We had to bring all the food we'd need for the time with us. As you can imagine, for 9-13 for 20 days, this was quite a bit of food. Since this site was so close to Iquitos and Judit had to go back halfway to pick up Eileen anyways, she brought some more food back then. But at the other sites I don't think we'll have that option. At then end, any leftover fresh food or opened packages we left for the park guards who were hosting us. We would also share our leftovers with them if we had any.
Right when we get up, we don't really have time for breakfast, so we just have some coffee or hot chocolate and oatmeal and/or crackers. Once we get to the field and the morning rush of birds is over (they want breakfast too!) we have a "real breakfast" of yogurt, fruit (bananas or oranges) and bread or crackers with a spread. We won't be able to have bread at the next field site(s?) because it isn't as readily available, and the bread goes bad after a few days in the hot and humid conditions. On the few days when we didn't have to get up super early (set up days, group days off) we would make pancakes or eggs for breakfast.
As I said before, we took turns cooking dinner for the group. I found cooking for 10+ people with ingredients I don't normally use super stressful, since most people turned out to be very good at cooking and every meal was quite yummy, so I felt like the standards were high. However, this was the only field site we had to do this for - at all other field sites we hire the locals to cook for us. Usually we cooked rice with some type of legume (beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc.) or pasta, and almost always had a salad on the side. One unique salad that's popular here is Ensalada Ruso (Russian salad) - cooked carrots, potatoes, and beets, cut into cubes and mixed with a mayo/vinegar/sugar dressing. It's actually really good. Stir-fry was pretty easy to make, and once in a while we made quinoa. Some people got really creative - we had some yummy things like tuna cakes, lentil burgers, sweet potato fries, potato fritatas, and once Phebe made a "Chinese roti" (Indian bread?).
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| Phebe's bread creation! |
We bathed in a nearby stream. I think this site is supposed to have the hardest bathing conditions too, because the stream is really really small and shallow (like a foot deep) which means you have to use a bucket to dump the water all over yourself, lather up, and then bucket-rinse. However, the park guards used this water as their drinking water too, so we couldn't rinse right in the stream, we had to rinse on the shore to prevent the soap residue from contaminating their water. It wasn't very fun. And since we usually come back when it's already dark, we have to do this all by the light of our headlamps, with mosquitos!
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| This was our shower for 3 weeks. No joke. |
One thing I learned about myself is that I don't really have any qualms about being completely naked in front of a bunch of strangers in this sort of situation, including the guys (but more at night, in broad daylight it was slightly more awkward). Interestingly, it was the guys who were way more awkward about being naked and being around us when we were naked. Go figure. They never took off their shorts when they bathed and were always like "are you guys naked down there? we can come back later!" It was pretty funny.
The stream is also where we did our laundry. The water here was very soft (or hard? I don't know the difference) so it was nearly impossible to get all the soap out. It just stuck to everything, even our skin when we were bathing.
At this site we had an outhouse/latrine. It's not really that bad, it's basically like a wooden port-a-potty... that is never emptied. I think some of the other sites will be similar, while others will actually have toilets that you flush by pouring a bucket of water in it.
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