The Rescue

It's four in the morning and I'm still half asleep. The phone call from Armando the previous night was a little vague and I'm not entirely sure why I'm now standing outside my hostel in the freezing cold and in the dark while a perfectly nice, warm bed is waiting for me inside. All I know is that Armando is on his way to pick me up for some new mission he's planned.

The streets of Quito are not the safest place to be in the quiet, dark hours of early morning. Some shifty looking characters across the street are sizing up my pack with hungry eyes. I huddle down in the shadows of the doorway, trying to make myself blend into the wall. Armando's only a little late however, and I jump into his car before he's come to a stop. We head off down the street and he fills me in on the mission plan.

We're heading north. The night before Armando had said we'd be going south, and my guess was we'd be exploring the site where the bears have been attacking cows. Plans on this project change as fast as the Ecuadorian weather however. It turns out now we're heading to the Columbian border to find our old bear traps, and more interestingly to check in on an adolescent bear that is apparently being kept illegally on a farm in the area. We won’t have the resources today to move the bear but we'll check on her health and work out plans for her relocation to the rehab centre.

Our drive takes us through the entire length of the Northern Andes. The grey road twists like a snake through an army of stone-faced, silent volcanoes, each one capped with a hard, heavy helmet of ice and snow. It's late morning by the time we arrive and the sun is already well into in his daily pilgrimage to the western horizon.

We pull into a small farmhouse. In the early days of this project the work was carried out at this site. It proved a little difficult however, to attract volunteers here. Something about working right on the notorious Columbian border, infested with bandits, paramilitary and drug-runners seemed to put people off. The project was relocated to where it is now but three of the traps belonging to the project were never moved due to the cost of transporting them down.

With our plan to move to new areas these cages are once more needed. When we have enough funds and willing volunteers, we'll hire a truck and cart the heavy cages down from the forests and relocate them into our new site. Our task today is to find out whether the traps are still in their old spot and work out how easy it will be to access them.

We chat to the owner of the house, who once helped Armando organise things in this area. The Spanish here is more Columbian than Ecuadorian and the young farmer has a strong accent with a lyrical melody to it. I catch only patches of the rapid Spanish but it turns out our cages have been moved from their original locations. The new spot they are in should be easy enough to get to and moving them should be little trouble once we have the manpower.

There's little need to check on the cages directly. We have all the information we need now for this so we turn to our second task of looking in on the young bear. At the local town we pick up two members of the Ecuadorian Environmental Protection Agency to accompany us on our "raid". In other situations the police are often used for raids on professional animal smugglers, and some raids have involved more than a hundred, heavily armed troops. This bear however is being kept by a local farmer, who actually contacted the police to turn it in. Hopefully we won't need backup for today's mission.

We almost pull into the wrong farm, following the directions of one of the Environmental officers. Luckily they realise before we walk in and we jump back in the car and drive a little further up the road. As we stroll down the road towards the house it occurs to me that we're hardly an authorative looking group. Neither of the guys are in any kind of uniform and Armando and myself are in jeans and T-shirts.

The farmer and his wife greet us a little warily but luckily they've seen Armando on the news from Rosita's release. We're practically celebrities as far as these people are concerned and they're more than happy to welcome us in.


They take us to where the bear is being kept and it's a disturbing sight. She's a lot smaller than we expected. We'd been told she was nearly a year old and were expecting an adolescent female as large as an average-sized dog. This little girl is, at most, five months old and is not much bigger than a puppy.

She's being kept in a tiny cage, about two meters long, two meters wide and no more than half a meter high. The cage is normally used for guinea pigs (a popular Ecuadorian delicacy) and this little cub has almost no room to move. The cage has not been cleaned for a long time and the cub is living in her own shit and filth.

The farmer's wife tells us that she feeds the bear scraps from the kitchen but that the cub especially likes chocolate and the occasional slice of cake. Though she means well, this diet could easily kill a young cub like this one, who should still be suckling milk from her mother. She's not well - foul smelling and slightly green diarrhea coats the bottom of the cage and she's clearly stressed by the presence of humans, hissing and screaming anytime we come close.

It's hard not to be angry at the way these people have treated this little cub but it is from a lack of understanding rather than any malicious intentions. At least they've done the right thing and contacted the police. Other farmers would have just put a bullet through the cub: one less bear to worry about in the cornfields.

This cub, along with her brother, were found wandering, alone in nearby fields some three months earlier (it took the farmers a month to tell anyone and the inefficient police another two months to tell us). The mother was apparently nowhere to be seen, which means she is dead, most probably shot by a local farmer. Female bears would never abandon their cubs like that and since the cubs were found in the fields it takes little detective work to see that the mother was most probably in the same fields when she met her end.

The brother of this cub died within the first few days of being found. The stress of the situation, the poor food and the dirty, cramped living conditions would all have contributed to his rapid demise. This little girl however, who Armando decides to call Marcia, has survived it all, though she's clearly suffered and still suffering.

