By Richard Munday,

One of our ongoing projects for the last six months has been the GPS mapping of the entire reserve.

This project has been planned in three stages. Stage 1 was the complete mapping and marking of all the trails around the reserve, which meant walking around all the trails and stopping every 50M waiting for a GPS signal and then moving on to take the next point. Now as you can imagine, with about 30 KM of trails to mark we knew it would take a long time! But thankfully we had the help of Rike Becker, a student who is now in Argentina, who took charge of the entire project and managed to complete this stage for us.

Stage 2 was the marking of all the main structures of the reserve, platforms, buildings, bridges and then putting all the data into one spreadsheet so that we could make the computerized version of the map. Again this wasn’t a huge task, although we probably had about 1000 points in total and probably a lot more than that. We managed to have the basic map made up with about two weeks of work, the next stage of things was to link all the points together so that the trails were actually lines and not just dots, making sure each trail was coloured differently, adding special colour points for bridges, platforms and buildings and then adding trail names, the river, the creek, a compass, and the main key.

What a cool map!

Stage 3 which is still being planned out, is the identification and marking of key areas of botanical interest. In February we should have had several botanists planning to visit us, but due to the flood and the resulting high swamp levels, we decided it would be best to delay their arrival until we could use the forest properly. When the levels have dropped again, the botanists will be able to help us identify primary and secondary forest, swamp areas, dense forest, clear forest, even down to different types of trees, this again is going to be a pretty big task and will no doubt take a good few months to complete it. But once the work is done we will have a complete map, which we can use for many different things like navigation, identification of good sites for certain projects such as mist-netting and auto-camera sites, and even new observation points.

You can learn more about our other projects on our Conservation Program in Peru here

The Canadian Projects Abroad team will be hosting an Open House on April 10th from 4-8 pm at our Toronto Office just south of Yonge & Bloor. This is a great opportunity to meet the staff and former volunteers who will be able to answer questions about our projects and destination countries. BBQ fare will be available with all proceeds being directed to the refurbishment of Peruvian schools in the Sacred Valley.

If you can attend, please RSVP here

I know Rob and Kyra would love to have a great turn out!

Volunters at Knysna

For our March Volunteer Trip, we cruised down the Garden Route in search of beaches, relaxation and fun! On the N2 freeway we passed through the vineyards, down to the coast to Mossel Bay where the official start of the Garden Route begins. Passing through thick forests, floral sanctuaries on the windy, rugged coastal highway, we finally arrived in Buffalo Bay! Buffalo Bay is an oasis for those who really want to get away from it all, the white sandy beach stretches for miles, the surfing is impeccable and development is scarce! We stayed the night in the Buffalo Bay Backpackers, where we met people from all over the world, tasted a traditional South African braai supper and watched the bright stars before heading off to bed.

We made a bold excursion into the Goukamma Nature and Marine reserve which is famous for its marine life, bottle-nosed dolphins and whales off the shoreline and coastal fynbos. We decided to tackle the Coastal Hike, a 10km trek in the hot sunshine! Before beginning our hike, we realized that in order to even get to the trail head we had to use our woman (and one man) power to pull the “ferry” across a river! We managed to do this with no casualties and had a laugh the whole way!

the “ferry”

We also enjoyed a day in Knysna, checking out the local shops and quaint town famous for its oysters! The volunteers also visited the Knysna Elephant Park, where they learned a lot about elephant conservation and rehabilitation. Jolanda Vroling, Ruth Hamilton and Lindsay Smith gave them some exercise by riding on their backs! We had a great trip, can’t wait to come back!

-Alyssa Myers

James Fones of Grandall Legal Group based in Shanghai wrote to Projects Abroad recently to praise the work done by interns. He said, “Working with interns from Project Abroad has been educational for both of us. Each intern in his / her own capacity brought with them superb skills and resources. Even the high school interns were top notch and contributed to our firm. The university and post graduate level interns were qualified to work with any firm in the international community. Project Abroad should be proud of its selection criteria and the results.

