Kahlia had us bus 18 hours across Honduras and Guatemala so we could volunteer a week at an Animal Rescue & Rehabilitation project, ARCAS. Whilst a lot more work than the turtle project we did, ARCAS provides a much more interactive environment with the animals. Our primary jobs being to feed them, wash and clean their cages or enclosures.

If you can commit to longer (and your female or they are desperate) you could be a monkey mother. Which means you carry and feed the babies all day, and if you get the Howler monkeys you also get to play with them! (They die with out contact).

We were responsible for feeding and cleaning the parrot cages for the first half of our stay. The job is pretty repetitive, but the parrots make it interesting. Volunteers work in quarantine were new animals are put indefinitely to learn to socialise and become less dependant on human contact. Some of the parrots have bee abused at the hands of humans and some are just angry at being ignored. So being in the cage you always have to be on the look out for rogue birds. In one instance my wedding ring being the only reason I still have a finger!

Our other problem in the parrot cages was Toucan Sam (above). It turns out Toucans are carnivores and territorial. If we didn’t feed it first or do what it wanted it would follow us around tapping us on the head and making noises like the Velociraptor in Jurassic Park. At the end of the week we were put on adult Howler Monkeys. They left us entirely alone, so the job was easier but less fun.

The place is full of Tarantulas, snakes and scorpions (which we think is cool), as well as biting insects. On the last night I had my first ever allergic reaction. Whether it was insects or wearing the same clothes for a week and being covered in animal germs, I broke out in hives everywhere! Kahlia was skeptical initially (I can be a little hypochondriac, apparently) but when I couldn’t handle it anymore we turned on the lights, uh oh. Luckily Kahlia was carrying anti-allergics… for horses it seems, I couldn’t feel my tongue for hours.

ARACAS is really cool if you like animals and don’t mind being dirty (ie them crapping on you). Besides Monkeys and Parrots they have cats (Jaguar, Ocelots, Margay’s), pigs, Micoleon (a cute possum thing), crocs and other random jungle animals.

Photos are here.