Armando has doubts about how much longer Marcia will be able to live in these conditions. She needs medical attention that only Leonardo can provide at the vet clinic. We're not equipped to move this bear however. Expecting a larger bear and better conditions, we'd planned only to carry out reconnaissance today - but this bear needs help or she'll die.

We improvise. We piece together equipment like the A-Team; picking through the scrap that always seems to litter the back of a farmhouse. We find a small cage normally used for transporting guinea pigs. It’s big enough to hold Marcia for the six-hour drive back to the vet clinic but it’s definitely not strong enough.

We dig deeper through the scrap and find a few pieces of wood and some chicken wire. Borrowing a harmer and some rusty nails from the farmer we set to reinforcing the cage. It’s a dodgy job but it will do until we get to Quito. The cage won’t fit in the car though so we have to strap it to the roof. We lay the cage flat and point the base towards the front of the car, hoping the wood slats will block out the wind.

Only one problem remains. This is an endangered animal, transporting her through half the length of Ecuador requires paperwork. There are at least six police checkpoints between the vet clinic and us, and if anyone of them stops us and finds a bear in the car we’ll have our arse slapped in the slammer for illegally trading animals.

Ecuadorian corruption has its benefits however. Armando is on the phone to a contact he has in the government. Normally getting permission for this would take a fair amount of time and effort but Armando’s friend will have the paperwork ready and waiting for us in Ibarra (about halfway back to Quito) by the time we get there.
We still have about three checkpoints before Ibarra however, but we’re just going to have to risk it. If we get busted Armando’s going to try and get them to take us to the slammer in Ibarra. Hopefully we can then get Armando’s mate from the government to come down with the paperwork and get us out.

We set off quickly. Marcia went nuts when we tried to move her, growling and hissing like a Tasmanian devil. Strangely enough, once she was in the small cage and on top of the car she settled down. It’s the presence of humans that distresses her, without humans around she’s calm and as happy as can be.

Luck is with us on the drive back. We pass each of the three checkpoints without anyone looking closely at our cage. Transporting guinea pigs is common in this area and the fact that our bear is in such a cage plays to our advantage.

One checkpoint stops us and checks Armando’s licence. Both of us hold our breaths and do our best to look innocent (a sure fire way to look guilty), praying that Marcia stays quiet. The side of the cage is covered in wooden slats but the gaps are big enough that anything more than a casual glance would give away the fact that no ordinary guinea pig is inside. She keeps her silence however and the bored looking copper waves us on.

Eventually we make it to Ibarra and our paperwork is waiting for us as promised. From there it’s an easy run back to Quito. In our rush to get Marcia back to the clinic we’ve missed lunch. It’s around dinnertime when we pass through Otavalo and we pull into town to grab a quick snack. I stay near the car while Armando goes off to buy something. Every time someone walks past Marcia gives a little growl and I get some strange looks from those passing by.

It’s late, it’s dark and we’re exhausted and hungry by the time we arrive at the vet clinic. Leonardo is waiting for us and using a rope noose we move Marcia into one of the cages normally used to kennel dogs. She goes nuts, growling, hissing and spitting. She clings to the cage with her teeth and her claws and we are forced to use our hand to untangle her while she scratches and snaps at us.

Eventually we get her in and then head outside to catch our breath and relax for the first time in hours. While we’re sitting on the steps of the clinic we hear a mighty crash and the clang of a metal table being upturned. We rush back inside and find that Marcia has torn a hole in the thick mesh wiring of her cage and is now running loose in the room of the clinic.

We corner her, using towels and furniture to protect ourselves. She’s an angry ball of fur, claws and teeth and ready to tear apart anything that comes near. Finally we have her pinned and manage to secure her in another dog cage.

This cage is no stronger than the last however and while someone keeps watch the rest of us go out back to find an old, steel transportation cage from Santa Martha. This is a lot stronger but we still need to reinforce it and we spend the next hour or so twisting wire around all the potential break points.

Eventually the job is done and with great difficulty we manage to transfer Marcia into the stronger cage. In her struggles she’s broken a tooth and is bleeding a little from her mouth. Luckily she’s young enough that this damage won’t cause any permanent harm.

It’s nearly midnight by the time we finally call it a night. Marcia will spend a few days in the clinic on antibiotics until she has recovered from her diarrhea. We had thought to then take her to Santa Martha but Both Armando and Leonardo are amazed and shocked by this little cub’s behaviour. No other cub has ever been this stressed or aggressive. When Leo and Gabriel, the two brothers now at Santa Martha, had been rescued they walked calmly around the clinic, playing happily with stuffed toys like little puppies. Marcia has clearly got some emotional issues she needs to work through.

After she’s recovered physically, Marcia will be taken to a specialised rehabilitation centre. A place called Segunda Opportunidad (or “Second Chance” in English). This is another, smaller part of the Espiritu del Bosque Foundation where an Ecuadorian woman called Marjory provides special care to young animals in her own home, which she has customised for the purpose. Marcia will be bottled fed there for the next few months and her only human contact will be with Marjory. Hopefully the months of gentle treatment will have her calm enough to be moved to Santa Martha by the time she grows too large to be kept with Marjory.

