After my best night’s sleep of the trip so far, I was happy to get up for the breakfast that had been prepared for us by Donald’s wife.  It was made up of fruit, freshly squeezed orange juice and other bits and pieces.  Our first task of the day was a tour of the site from Donald.  This was meant to take a few hours, but actually continued until about 11 o'clock as we were interrupted three times by delivery trucks which he had to unload.  Lunch was cooked for us and was made up of another rice based meal.

In the afternoon we were given our first set of real jobs.  Most people were working on the biogas generator - creating the concrete foundations, but me, Ben and Sam found ourselves in the chicken coop, cleaning out the chickens and pheasants. This was not as bad as it sounds and we had a laugh while doing it - throwing bits of dried chicken droppings at each other.  This was followed by the funniest moment of the trip so far.  Ben and Sam put a sack over Stevie B’s head, causing him to run around randomly until he ended up in the swimming pool.  Luckily I recorded it on my camera.  The evening meal was good and filling and after this we had a fairly big meeting where we discussed the idea of changing the rainforest trek to accommodate the injuries that had been sustained and also to cut it a bit shorter to collect TP’s passport from San Jose (he had lost this and his money on the bus).  The curfew was at 9.00pm.

Day 17: Thursday 6th August 2009