Our firm focuses on M & As and IPO’s. In addition, as the Foreign Legal Consultant, I work on funding and start-up companies in need of financial support. The firm’s attorneys are the best China has to offer and are not shy in asking the interns to participate at all levels of business transactions. I have never been let down by an intern. On the contrary, my business client’s enjoy working with the teams and our reputation is enhanced by them. An effort is made to tailor projects for the interns in accordance with their personal education specialty and goals. This allows the interns to grow in the field of their choice. In addition, introduction to Chinese business and social customs is emphasized so the interns may return with knowledge that is immediately useful in their respective countries.”

Well done to all who have undertaken a law internship in China!

To find out more about Law placements in China please click here

Cochabamba, Bolivia

Every month the New York office we receive publications that our volunteers contribute to from around the world and we love to show them off on our coffee table and to our many visitors. One of them is the “Cocha-banner”, a publication Projects Abroad helped develop in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Ximena, the editor, and our volunteers celebrated a milestone with the 30th edition of the magazine. Congrats to all!

The “Cocha-banner” has come a long way since its inception to being a really polished publication filled with lots of interesting articles while it still stays true to its mission to help students study English and raise awareness of different organizations throughout Cochabamba. Congrats again to Ximena and to all the Journalism volunteers throughout the years whose hard work and creativity has made the “Cocha-banner” such a success!

To learn more about working on the “Cocha-banner”, click here

As a geo-geek I am addicted to this website! If you have a free moment and want to test your geography knowledge, give it a whirl.

It is hard to stop playing!

Traveler IQ Challenge

- Will

By Richard Munday

Only just in to the second month of 2008 and already Taricaya has had a little excitement but a major inconvenience.

On February 2nd The Reserva Ecologica Taricaya found itself going underwater. Now this has already happened before all the way back in 2002 but we still found it a huge shock and a big inconvenience, worrying about all the animals, how much deeper it was going to get and of course what to do with the volunteers was all flying through our minds when we realised what was going on…

Leaving Taricaya on Saturday morning, we saw that the waters were worryingly high, but didn’t think to much more of it having already made preparations for a minor flood like moving generators and all the electrical items to higher levels, making sure all the volunteers in lower rooms had moved their things to high shelves and making sure all the staff knew what needed to be done and where everything would be going if things got worse. We arrived in Puerto and with Fernando and Stuart both in Cusco it was left to me to take things under control in town with emails to check, making sure coordination’s were made for supplies for next week and two new volunteers to pick up that day, I found myself a little tied up to say the least!

With everything finished by about 3:40 Saturday afternoon, I headed back to Fernando’s house (where I stay in Puerto) and quickly found myself confronted with Maria Fernanda who had been checking the water levels at the port. Hearing from her that the water had risen another 50 cm I quickly got things moving to get a boat ready and head off to the lodge. But as we all know things in Peru don’t move quickly, it took us about two hours to get everything organised, from getting some of the volunteers down to the port to help us, finding all the staff possible and of course coordinating things with Fernando, Stuart and Willy.

Going down a fast rising river in the dark wasn’t really fun, but of course we managed it with no problems with thanks to Gigo and Sr Wicho (A carpenter of all people who has been doing a lot of work for us but has a lot of experience on rivers)

Arriving at the lodge we were glad to find that we had arrived in time. Although the waters were high, they were not high enough to be a serious problem; even our little Donkey house for Baby Rambito was still dry.

Panic over, we sat down and began coordination for the next days work, moving everything we could find to top rooms, with the water rising about 2cm an hour, we knew that by tomorrow night we would be deep under the water.

Over the course of the next 5 days the river rose to a maximum height of 1M (measured from a high point near the new kitchen – These measurements were taken so we had reference of what the river was doing) then gradually dropped back down to zero again…

The fun wasn’t over though as we had to clean up the mud that was left over, which was great fun! We used a huge water pump to blast the mud from buildings and then repairing all the damage that the waters had caused.

Thankfully no one was hurt over the course of this excitement but unfortunately we did loose one of our Blue and Yellow Macaws, who had fallen into the water during the night.

We are now back to normal work and life in Taricaya, in fact the flood at the start of the month seems like a crazy dream, here’s hoping that our next “El Nino” cycle (The weather system that causes global flux’s in weather) is a little more friendly…still we have another 5 years to prepare for that one!