Exploration

After the new Andean Bear website goes live I commit the unforgivable sin of spam-mailing everyone I've ever met with a heartfelt, cheesy plea for support (worthy of any politician campaign speech). Friends, family and the occasional stranger rally to the cause. Some donate a little, some a lot, and still more pass on the message to their friends and family, continuing the chain.

The web site doubles in the number of hits it's getting and within a couple of weeks we've raised over US$500 through donations. We're even contacted by a new, UN-sponsored TV series, called Last Chance, wanting to feature us in one of their episodes. Add to this the recent publicity from Rosita's release and the support Armando had won at the International Bear Conference and it was clear that this project was finally taking its first, tentative steps into the International lime light.

It was time to look to the future. If things continued to improve then we would have both the funds and the support to finally move into new areas, extending both the depth and the usefulness of the bear research. We begin planning for exactly this and there are two things we need to do. Firstly we need to explore new, potential sites for signs of bears and to gain support from the local communities. Secondly we need to move cages down from their current locations to whatever new site we choose.

I volunteer to join the exploration team tasked with scoping out a new site. There are two types of locations that would prove useful. Since our current study is in a rural farming community, the bears' habitat is made up mostly of fragmented forest regions. The movement of the bears in this area is clearly influenced by the presence of farms, villages and roads. Ideally we need to compare these movements to bears in untouched, primary forest regions.

Bears have also been found living in highly cultivated areas with little forest to speak of. It's here in these areas that the bears have most frequently been attacking livestock. With little natural foods around, the bears have resorted to cattle rustling. There's an area south of Quito where attacks have been a little too frequent and it would be useful beyond measure to have an understanding of how these bears are living and moving. This information would be the first, vital part in finding a solution to the increasing conflict between farmers and bears.

The plan is to check out both areas (hey, we may even get big enough to study both!) but we decide to explore a site of primary forest first. I meet up with Dave out at the now familiar volunteer house. Strangely enough we have only male volunteers this month, discrediting my theory that volunteer work is a female dominated past time. Two of the four lads sign up for the mission as well, both from the UK. Paul is a tall, lanky guy with a heavy, northern accent, a wicked, crude humour and some of the funkiest glasses seen since the Beatles last played live. Andy, on the other hand, is a soft-spoken, little guy, with a subtle, understated sense of humour. It's a good team for an adventure into the wilderness.

Armando drives us for two hours along a dirt road through the middle of nowhere, past the back of beyond and then slightly further on. The condition of the "road" is finally so bad that Armando's four-wheel drive can go no further. He drops us off before turning around and heading back down towards the volunteer house, which compared to this isolated wilderness, now looks like the bastion of civilization. We pull on our packs and, weighed down with camping gear and food for several days, trudge through the mud up the winding path.

Eventually we come to a house nestled amongst the trees. We are not yet in the primary forest we are here to explore but the area is already wild and largely unfarmed. Dave is good friends with Fernando, the owner of this house, and Fernando has offered to be our guide into the forest above. Fernando and his brother German (pronounced Herman) own a large chunk of primary forest over the next ridgeline. This land borders with several other properties of unspoilt forest, which in turn border the massive expanse of the protected Cotocachi national park. The land these farmers own has never felt the steely bite of the hoe or plough: it's both too far away and too wild to be worth the hassle of farming of it.

We spend the night comfortably in Fernando's house, once again overwhelmed by the generosity of these poor, rural folk. The next morning we awake at first light and head off. Grey clouds hang from the mountains like drapes of dirty, wet wool just as they've done since the onslaught of the rainy season a month or so earlier. The path is wet and slippery. Thick, clay-like mud sucks at our boots and splatters over our legs. Every so often one of us loses a shoe beneath the brown sludge and we help each other dig through the mud for the missing footwear.

Despite the gloomy weather and the sucking embrace of the mud, we're in a fine mood. The area is unbelievably beautiful and rugged; the air has a fresh coolness to it and a sense of excitement and adventure follows us up the path. We're all relatively fit and well acclimatised and we keep a steady, comfortable pace. Both Fernando and German have joined us, proudly showing off their beautiful land, and we have a mule and a horse with us to help carry our load.

As we climb higher the clouds lift a little, flirtatiously revealing glimpses of the unspoilt green valleys surrounding us. Huge, white-wood palm trees tower above the dark green underbrush, spread through the forest like silent sentinels surveying our arrival. All around us small, frothing waterfalls tumble down the looming cliffs to form icy, clear rivers in the valleys below.

A day's hike has us at a small cottage at the edge of Fernando's land: his holiday cabin. It's similar in style to the other huts I've used in these isolated parts of Ecuador, though a little more care has been put into this construction, giving it a welcoming feel. The floor is bare mud however, a few stones in the corner serve as a hearth and a gap between the wood slats of the wall and the tin roof allows smoke from the fire to escape and join the clouds outside.

