Accidental Days Off

Good news! We finished collecting the minimum amount of data our boss wanted to. It was a struggle to finish actually. As soon as we were close the monkeys decided to elude us for a few days. Finally after spending a few hours following the monkeys off trail, hacking away at the forest with my machete, at round 630 as the monkeys were heading to bed and the light was fading I was able to get the last 10 minutes of focal data to reach our goal. It was glorious. Needless to say, we decided to treat ourselves to a party and a day off. We blasted some music at our boss´house (she´s out of the country until tomorrow) and have some fun. The next day, our planned celebratory day off, we ventured across the border to Foz de Iguazu, Brazil. I´ve actually made friends with the smiley bus driver who laughs at us silly Americans who just want some Chinese food. We ate, bought some stupid costumes and nicknaks (I came away with a tiki torch, and a funny foam hat that says brazil on it; Lydia bought a child´s panda mask; Boi bought a costume cape; and Dan bought a child´s acordion), we walked around town and went to the large grocery store to get some products not available in our tiny town of Puerto on this side of the falls. Just as the rain started to pour we headed home.
Coincidentally, we also had the following 3 days off because of storms. We´ve been hanging around CIES, reading (I´ve been reading an insane amount of books, including randomly Othello this week as I felt like reading a classic) , playing guitar, and playing lots of scrabble. Yesterday was our first day back with the monkeys but they were in such a poor area that we were unable to collect any more data. And today, of course, I woke up at 6am only to hear thunder and a downpour. So overall it´s been a pretty relaxing week. There´s been so much rain that the Rio Iguazu, the river in town, is so flooded that the riverside eatery we usually spend some time at eating empenadas and hanging out is completely under water.


Dan decided to run a half marathon (or the equivalent distance) sunday morning because his family was doing the same back in Ohio. A few of us went out on the town saturday night and on our way home, we had our taxi stop randomly along the road back from town to the park so we could place water bottles for him along the way, under signs and by posts. We left him a note for where to look for them and he set off early in the morning. Our taxi driver was pretty confused as to why we kept wanting to stop but we eventually explained it to him. Dan says he couldn´t have been able to finish without the water, all of which he found with ease on his run.

Our boss comes back tomorrow so we´re enjoying another relaxing day of rain before we have to get hurriedly back to work!

A picata, 15 pesos at the Farinia, a plate of cheese, olives, and salami.










Dan and I examining the barrels of olives at the Farinia, an outdoor market that sells a lot of salami, cheeses, olives, wines, etc. We often go here to eat and drink wine outside and relax.







A cool tree in the
forest.










A giant lizard, a Tegu.

Me, Angelica, and Boi at the Cataratas.

The weather here is crazy. Last week there were crazy storms and it was actually cold. Today it's like 90 degrees and sunny. It was almost unbearable in the forest this morning. The monkeys were even too hot; they took a two hour siesta late this morning and just layed in the trees (it's actually super cute how they dangle their hands and feet over the sides of branches and swing them in the air). Work has been going well; my group is almost done with our assignment for now. We hope to get all the information we need within the week.

This week is a full moon again, and last night we went to the waterfalls again. They are too cool. They are crazy full of water because of all the recent rain. They had to close parts of the lower trail last week because they were flooded. This week also marks my two months here in Argentina. Crazy. I can't believe I'm 1/3 of the way done with working here. It all goes by so quickly, even if the days seem long; (I often lose the date or day of the week). There is a foot and a half long lizard that came out of hibernation and now lives outside our kitchen. He scurries away when you get too close, but he's pretty sweet. Coatis attacked our kitchen yesterday, and ate most of our bread, and Boi had to chase them out with a stick. In other words, spring is in full bloom, and heat, here.