Paraguay: Volunteering at Para La Tierra

We landed another amazing opportunity and adventure. Not even totally sure how it happened and how all our connections worked out, but they did.

The girls were in charge of charting our course for Paraguay, they picked the destinations, the route, and did all the coordinating. 

We entered Paraguay from Iguazu, Argentina into Cuidad del Este (which was a horrible place as many border towns can be) and then their route took us North. They wanted to go to this Reserve that had a reputation for a beautiful lake and pristine wildlife and some sort of research centre called Para La Tierra. So we were on this little local bus out of a tiny town and got dropped off quite literally in the middle of nowhere. If it was not for the scenery on the bumpy and dusty bus ride, I would have probably been a little more concerned. It was one of my favourite drives so far. Tiny little adobe brick and cement homes along the road, red earth, scrawny livestock roaming everywhere. Every home had a drinking well outside the front door and then to throw a curve in the asthetic, most had satellite dishes.

A young fellow with a wagon on the back of his moto-trike met us at the dirt road intersection where our bus dropped us off and took us to a place called Reserva Laguna Blanca.  (This was Joe, an American who has lived in Paraguay since he did his field research on the endangered Nightjar (bird) when he was 22; now, a couple of years later, Joe is the Research Intern Supervisor and is tirelessly working to secure the Reserve from being sold with the young and ambitious founder Karina.)

It ended up being a ridiculously great experience for our whole family. Good job Colby and Quinn!

Laguna Blanca is one of the most biodiverse areas in Paraguay due to its unique location at the frontier of two distinct ecological regions. The research project house sits by the side of Laguna Blanca, an artesian lake, with endangered Cerrado Desert to the north and humid Atlantic Forest to the south. This combination of habitats and the fact that many of the species are endemic to the area make the area a perfect place for researchers. The Reserve harbors a noteworthy diversity of plants and wildlife, including a number of rare, threatened, or endangered species. In Paraguay, the Cerrado suffers continuous destruction as a result of expanding agricultural activities, such as cattle ranching and soya production -- so the Reserve is of great importance.

So we landed amongst all of these (surprisingly beautiful and) young biology, zoology, primatology and conservation graduates (another rare species) who were doing field research projects and we were able to tag along. 

See what we mean! 

We learned how to:

• study the resident tribe of capuchin monkeys; unfortunately we were not able to see any of the monkeys on our early morning scouting walks but we did learn about the locating and the collection of data on their day-to-day movements and behaviour and we loved watching the camera footage that captured the monkeys with the bananas that were left out for them one evening (with Becka, a totally cool gal from Scotland with a Masters degree in Primatology and with a goal to habituate the monkeys to humans (and would love nothing more than a GPS collar or 3)
  
  
  
  
  
• organize and prepare specimens at the little museum beside the research project house (with Olga, a walking encyclopedia from Russia who knows absolutely everything about insects, reptiles, birds -- you name it, she knew it and was a heck of an artist too). We loved all the butterflies and moths at the night moth light where Olga identified all kinds of interesting species. The bugs were quite incredible actually, not mosquitoes, but big beetles (that would dive bomb us) and millions of butterflies and billions of things much uglier than butterflies. Olga also took us out at night to find find scorpions in the jungle -- a totally amazing experience, especially when we realized just how many scorpions there were under the trees and in the sand. They were everywhere and we found them easily with a black light which made them turn flourescent green right before our eyes. [Please note that scorpions are not fatal as the fairy tales led us to believe.] 
  
• set opossum traps to track the little critters in the bush (with Holly, absolutely lovely girl from Scotland who patiently showed us how to bait the traps and then how to carefully identify the opossums from her clever fur shaving system, weigh them, measure their tails, track the females, and then release them).
  
• dig pit-fall traps for lizards and snakes (with India, a very cool Brit who was as coordinated with her machete as she was on the dance floor)
• combine research and reserve work with community outreach and education (with Vivian, a doll from Switzerland who knew 5 languages and who coordinated Para La Tierra's first school group education field trip while we were there; Greg became an event official photographer to document the great day).
  
  
  
  
  
• go night fishing for piranhas (with Jorge, a local fellow with a gentle and confident disposition who knows the reserve inside and out and who works at Para La Tierra. Unfortunately we didn't catch any piranhas but it was great fun attaching raw chicken to our fish hooks in the reeds of the laguna and it was awesome watching the stars of the Southern hemisphere in the black of night from the quiet boat.
  

We would be out in the bush around 6:00 am so that we could be back early in the day to avoid the heat and hit the great little sandy beach. It was between 35-38 degrees everyday -- too hot really, but I'll take it over the snow and cold for now!  We have only had 1.5 days of rain so far on the whole trip! During our down-time we would watch the interns prepare their next day activities (like Abigail, who spent hours counting and re-counting her sunflower seeds to track grazing behaviour of small mammals).

One night the research interns even took us to this local Paraguay dance party. This was a celebration of the community building of 3 chicken coops that Para La Tierra had coordinated so the local women could earn more money independently. This event was particularly important because it was organized by Griselda who did all the cooking and cleaning at the research project house. It was a pretty funny experience complete with chickens walking around on the red dirt dance floor and local teenagers grinding to the Latino dance music as close to the speakers as possible. Greg, Levi, Quinn and I turned in at midnight but Colby stayed out with the interns until after 2 am. Colby now wants to be a biology major (-- she would be such a poor fit for that but it does tell me what a great experience we had and what an impression it made on her). We were the only people at the Reserve until two young pharmacists from Iceland came for our last 2 days.

We were with the interns at Para La Tierra for 5 days and because we were 'volunteers' we only paid $137 per day and that included all our food and lodging. We couldn't buy this education and experience for our kids if we tried. .