It's early afternoon when we arrive but the gloomy clouds have brought dusk earlier than normal. As we light the fire inside the little hut the rain begins to fall heavily on the ground outside. We settle down to warm soup and quiet conversation, drying our wet, mud-caked socks by the fire. Eventually we turn in for the night falling asleep to the heavy patter of rain on the roof and the gentle crackle of the dying fire.

The clouds still linger when dawn wakes us the next morning. We head out anyway, it's a mere drizzle and a little rain won't hurt us. Fernando has to get back to his farm and he heads off early with the mule. German leads us in the other direction, down a small track through the trees and into some of the lushest and beautiful forest I have ever seen.

We spend the day hiking up and down valleys, exploring sites and looking for evidence of bears. We find no direct signs, the rain has concealed any obvious evidence, but we do find the occasional half-torn bromeliad, possibly discarded by a feeding bear. Even without hard, direct evidence however, it's certain that this unspoilt area is home to more than a few wild bears. The habitat is ideal and undisturbed for miles; it's a perfect site for our bear research.

There are few paths for us to use in this uncultivated area, and we push through thick wet leaves and small shrubs. We hike for the better part of the day and after slipping through the mud and having the cold rain drip down on us through the overhead canopy of green we are soaked through and muddy all over.

Towards the end of the day, on our way back to camp, we find ourselves wading through an icy cold river as the trees and bamboo prevent our passage along the bank. Without warning Dave suddenly gives a Tarzan like yell and dives into the cold water still fully dressed. The rest of us exchange glances, shrug our shoulders and dive in after him. We're wet and cold anyway, at least this way we get the benefit of being clean for the night.

We make the last half hour of the hike back to the camp in freezing, wet clothes, shivering and hugging ourselves for warmth. We get the fire going straight away and spend the rest of the night huddled around it, wrapped in our sleeping bags and cradling warm cups of some native herbal tea that German claims wards off colds (and, according to him, can also get rid of headaches, stop you getting pregnant, and can probably cure cancer).

The next day we explore a little more in another direction but after lunch we break camp and head back down the hill. We've seen enough to know that this site would indeed be perfect for bear work if we can find some place to base the volunteers at. Getting supplies in and out may be a problem but nothing we can't work out.

On the walk back down German disappears behind a tree to take care of "business". The rest of us continue down the trail and Paul is left leading German's horse at the back of the group. At one point the trail cuts along the face of a steep, muddy slope and the path is both narrow and slippery.

Myself, Dave and Andy cross without problem, but the horse balks and Paul is unable to make her budge. After several minutes of pulling at the reigns he starts to lose his temper, swearing and cursing. He tries walking around the back and slapping it on its arse, but the horse just gets startled and tries to walk up the face of the slope shoving its arse in Paul's face as it goes.

The rest of us look on slightly sympathetic but mostly amused. We're unable to help on the narrow path anyway, but Paul's mood is improved little by us laughing and cracking a few jokes at his expense. Paul lets out a string of swear words and angrily kicks at a stone. The stone doesn't budge however and Paul is left so off balanced that he falls over backwards. He literally tumbles down the hill, turning head over heel several times until he finally lands face first in the pool of slime coated mud at the bottom.

Paul finishes the rest of the hike covered from head to toe in thick, brown slime. He decides to have a strop and says not one word for the whole hike down. The rest of us have the good sense to keep our mouths shut, though I can see both Andy and Dave struggling as much as me not to laugh.

We hike back down to the road, find a local farmer with a truck and pay him a few dollars to give us a lift down to the nearest "town", called Cullaje. From here we can get a bus back to the volunteer house but not until morning. Luckily Dave is well known in this town, some of the lads from his football team live here and he has spent many a night here drinking with them. We have no shortage of offers on places to stay and end up sleeping in a nice little wooden house in the centre of town.

Dave gives us a tour and since the town consists of three streets and one main square, the tour takes all of five minutes. Dave knows just about everyone here. Everyone we pass on the street greets him like a long lost son. The local lads all want to drink beer with him, the local mothers all want to feed him and fatten him up and the local, young girls all have something else in mind.

We get a meal in one of the houses that doubles up as the town's restaurant. After that the beers come out and the shots of the foul tasting Puro (the local moonshine) follow soon after. A couple of local guys have joined us and the family who own the house all sit and drink with us. The rotund, friendly mother thinks we are the funniest thing to ever happen. She makes us all stand up, wanting to see how tall Paul (who's now once again his happy self with some beers in him) and myself are.

When Andy stands up she laughs and comments on how "small" he is. When Dave makes a joke saying that "small" in English is used more in reference to how well hung someone is, rather than how tall they are, she bursts with laughter. She then spends the rest of the night calling Andy chiquito (i.e. the little one) and making references to little hotdogs. Andy, not able to retort as he speaks little Spanish, spends the night grumbling to himself instead and staring into his beer mug.

It's well passed midnight when Paul and Andy decide to call it a night. They wander back to the house but Dave and I stay up to finish off the last few beers. Dave likes a beer, and like the local Ecuadorians he can handle a weekend long fiesta of serious drinking. In Quito his drinking antics have earned him the nickname of "Dangerous Dave" at the hostel where we meet volunteers.

