6
Location: Amazon
Today was the groups’ last day in the Amazon, and everyone seems to have had a wonderful time here; I know that I certainly have. After breakfast, we collected 6500 snails, which added to our 6500 from the past two days gives us a total of 13,000, which is 3000 snails over our original goal. Considering the amount of offspring that these snails can have during their 9 year lifetime (200,000), we truly made an impact not only on the survival of the snail species native to the rainforest but also on crops that people depend on which these snails would otherwise (and are starting to) completely obliterate. Because it was too wet to start a fire, we buried the snails that we collected today. Helping the community and the environment is important to all of us, and exceeding our goal was truly amazing. When Hector told us he was aiming for 10,000, we all thought he was just joking, but having actually met that challenge proved that it is actually possible to have a true impact, and the work we’re doing does actually make a difference. Later today, we also got to see many monkeys and birds on the canoe ride we went on after lunch. Though it did start to rain shortly into it, we all seemed to have a good time looking for wildlife and taking turns rowing. We had an amazing dinner, complete with placemats made of leaves. We ate whole tilapia, and some people even tried the eyes! Had it not rained so much during the day and had it not been so late, we would have gone on a night hike with Hector, but after the long day we had and with the early morning we’ll be having tomorrow to come, we decided not to go. Hector was very happy that we not only reached but surpassed our goal for our snail collection, and that happiness was certainly infectious, as we all celebrated and it seemed to be everyone’s high point for the day.