happy about having them in close proximity. I was upset that when most people came back from their fieldwork they would list the mammals and birds that they had seen, but more often than not when I came back I was telling my stories of snakes. I decided that I am not a fan unfortunately, but I obviously wouldn’t want to see any harm to any snake. In Paraguay like lots of countries in the world snakes have a bad reputation and are often killed, one day we received a call that an anaconda had been found in the local village and its future would be uncertain. We (when I say we, I don’t mean me) went out and rescued her and brought back to the reserve. Now the lake was a place for swimming and relaxing but after a 3.7m constricting snake had been released here I didn’t feel much like swimming there anymore, I’m a wuss I know.

Not all the animals were scary though, as soon as I arrived at the reserve I clocked the dog sat outside the house, he had big feet, big floppy ears and a waggy tail. I was going to be happy. Lobo was the “security dog” a big squishy ball of dog in reality. I was so happy to have a dog around and loved taking him out for walks when I went out to do field work he would run off ahead and then wait for me to round the corner before heading off up ahead and he would patiently wait while I set up the butterfly traps. He could be a bit naughty and bugger off into the forest but he knew the reserve very well and would usually be waiting up ahead for me. There were a couple occasions when Lobo didn’t like me and no more so than the time he had been scooting his bottom along the floor indicating has anal glands were blocked. I knew my nursing skills would get me on my travels at some point, but having to unblock anal glands was something that I didn’t think I would have to do. Gala is a naughty tortie and was obtained to keep the rats under control and she definitely did a god job at this. She would stalk you in the living area along the table and depending on her mood, would swipe you or give you a head rub. Because of the endemic lizards and birds she wasn’t allowed outside unless it was supervised but she would often sneak out when the door was opened resulting in a search party and a game of chase. She liked to sleep on top the vacant bunk bed above mine as it had a comfy mattress and a window she could look out of. If I was on the bed below it was like a gruffalo was walking across the top, she wasn’t the most graceful cat and often slipped off high places, she reminded me of me a little. A little tabby cat turned up one day and was very evident she was heavily pregnant; she decided to have her kittens in the directors house. Not so daft as soon as we found the kittens she was adopted along with her babies to be looked after.

Life as an intern on the field site, we had the opportunity to help with other projects going on. I enjoyed going out after dark looking for scorpions, nightjars and potoos. I started my life as new graduate wanting to work with human animal conflicts with big cats but during my time at Laguna Blanca I developed a big interest in butterflies to the point where I have become a little bit obsessed. Doing this project I have decided that I want to start looking into jobs working with the collections, the Natural History Museum would be a dream.

Not far from the reserve on neighbouring property a special bird is found nesting there. The white wing nightjar is a small beautiful bird that is only found nesting in 3 locations including the one where we have been monitoring them. It was such amazing opportunity to go out one evening to see them, and to hold the endangered bird was an experience that I wont forgets in a hurry. Now I’m partial to a bit of bird watching and the reserve was a great place to do this, I spent more time trying to get close to the burrowing owls that made the Ceraddo their home. They would sit on the dried fire burnt tress and bob up and down and screech at me with disdain, but these plucky little owls became my favourite. I managed to tick off a lot of birds in my book on the reserve but I’m not quite at the big year stage yet.

The internship was at times punishing but all in all one of the most rewarding things I have done, I will hopefully be writing up my study for publication and I was awarded intern of distinction, an award that hasn’t been awarded to many people. Im definitely going to miss this crazy little reserve in Paraguay.

There’s so many stories I could talk about but then this blog post will be never ending, its probably too long already. My last story was my journey home, as I was loading my backpack on the truck, I was informed that there was political unrest in Asuncion that was becoming more violent. It was decided that it wasn’t ideal for me to travel so I got a bus into Brazil and changed my flights to Rio. From Rio I thought it would be a straightforward flight back to London but along with the theme of the trip it wasn’t to be. Three hours into the flight the pilot came over the intercom to inform us there was engine problems and the flight could not continue onto London and that it had to return to Rio. I wondered at this point if someone above was a having a huge laugh at my expense. The pilot assured us it was not a serious emergency but they didn’t want to fly large distances over the ocean. Arriving back to Rio the airline couldn’t have been more helpful, we were sent to a local hotel in a taxi and then the following morning new flights were arranged for us. I made my way back to London drama free that day.

This trip has had many ups and downs, dramas, happy times, and down times but ultimately I have gained many experiences and memories that I had would not had the privilege to have if I had just decided not to come to South America. Due to changes throughout there has been places that I have not been able to get to but this just means there’s more trips to be planned in South America in the future.