This is my last night as well out in the real bear work and that's worth a little celebration. With Rosita released I've decided to go home to spend Christmas with my family and friends. I've lined up some work for five months but then plan to be on the road again by next June. Armando has offered me a permanent place on the bear project but I have lots of other things to see and do as well, the world is full of deserving volunteer projects. I'll decide where I'm going next around next May - no need to rush these decisions.

The night carries on well into the early hours of morning. Eventually we are out of beer, and thankfully out of Puro. It's time to call it a night. Dave and I take our leave from the family and head out into the night to stagger home. Halfway back to our house however, we find a group of about ten lads sitting on the corner of the square drinking beer. Dave, in slow and careful speech (trying to prove just how sober he is) explains that these are his best mates and we have to share a few drinks with them. At that stage of the night I think anyone we'd have met would be Dave's "best mate" but we hung around for a few beers none the less.

When the singing starts I decide it's game over for me. "One more!" is the call from Dave but I am well and truly done and I leave Dave behind for his "one more". I staggered up the street and, guided by my beer compass, manage to find the house we are staying in. I crawl into my sleeping bag, stepping on Andy's head in the process, then pass out.

Dawn arrives and pounds me on my forehead, stabbing me in the eyes with bright, steel rays of sun light. I groan and roll over to find the other guys looking as bad as I feel and crawling out of bed. All except Dave that is, his bedroll is lying untouched in the corner. I check the time; it's just gone eight, leaving us an hour to make the bus. We pack up and then head out into the cursed sunlight to find Dangerous Dave.

It's an easy trail to find Dave. As we wander into the main square a couple of guys tell us that they'd seen him earlier that morning drinking beer on the next corner. We wander in that direction to find a friendly, fat shop keeper who has a crate of beer that a drunken Dave apparently bought at around five that morning and then forgot to take with him. She points us in the direction he headed and here we find a couple of kids playing football. When we ask about Dave they say he'd been asleep under a tree there that morning but he'd woken without any shoes and had gone off looking for them.

We follow the path of bare-footed Dave, and the local residents direct us from house to house. Evidence of Dave's handiwork is visible everywhere. After passing a street corner littered with empty bottles and cigarette butts, we finally enter a house to find a very drunk and bleary eyed Dave sitting at a table with a family eating soup. "These are my best mates", he says when he sees us.

Dave's having too much fun to want to go home so we decide to leave him there with the family. I say my final farewells and Dave shakes my hand and tells me I'm one of his "best mates". Paul, Andy and I head up to the bus stop. As we're waiting for the bus to turn up we see Dave staggering up towards us. He gets halfway but then is distracted by some locals with a horse. Next we know he's chatting to them and has somehow convinced them to let him have a ride.

The three of us look on as Dave, totally pickled, tries to mount up. He throws himself chest first over the horse and then slowly slides down the other side, landing face first on the ground. The locals rush to pick him up, but Dave jumps to his feet, brushes himself off, staggers a little and then jumps onto the back of the horse. With a little luck he manages to stay on this time and the horse sets off at a pace. The bus pulls up and we hop on. The last view I have of Dangerous Dave is him galloping around the main square of Cullaje, pissed off his head and whooping like a cowboy.

Free at Last

The release team, including members of the police and various members of both national and international media organisations, are due to arrive at five in the morning. This is Ecuador however and a planned 5am start would normally kick off around ten. There are around twenty people in all accompanying the release - a regular circus. It's a tribute to how important this event is that people start arriving at half past five and no one is later than six.

After my restless night I'm awake and down at the bear cage well before five. In order to drug Rosita we need to lure her into the small cage away from the other bears where Leonardo, the vet, can get a clear shot with his blow dart. Rosita hates crowds with a passion and hates the vet even more. Knowing full well that once the rest of the people arrive Rosita will run and hide in the furthest corner of the cage, I decide to lure her in myself while all is still peaceful and quiet.

The first rays of sunlight appear over the surrounding snow-capped mountains, the morning mist begins to lift and the lions greet the dawn with their customary breakfast roars. The smaller, nocturnal ocelots turn in for the day as the monkeys begin their incessant chattering. The male bears are still dozing but Rosita is awake and picking through the remains of a few bromeliad leaves. She's not been fed for a full day, since the drugs we are about to give her will cause her to throw up anything she's eaten and, as she'll be unconscious, there's a high risk of her choking herself.

I've an apple with me, my breakfast for the morning. Rosita, seeing me, approaches the fence and looks longingly at my tasty treat. I hold it up to the fence and then slowly coax her down the hill, keeping the apple close enough to draw her in but always just out of her reach. Eventually we reach the door to the small cage. Normally getting her into this would be a near impossible task but she's hungry today and we're alone; she has no reason to suspect my treachery. For the last month I've been the source of nearly all her food and, up until now, never once abused her trust.

