Welcome back to CBT!

The experience back in our CBT site has been interesting so far. Before we left, a horrible storm blew through on Friday night. There was an amazing amount of rain and extreme winds. Not as much thunder as some of the previous storms, but the wind more than made up for it. The temperature was also much lower at that point, making it uninviting to venture outside to buy anything before heading back to CBT. Fortunately, my site is much larger and has more amenities when compared to other CBT sites.

Saturday morning things had mostly cleared out, a last whip of wind blowing the rain and clouds back out of the mountains. I went up with a fellow trainee to negotiate for a grand taxi to our CBT site. I was impressed with her negotiating abilities, and we were able to get a cheaper ride than originally quoted (which was high for the "tourists"). Once I reached our town, and I had walked up to my house with my bags, it became apparent that the town currently did not have running water. The storm on Friday apparently damaged the water system. It has since come back on, but went off again this morning. This isn't a huge problem yet, the storeowner in the middle of town pulled out a hose that was being fed by the well in the back of his shop, and let people fill up bottles and buckets to take water home. Running water is a luxury anyway.

This morning five of us trainees went back up into the mountains, this time venturing further (still no monkeys though). I'll be putting up photos on my flickr page (see slideshow to the right). Basically, I'm in an amazing area where I can easily get breathtaking views of the mountains. The off-road trails we took were mostly animal footpaths, which created plenty of tree-branch obstacles for us taller creatures.