Day 3: In the Jungle

It’s 8:30pm, and I’m beat. We were up and at ‘em, starting our drive to the rescue at around 7:40am. We got some gas and pulled in on the chilly 45 degree morning with our sweatshirts on. Dan the Man gave us the low down on the reserve, and warned us that we might want to take off our sweatshirts. He was right; it was a scorcher out! Okay, so it really wasn’t that bad, but 80 degrees sure felt a lot warmer than I was used to! Our sunburns were festering, but I was smiling, knowing I got to spend my day in the warm sun!

The reserve was really neat. We grabbed our gloves and hopped into the bed of the truck and got brought down into the middle of the woods. On the way, we passed several cages of tigers, bearcats, and ocelots. When we made it to the bottom, we were told to clear the woods area and pile the brush onto the various pickup trucks. Little did we know, we would be doing this for all 5 hours. Working alongside a group from New York, Terry the volunteer, and “Money Maker Mike” (I’m the only one who calls him that) who is there for community service hours. He’s quite the character, but today was his last day so I’m afraid we won’t be seeing him any longer. Mike was responsible for getting the truck stuck in the mud not once but about three times, and Dan was not too happy about it.

Finally, we cleared the initial area. The truck wasn’t budging, so they let us go to lunch early. Unfortunately, I had low balled on the amount of bread we had left, so Hannah went to the market for a bread run while I tried to alleviate the starving stomachs of 20 other girls with the bread and granola bars we did have. Needless to say, I have to do better planning for future lunches.

We went back to it for another few hours, and by the end, we were more than ready to go back. We had to make a Walmart stop for supper and to cover lunch the next day, and Alanah and I were basically on our own. Let me tell you, buying supper/lunch for 24 is not an easy task. With two vegetarians on top of having my brain fried all day, I was a little bit stressed. Five rotisserie chickens, two boxes of easy mac, and a few bags of snacks later, I was pretty done with the day. When we got back to the hotel, we served the food and sang happy birthday to Emily, along with the mini cupcakes that we bought at Walmart (which were way better than I expected).

I got a quick shower and dealt with the drama of some people wanting to shorten our hotel stay to save money and go to the zoo on Saturday and some not wanting to, got some time to digest my food, and uploaded my photos. I’m really psyched about the tiger photos I got from today, including my coveted tiger selfie. I hope that the days ahead are a little more exciting and a little less stressful, but I’m loving this experience. I’ve already learned so much about how capable I am as a trip leader. It kind of sucks being in charge, but I never would have thought that I could make the decisions I’ve been making. My high school teachers were right, I might be pretty good in a leadership position!

We’re hoping to get around to our bonding night tonight. First Cards against Humanity experience! To be continued..

#CTR