It is Thursday 3rd April. Once again, we wake up to a dry jungle, though this time slightly warmer.  I start my day by feeding the coatis and then performing my favourite task: baños. I feel I have spent more mornings burning toilet paper than I have walking Gaia. Speaking of whom, today is her first time meeting Aeddie. We set off at 9am, and, alike yesterday, make slower progress than usual. These treks are never easy the first time around. After about 40 minutes, we reach the enclosure and Aeddie gets to meet their star. Gaia is full of energy today and whizzes around the enclosure chasing after her ball. The three of us stroll together, telling Aeddie about Gaia and learning more about their life and travels too. We then change the hay on Gaia’s second platform and I walk ahead to burn it before lunch. Already lacking in delight to be spending a second session at the burning pit today, I am further displeased to find hay left in there that someone did not burn shortly beforehand. I bitterly stand in my cloud of smoke, but at least dreaming of the lentil dish that will follow at lunch.

At 2pm, Marine, Luca and I make way on Luca’s second session with Kusiy, shaving five minutes off of her current outward commute time. Kusiy, as with yesterday, is chuffed at the presence of several people and we walk several laps with him. We then take a sit down and I work on some enrichment. With Gaia, we tend to work on her enrichment in one of her management cages. She will then sit by the sliding door, relaxing in our company and finding fascination in the new toy being constructed for her. I have not tried making enrichment in front of Kusiy before. This is quite a simple toy – three sticks wrapped together with vines, accompanied by large patuju leaves around the outside that he can scratch and rip apart. He seems pretty relaxed, until I stand up with it and he begins to follow, very focused on the construction. I think in the future, I will prepare the enrichment in private and leave it as a surprise.

We finally walk back, once again, completing the journey in a shorter time than previously. Tonight, the vet students are doing presentations after dinner. Jose and Tania are studying in La Paz and spending two months here working with the camp animals. Living in the jungle for two months is not a bad way to spend work experience. It’s definitely something to write home about. Today, the focus of the presentations is all about enrichment and how important it is that we do what we can to best simulate living in the wild. Hiding food, in particular, encourages our cats to use their sense of smell, to dig, to jump and to climb.

It’s Friday – the end of the working week at last! I go to write my diary to discover that it is infested with termites. Can the jungle just leave me alone for a few hours? I brush them off, consume my morning porridge (a ritual of mine on Gaia walking days) and set off at 7am with Adi and Aeddie (confusing, right?). This time, the walk is a lot shorter now that Aeddie knows where the holes are. We greet Gaia and get strolling. I walk at the front, with Adi on the back and Aeddie beside her, observing how things are done. It all goes rather well and Gaia enjoys her longest trail “Coconut Mall”. However, when we reach the final cross road before heading to the river, Gaia takes a mini short cut through the bushes and gets herself tangled in vines. After some persistence, we manage to set her free, with Gaia calmly sitting down throughout the process, understanding that we are trying to help her. Upon arriving at her home, I then march back to the spot of all the drama and machete away the vines to avoid such a situation arising again.

We then make way to camp with Adi walking ahead and Aeddie and I proceeding at a more leisurely pace behind, having a lovely conversation as we do so. As we arrive, we are greeted with some excellent news. It has become apparent over the past few days that the baños have been filling up. Our toilets are either a toilet shell or simply a hole, with our poops landing in large containers underneath. These containers are in fact wheelie bins. Wheelie bins that, as of last night, were overflowing. In annuncios this morning, the volunteers were told that today is the day the bins will be emptied. As a team, they gloved up and wheeled the bins over to the poop hole (no description needed) and tipped the contents into the abyss. Having been on a walk with Gaia at 9am, when this was all kicking off, we narrowly avoided being roped into this task. That wouldn’t have been a great second morning for Aeddie.

Following lunch, we then head for Kusiy. Word on the grapevine (I spoke to his morning volunteers) is that he did six laps this morning. Our goal is to beat this. No one has a great deal of energy on a Friday afternoon, but we pull our socks up and crack on with it, managing a total of seven laps, with plenty of running too. Luca, bless her, still suffering with an appalling set of wellies, requests a five minute sit down before moving onto our end of day jobs. I take a look at Kusiy and quickly establish that he will not be protesting about such a thing. Our boy, is too, tuckered out.

We then race home and take quick showers and pack our bags. Tonight, as a special change, we are going to stay at the Laguna hotel again. This means a rare night in my own room, a warm shower and air conditioning. We eat our dinner and head to the Fumador, on the road side, to wait for the taxi. Our driver today is Jose Luis. In true Bolivian style, he likes to turn up late. Furthermore, after less than 10 minutes of driving, he stops in Santa Maria to top up the fuel tank. Abbie jokes that he must be doing this with a pipette, as we sit parked for well over 20 minutes. Mario questions why he does not do this before collecting us. Then, after what feels like hours, we finally arrive in Guarayos and race around buying booze and snacks, and in my case, vouchers for phone credit (that’s right, in Bolivia you buy phone credit in a shop – it’s like being in the past). We then make the final journey to the Laguna and set ourselves up on a large table outside. Last time we were here, there were about 10 of us. Today, it is about 25.

I sit with Abbie and Bex and we get drunk chatting with Cleo. I have never seen Cleo drunk before. We start talking about the cats, because there really is no work-life separation here, and she tells me that peeing in the cat’s enclosures is good enrichment. Whilst I respect Cleo’s judgement, I will definitely verify this when she is sober tomorrow, before taking a whizz on one of Kusiy’s trees. We then enter into a game called “rage cage”, which is essentially a horrific adaptation of beer pong in which we move in a circle trying to bounce a ping pong ball into an empty cup. Once you have succeeded, you pass the ball to your left. If you succeed on your first try, you pass it anywhere you like. There are always two people playing. If the person behind you catches you up, you have to drink from one of the full cups in the centre of the table. Unshockingly, I do not immediately take to this game, and the other players, having realised this, regularly pass the ball back to me so that I am frequently overtaken. To add insult to injury, if your ball bounces and lands in one of the full cups, you need to drink the contents. I have never drank so much beer in my life. I’d have rather this was played with wine. Still, the other players take joy in watching me try and fail as I grow increasingly angry with cups, informing them that I am a doctor of gravity and that they should be doing as I say.