A Day in the Life at Jatun Sacha

We're now 2 weeks in to our stint at the Jatun Sacha Reserve, on San Cristobal, so here's what we've been up to...

The working week at the station is Monday to Friday, with weekends off for a well-earned dose of civilisation. The reserve is situated a 45 min drive on a gravel road up into the highlands, so the week starts on Sunday evening with a bone-shaking ride on the back of a pick-up to take us to the station. Work starts at 8am after breakfast (all meals are prepared by a live-in cook, who does an amazing job to produce edible food for 20-30 volunteers and staff with no electicity and a pretty primitive kitchen). Work generally consists of a combination of reforesting tasks (scrub clearance, planting, collecting seeds, watering) interspersed with site infrastructure maintenance, and occasionally more fun activities, such as making coffee from the plants on the reserve. There is also a kitchen rota to help with each meal. We work 8-10am, then 10.30am-12pm. After lunch a siesta is required to escape from the midday sun, and there are ugly scenes while everyone fights for a space in a hammock! We then work again from 2 till 4pm in the afternoon.

With no electricity, you really do have to provide your own entertainment in the evenings, and we usually end up playing cards (in particular an Ecuadorian game called Cuarenta, which we've all become experts at) and chatting with other volunteers and staff.

On Fridays the staff from the reserve lead hikes around the local area to see places of interest. Most of them have grown up in the islands and know the place inside out, so they can tell you anything and everything about the plants and animals along the way.

The accomodation is fairly basic, rooms with a bed and mossie net, (usually shared with local wildlife, including spiders the size of your palm) and cold showers. But it doesn't really feel like you need much more, and everyone just gets on with it.

Being there really makes you appreciate the technology we take so much for granted, and certainly reminds you where your food actually comes from. Its great to eat so much produce which is locally grown on the reserve. For example when you're asked to get orange juice for lunch, that doesn'mean opening a carton from the fridge, it means climbing a tree, collecting fruit, carrying them back to the kitchen and squeezing enough fresh juice by hand for 25 volunteers!