Day 7 – No Bears…

June 10th – 10:12pm

Today was a sad day. We didn’t hear any bears.

It started with a breakfast of Fried Bread which was quite good with butter. After breakfast, Sarah and I were basically thrown to the wolves. The boys got Kerry as their guide and, due to vehicle troubles, our guide didn’t make it to the bear house. Samuel is a guide for the Andean Bear Project that lives on the Cazapamba trail and he was supposed to lead us up the trail. Instead, Sarah and I ended up having to go to him. So… basically, we did the trail by ourselves and could have gotten lost or seriously hurt and no one would have known.

We hiked the whole way up Cazapamba in about an hour and a half to meet Samuel at his house. When we arrived, he wasn’t ready to go and we ended up sitting around for about an hour. He was very nice though and let us tour his farm and what not. Samuel has a huge Grenadia plantation, which is a fruit closely related to Dragon Fruit. He let us each try one. They are very good, but they have way to many seeds for my liking.

After sitting for an hour, I got terribly stiff and the walk back down Cazapamba was terrible for me. To make it worse, we didn’t hear Frida or any of the other bears. I’m so excited to have the weekend off to just relax and heal up.

We’re planning on going Zip-Lining tomorrow, but I’m not sure if my legs will be up for it, so I might just go in to town for some internet. I would also really like to talk to Ben tomorrow. I talked to my mom today and she said he seems really down since I left. That makes me really sad and I really, really miss him already. The first week is almost over, so it’s only a matter of time before I get home.

Kerry also told us that we will probably be camping Tuesday through Thursday next week. In a town not to far from Pucara, a farm-owner has been seeing bears in her corn field. Based on the amount of information we can get from her, we will camp on her farm with the intention of trapping and collaring a bear. This means, I may get to be part of the collaring process. So, hopes are high. It might also be nice not to walk for two to four days. Haha.

Hoping to see a bear before coming home.

Love and Andean Bears,

Ashley