Heading into the jungle for a month or more...

I met a Dutch couple in a hostel in Santa Cruz (Bolivia) today who told me about a national park six hours away in the jungle run by an organisation called Inti Wara Yassi. From the website:

I have decided to leave Santa Cruz at 6am tomorrow and take the bus to Parque Ambue Ari. There I will live and work for a month (longer if I choose to stay) with monkeys and big cats in a wild reserve. The work is apparently hard, the hours long and in rainy season it can be epically hot with mosquitos up to your eyeballs. Repellent is not permitted because the animals don't like it. The park is in the middle of nowhere with no hot water or even electricity. Of course there is no internet so this will be my last post for a while.

This is the kind of opportunity I am always hoping to stumble across on my travels. I thought the park would be flooded with volunteers but apparently they are desperate for help and only have a small group of fifteen or so. You are allocated one or two big cats (like pumas, jaguars etc) and over the course of a month or more develop a bond of friendship with your animal as you spend six hours a day playing, walking and interacting with the cats. It looks to be an INCREDIBLE experience, I have long held a fascination with primates as well because we can learn a lot about human behaviour by watching them and the chance to work closely with a family group of monkeys is a rare one. I hope to take a lot of notes about their behaviour. The work will be hard, but listening to the couple tell me of their experience and seeing the fire in their eyes as they described the unique bond they developed with their big cat in this reserve has me very excited, I cannot believe an opportunity like this even exists. The prospect of a month or more of no communications might daunt some people but I look forward to it. I suppose I'll spend Christmas and New Year there. It's funny, everyone seems to ask where I'll spend Christmas and New Year like its a big deal, but I hadn't even really thought about it.

I will be parting ways with David here. We have been through some cool experiences together and he will always be welcome to my house wherever I live, but I am determined to go and the rough conditions to be expected are not everyone's cup of tea. David wants to go to Cuzco to party and meet women for New Year and I want a chance to work with some majestic and beautiful creatures. Everyone in life chases something different. I feel deeply privileged to have met David and had the chance to teach him some english. He is a rarely honest man with extremely solid values, I wish him the best of luck with his endeavors.

I guess you have your own reasons for reading this blog. I write it because it helps organise my thoughts and I like to share how I think and what I do in the hopes that perhaps it might prove useful to someone. If one person takes one sentence from this blog and uses it to help achieve something positive in their lives, it has been a success.

I have made a lot of extremely positive changes in my life and myself over the past year. Most of them stem from one pivotal moment in about February this year, that moment was when I watched this video. I know it sounds cheesy, dumb and lame, but it literally was the one key piece of the puzzle that changed my life. Please PLEASE watch it. I know I rave a lot about Tony Robbins, but it has some justification. I consider myself to be fairly smart in some areas but this man has genius I cannot even begin to comprehend. He understands the way we think beautifully and elegantly and knows exactly what to say to get the most out of you. I hope to one day possess one tenth of his self-awareness. Watch the video, even if you don't see much in it your subconscious will chew on it for a long long time and you WILL gain something from it. I'll stop plugging him for a while now I promise.

Someone told me the other day they were "living vicariously" through me and my blog. Don't do this. Don't live vicariously, live for yourself! I write this so I can prove that anyone can do what I do. You could buy a plane ticket to Honolulu tomomorrow and live in Hawaii for the rest of your life if you wanted to. Do something outrageous!

YOU are the only person who owns your life. YOU are the only person who is responsible for what you make of it. You do not need to justify what you do to ANYONE except yourself.

And the only person who is allowed to live vicariously through this blog is my mother ;-)

Chau, until... who knows when!

CIWY is a Bolivian organisation that works in defence of animal rights and the environment.

CIWY has founded and manages three wild animal refuges in Bolivia and strives to educate the Bolivian population to uphold values that promote life, conservation, preservation and the recuperation of biodiversity.