She hesitates near the door, sniffing cautiously around the edges. She gives me a questioning glance and I move the apple a little further along the fence in answer. She steps slowly into the cage, first one foot and then another. Only her back, right leg is still out of the cage now, as she stretches to reach the sweet, succulent apple. Finally she commits herself and enters the cage completely. At the same moment I slide the small door into place locking her in. The door gives that spine-chilling scream of metal scraping on metal and my treachery is revealed. Rosita dives for the opening with a woeful moan. It's too late however, the door is sealed, along with her fate.

She paces the small cage nervously, glaring at me with both anger and hurt in her eyes. My last task before setting her free is one of betrayal, a malicious act of deception. My guilt is worsened by the fact that I can't even give her the apple that I used as bait, she's allowed no food at all. With Rosita watching on I'm unable to eat the apple myself and end up throwing it into the bush. We both go hungry this morning.

It's all for the best however: her life in the wild, away from humans and free from cages will be far better than she has ever known. Once free she will be able to wander where she pleases and eat when she feels like it. A bear in the wild has no meal times, she'll eat when she's hungry, forest foods will surround her on all sides. No longer will she have to depend on the whims of us humans to receive her fill.

The others gradually begin to arrive. There are several reporters and photographers from Ecuadorian newspapers and also a couple of journalist from some International media groups (I recognise none of the names, but then I don't read a lot of bear-centric, wildlife magazines). An Ecuadorian, television news crew is also on the scene sporting an impressive array of video cameras. With the camera men all jostling for the best camera angles it's a regular media frenzy and Rosita is, as expected, not at all happy about any of it. Thankfully Leonardo hits her with his first dart and before long she's out cold, oblivious to the commotion around her.

Dave, the field zoologist from the bear project, has made it along to help out and as soon as Rosita is asleep, he and I load her onto my stretcher and move her out of the cage. Armando takes measurements and fits her with her new radio collar (and for the fashion conscious bear, brown is definitely "in" this summer) and then we load her into a small cage and onto the back of Johnny's truck.

We set off in a convey of some five or so cars. Dave jumps on the back of the truck with the bear but I ride with Armando in his four-wheeler to catch up on all the latest bear project news and to discuss the last few changes to the web site. In the car I meet Colleen, the American woman and lawyer who helped kick start the volunteer project and who has been supporting the bear project ever since. She's flown down for only a couple of days just for this release.

Rosita is in fact supposed to be named after Colleen as a tribute for her many years of contribution to the project. Since I've spent the last month calling her Rosita, I put my foot in it right away (and continuously throughout the day) by calling the bear Rosita instead of Colleen. Colleen kindly tells me it's not a problem but none the less makes a point of firmly correcting me every time I slip up.

It's a good three hour drive. The less time Rosita (errr ... Colleen) spends in the small cage and the less drugs we her the better. The speed, or more precisely the lack of it, has Armando cursing. Co-ordinating the convey and making sure we all stay together results in us having to stop frequently to let others catch up. The trip is made even longer however when the police decide to stop to buy themselves some chips and snacks on the way. Armando comes out with a stream of Spanish words that, although I recognise none of them, I understand perfectly. Even a bout of furious horn beeping does little to speed things along as the tiny corner store owner slowly counts out change for each of the coppers.

We turn off the main road and head into the Cotopaxi reserve (the very same that I mountain-biked down so many months earlier). A long drive on a pot-holed, dirt road eventually has us at Yanahurco, the private reserve bordering on the massive Cotopaxi national park where Rosita is soon to call home. It's a beautiful little lodge in the middle of nowhere but this is not our final destination. Awaiting us at the lodge is a posie of saddled horses ready to take us on a three hour ride, through the windswept, mountain grasslands, and to the final drop off site on the edge of a remote forest.

It's a miserable, shitty day. Grey clouds slink in around us and a cold drizzle starts as we mount up and head off. We follow the steep, rocky trail up through the barren hills and a cold, biting wind beats against us. The still unconscious Rosita is tussled in a sack, with only her head sticking out. Her eyes are wide open, which I now recognise as normal for a drugged bear, and we tie a blindfold over them to protect her from glare. One of the local guides from Yanahurco is assigned the task of transporting Rosita and her limp body is thrown unceremoniously over the front of his saddle. The rest of us mount up and fall in behind.

My horse is calm and steady. She's used to carting tourists around and generally just follows the horse in front of her with little direction from me. There's small chance of my earlier riding misfortunes being repeated here: I'm not likely to fall off this one. It's a quiet and somewhat miserable ride up however. The wind whips away any words that aren't yelled and attempts at conversation are abandoned early.

We huddle down in our saddles as the rain lashes down at us. I'm wearing my Gore-Tex jacket but my hands are exposed to the cold, icy wind and my unprotected legs are quickly soaked. After a half hour or so, one of the guides rides along the line and points out that we have ponchos tied to the saddles (which us stupid city slickers have failed to notice). I slide mine on over my head and it's pure bliss, the rain slides off the thick oil skin and I barely notice the wind. My hands and legs are protected as well, since the heavy coat drapes over my saddle and down the side of my horse.

