Bowlines, Damnations, Spanners and a headache
Well we are now down to 40 days to go before I go and to say there have been a few problems is an understatement.

Tree Climbing has had to be postponed for the last two weeks due to adverse weather conditions i.e. lots and lots of rain only on a Wednesday afternoon the last two weeks.

So I have still been really good and practising bowlines and figure of eights. The Carabineer I now appear to have got the hang of as well but just no chance to go play. Most frustrating.

Andre the guy who is helping me in Sao Paulo by doing all the lab work for the project and his dissertation has emailed saying there may be a problem bringing samples into Brazil. Apparently they are really hot on biological samples at the moment because of Newcastle’s disease and some sort of flu. If you get caught bringing them over the border without the relevant paperwork you face a penalty of been thrown in jail. Great…. a Bridget Jones scenario just looks more imminent every day. (Must remember to pack v decent bra and galaxy chocolate and take a Mr Darcy’s mobile number and email address with me… Does anyone have Ewans Mobile or email?? Or Keanu? How about Brandon Fraser?? No oh well…).

So the Ministry of Ecology was first contacted in May and didn’t answer me and with reminders still haven’t emailed me back to date. After a temporary hiccup I got back onto the web and started looking for Veterinary labs at University’s in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas in Argentina thinking that would solve the problem as it had worked so well with the Brazil side of things.

To date I have emailed 20 people. And had 0 replies. So I tried a different search and a different way round it trying Buenos Aires zoo got an email address for that and for the vet.   0 replies to date. Official Government Labs 3 emails sent … 0 replies.

Read an article about EAZA (European Association of Zoos and Aquariums) linking in with Latin American zoos emailed them... 1 out of office on holiday reply away for 2 weeks BUT someone has answered me WHOO HOO. Also then decided to contact WAZA (World Association of Zoos and Aquariums) 0 reply’s. Getting very down hearted with the whole thing hence the headache.