The End....?

Part two is over, and I'm finally home for good. What a long strange trip it has been, from raising a rhino, to being spider-man on the Inca trail (seen above) It was more than I could have expected or asked. I have more stories and experiences from this year than I could ever fit onto this blog. While I doubt the following of my escapades is currently at its peak, its only fair for an ending entry. I'm off to Indiana University this fall, despite my efforts to gain entry into a different college, but I'm extremely excited to start living the college life, wherever that is. Thank you to everyone who followed, and I hope I made you proud.

Tyler

A better view when you are closer to the edge

Remember that bike ride I made a reference to?

Here is a nice picture from that bike ride, which was very scarey. Also just an update as to where I am now, we just arrived for ourlast weekend in La Paz for a couple days of trek preparation. we aregoingto ice climbing tommarow which will surely yeild some cool photos, and then we'll be heading for our first trek site. More on that once there is a story!

WARNING

WARNING READ THIS

The below picture is 100% gross.

Not for the faint of heart.

Not For those of you here ¨Because `you want to see pictures of animals`


It Includes injections AND puss

Okay you´ve been warned...

Mom, you were right

Before I left as some of you may have caught wind of, I got my ears peirced. Something I had been thinking about for a while, my parents did not dissaprove, but chops were busted. So things were working out really well until we had some chicken fights in the swimming pool of a hostel we stayed at (not a common luxury). Despite certain taboos, I had a male as a partner on my shoulders who would not realease his vice-like thigh grip on my neck. So I had to pull this guy of me ripping one of my ear lobes a little causing pretty rapid infection. So in reference to the title, mom- when you asked ¨what happens if it gets infected?¨ and I just said ¨The same thing that would happen here¨I was waaaaaaaaaaay wrong. This picture is of one of four injection I had to numb my ear lobe so I could get the mass amount of puss removed without pain. Sorry about the graphic nature of the photo. My ear is better now, and it was my left ear so I had to keep the right one out too. In conclusion, if you were not a fan of the earings, they are gone now.

The Monkey Man

Hello blog followers,
I have finally arrived at the animal stage in the trip, but as a warning you wont be seeing the same class of pictures that I had access to in Africa. I am exclusively working with capuchin monkeys, so for the most part, that´s what you´re going to see animal wise. As for Awesome pictures though, you´ve toured the blog, and you know I´ll deliver.
So let me explain what I´m doing. I work in the Mirador which is the final stage of monkey rehabilitation at the Machia Ecotourist Animal Park. There are about seventeen monkeys that are in cages that we let out on cords for the majority of the day, and fifteen plus mokeys who are a part of the troop, but roam free without cords. So every day we take about a half hour hike to the Mirador where we feed the monkeys, move them to their respective cords, and them work on making the place more efficient. Obviously we also have quite a lot to clean.
In this picture I am trying to coax this monkey into my arms for a sweet pic, but he´s not having it. The monkeys we work with can be friendly, but interaction with non-corded monkeys is discouraged, and there area a few monkeys who are not friendly.

So I am going to be here one more week and then the group will start our trekking phase.

More to come!

So Far So Bueno

We arrived in Sucre the Jidicial and official capital of Bolivia for our first two and a half weeks. There the Spanish lessons began, and we lived a somewhat modern life, with showers and full access to all of our clothes. After we finally became familiar with the city we left for the silver mines of Potosi and the Salt Flats near the border. The clothing access became fickle, so if you find yourself noticing that I´m wearing the same clothes in all my pictures, ot mostly because i didn´t change. Also I think I´m going to need to adress the beautiful golden locks that are come out from my hat in all of those pictures... that´s my hair. We´ll be going to do construction for ten days after the most dangerous bike ride in the world today. More to come soon!

Bolivia

Hey everyone I´m here in Bolivia now, we are currently doing intensive language study 4 hours a day to prep for the rest of the trip. So far we´ve enjoyed quite a bit of the rainy season, but the sunny days are here too. in about a week we´ll start our camping/trekking phase, and I´ll have some cool pictures to post.

There is an official blog for the organization that has sent us all here, and you can look at that here
http://www.questoverseas.com/first-team-update-bolivia-gap-1.html

but a lot of the entries are done by british students, so you´ve been warned, there are multiple references to the three americans following the code that when the going gets tough, the tough get shirtless. For the record though it was only a couple times.

Part 2

Hey everyone! I know there hasn't been much excitment on TGEoT lately, but that's all about to change. I leave for my second trip this sunday the 17th to spend the longer side of 3 months in South America. I will be in Bolivia for the majority of my trip. From what I understand it is a three part experience; the first part will be spent studying spanish intensively for 3 weeks, followed by 3 weeks of service work at an animal conservation center in the Bolivian Amazon, and the final 6 weeks are trekking through Bolivia, Chile and Peru following the Incan trail to Machuu Pichu (did I spell that right?)

So swing by the site in a week or two , and i'll have some pictures and/or stories up.

p.s. I know the video I posted isn't working anymore, so I'm going to try and get th e DVD copy I have into file form, but I don't know if my tech skills will extend that far, so if it's not up before sunday, it won't be up until April 30th or so.

Thanks for following!