After three hours on horse back we finally arrive at a small patch of forest in a secluded valley: Rosita's new home. It's a tranquil site. A crystal clear river meanders through the lush green trees fed by a large and spectacularly beautiful waterfall. When we first arrive the clouds still hug us tightly and I'm a little concerned that the area has too few trees to house a bear. As we lay Rosita down amongst the vegetation however, the clouds lift and warm rays of sunlight illuminate the area. We are treated with a glorious view of the surrounding valleys. This little patch of forest is merely the gateway to an endless rolling sea of thick green trees, shadowy valleys and clear cold rivers. This is bear paradise.

It takes a little while for the drugs to wear off so we leave Rosita in the shade of a few broad leafed plants while we eat our packed lunch. Eventually she begins to stir and once again the media crews jostle for the best shot of her waking up. Those of us not in the media decide to hang back a little as the day has been stressful enough for poor little Rosita. There's no need for us to crowd around her and make things worse.

From my vantage point, a few meters back from the jostling crowd of camera men, I catch one last site of Rosita. She struggles to her feet, looks slowly around at her strange new surroundings, and then sets off groggily into the forests. Without a backward glance she disappears into the thick undergrowth to her new and natural life in the wild and that's the last I see of my little rose. She's free at last.

We mingle around the site a little longer while Armando (clearly enjoying his moment of fame) gives an interview for the TV crew. In the end the job is complete, there's nothing left to do and nothing left to say. We head back to our horses for the long ride back down. I return to where I "parked" my horse only to find it missing. I look up the hill and Johnny is already halfway up the ridge line on the back of my horse. He shouts down at me and points to another horse. I assume he's just mixed up the two and taken mine by mistake so I mount up on what I assume was his horse.

As I turn to leave however one of the camera men stops me. It's his horse that I'm on and he's not too impressed with me stealing it. I clamber down and hand over the reigns and look around for the horse that Johnny must have left behind. I find it tied to a tree in the corner and I quickly realise why Johnny was keen to get rid of it. This horse is a midget, barely bigger than a pony. Johnny didn't take my horse by accident, the bastard stole it!

I've no choice, the rest of the group are already on their way out. I carefully pull myself up into the saddle and, after apologising to the poor little guy for my bulky weight, head off. My clown-sized feet don't fit in the stirrups and they are so high anyway that even if they did fit my knees would be knocking against my chin. I settle for letting my legs dangle. The poor little horse is so small that my feet are only a foot or so off the ground. In truth it would probably be fairer if I carried the horse back down the hill, rather than the other way around.

The sun is shinning brightly now and the clouds have lifted. On the way up we were barely able to see the horse in front of us but now the mountains are rewarding us for delivering a bear to them. In every direction we are surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of towering mountains. As we round one bend, about halfway down, we are greeted with an unobstructed and awesome view of the pyramid-like Cotopaxi volcano, a giant of the Andes at 5,900 meters above sea level, sporting a pure white mantel of snow.

At last we arrive back at the Hacienda of Yanahurco. My little steed holds his strength until the last and he rides proudly down into the coral his head held high. I dismount gratefully and give him an appreciative pat, ignoring the jibes and jokes of the others about our mismatched sizes. I give Johnny an accusative glance and he looks away sheepishly, failing to conceal his evil grin.

The next few days after Rosita's release are highlighted by a media extravaganza. Ecuador is gripped by "bear-mania" (well, this is the somewhat colourful description used by Dave in a grant proposal he was writing). The release of Rosita makes it onto the evening news and we are in two of the national papers. I miss the news on the TV but manage to get hold of one of the articles in the newspaper.

Accompanying the article is a photo of me carting Rosita out in the stretcher, only they've cut the photo off so that I'm visible only from the waist down. There's also a few paragraphs in the article about me getting down there at the crack of dawn to move Rosita into the cage. They've even quoted me, using my story about the bears being highly intelligent and not liking the vet (though they improved the grammar of my Spanish a little before printing it). The only problem is that instead of using my name they've taken Leon's by mistake and claimed that I was from New Zealand. So basically I made the papers but only from the waist down, and with the wrong name and wrong country. The fame has been hard to deal with, but I've not let it get to my head.

One week after Rosita's release we check on her for the first time. A wealthy friend of Armando's, who uses light aeroplanes to take aerial, landscape photos, makes a flyover of the Yanahurco reserve. Armed with one of our radios he picks up Rosita's single. She's moved a little way into the forest and the signal is both strong and active. We'll continue to check on her from time to time but for now it seems she's coping just fine out there in the wild on her own. I suspect it won't be long until there are a few little Rosita-cubs wandering around there with her too.

The Great Escapes

I once tried going on a detox diet (it was a mistake and one that shall never be repeated, I can assure you). I could handle the loss of dairy goods (replaced by some form of bean extract) and the loss of bread (replaced by some form of cardboard). It was the lack of sugar that drove me mad. I don't eat a lot of junk food mind you, it's just that even the "healthy" foods in the Western World seem to be loaded with sugar. I had cravings: no matter how much bean curd and cardboard I ate I always needed something more. I was grumpy too, unapproachable and liable to snap. I was like a smoker on patches, a junkie needing a hit. It was a tough two weeks.

