Well one month has past and I´m back in Cusco for a weeks vacation with Paula, the resident naturalist at MLC who is working on setting up a medicinal plant garden. It´s been so long since an update not really sure where to start so I guess I´ll start at the begining. The bus ride through the Andes. It takes about 12 to 13 hours on a tiny, winding, bumpy road (not fun when your still sick from the Malaria tablets). The view is amazing and we were passing through one of the most beautiful bits as the sun was rising over all of these farms on the mountainside. The bus ride ends in Atalaya the port town on the Madre de Dios river. From there it´s a 30 minute boat ride to MLC.

The MLC is beautiful, there is no other way to put it. Volunteers sleep in traditional thatched roof pods on the second floor. Every morning (if you don´t have macaw monitering) the sun comes in and lights up all the mosquito nets. The first week was mainly lectures and hikes on the trails. After that we did a lot of work in the nerby town Salvacion building biogardens. But about mid way through the first month the orchid specialist Javier came down to work on the Orchid garden. We´re expanding the infrastructure, and now building a roof because the big shade tree came down in the last storm, to includ orchids from the cloud forest. BUt I finaly have a project, assisting in the orchid identification research. Essenetially I just collect and preserve flowers and take pictures of them and write a description. Well thats all for now. I´ll add some more about our jungle "experiences" tomorrow.