It was no surprise to me then that by taking the bears off a pure diet of sugar-rich fruit and putting them onto what is basically the brussel sprouts of the bush (i.e. bamboo and bromeliads), I would end up with some pretty unhappy customers. Pissing off a bear is not something I recommend doing. Sure they might look cute and cuddly but get on the wrong side of them and they'll happily tear you a new arsehole. Fortunately I was on the outside of the cage (most of the time) so the bears had to make do with trying to tear each other apart instead. They jostled restlessly with each other constantly and when the food, with an ever decreasing fruit content, was put in the cage they were unable to decide between trying to scoff it down as fast as they could or fighting with each other over it.

All the boys were out of sorts, but Beto took it the hardest. He went from being a happy, go-lucky bear (probably from all that wanking) to an angry, vengeful demon looking to vent his rage on anything that moved. He was mid-puberty as well and going through a growth spurt so I really can't hold it against him. I did try to introduce the change as gradually as possible but I had only four weeks to work with, and Rosita, being smaller and more experienced, was much quicker to adapt than the boys. Since she was the only one going out for the release she was setting the pace of the rehab and the boys were forced to tough it out.

I'm sure it was Beto that master-minded the escapes. He was always just that little bit more cunning than the other boys. I'm sure it was he that led the others astray. I'm in Quito when they escape the first time. I'd gone in for just a couple of days to do some work on the web page that needed Internet access. I arrive back at Santa Martha to discover that they've dug away a solid chunk of earth just near the door. The resulting hole is not much bigger than the entrance to a rabbit borough but somehow all four bears have managed to squeeze through.

Once again the volunteers manage to get them back in the cage. Hunger, the cause of the problems in the first place, also provides the solution. The male bears are found down in the pen of the Galapagos Tortoises gulping down the mounds of fruit that these slow reptiles take a day to eat. The tortoises, though surely not happy about the invasion, are not about to stop three hungry, male bears and they are wisely hiding inside their shells when the volunteers arrive.

Using a few buckets of fruit, the boys are easily lured back into their cage. Only Rosita is not so easily conned, her hunger being far less. This is not the first time Rosita has roamed free either. A year or so earlier, in the dead of the night, poachers cut a hole in the fence and pilfered Beto. He was taken to Quito where he was undoubtedly headed for the black market. Luckily the poachers were caught by police and Beto was returned. The other big boys remained in the cage, but the more savvy Rosita found her way out through the hole left by the poachers. She wandered around the farms of Santa Martha for two weeks, living off local crops, before she was finally tranquilized and recaptured by Armando and Leonardo.

Having escaped again it was reasonable to expect that she would not be found so easily. For some unknown reason however she returned to the cage later that afternoon. Either she'd had a bad time in her previous escape or she just missed the boys. Some of the volunteers had stayed by the cage for the day just in case, and when she returned they merely opened the door, threw some fruit in and she wandered casually back in.

We repair the cage but decide to increase the amount of food that the bears are getting as well. We increase both the fruits and the forest foods in a attempt to placate them. Increasing their fruits isn't ideal, but rehabilitation would be pretty pointless if the bears all escaped and then were shot by local farmers. A compromise is used that should still have Rosita prepared for her release.

Food is suddenly not the only problem however. I am down helping the other volunteers repair a cage for some Cabeza de Muertes (ugly little animals that look a lot like stoats - the name means "Head of Death" as they sport particularly evil looking mugs) when we start hearing strange noises from the bear cage. It sounds like a couple of Wookies are having it out, with a strange mixture of purring, grunting and growling. I don't think much of it at first but a volunteer who'd gone back for some more tools tells me that two of the bears are mating.

I head up for a look and sure enough discover Gabriel humping away on top of the less than impressed Rosita, who looks somewhat bored with the whole thing. I watch them for a while at a distance unsure of the best action to take (earning me a reputation with the other volunteers as a man into bear porn). Eventually they notice me, and since I am by now, the source of all their food they quickly give up on the mating and come looking for tasty treats (well Rosita stops quickly anyway, Gabriel looks a little less pleased and I'm sure gives me some unfriendly glances).

I have fears that the release will be cancelled since a pregnant bear should probably not be drugged. After we talk with Leonardo, the vet, however it's decided to continue with the plan. This is the first time Rosita has come into heat (just my bloody luck!) and it's more than likely that the romantic intentions of the still very young Gabriel will amount to nothing. We decide to risk it, getting Rosita out into the wild where she can mate with other wild bears is even more important now.

Of course having a female in heat sharing a cage with three pubescent and hungry males does little to help the mood of my furry friends. The boys continue to wrestle and shove each other, and often one or the other loses his temper giving a loud, vicious moan that I never once heard before changing their diet. One morning I come down to find that Leo's right ear has been badly cut. None of the other bears own up to it but I guess that the increasingly aggressive Beto is the guilty party.

The lack of equipment for the earlier move of the boys into the smaller cage and the general Ecuadorian attitude towards such things has me concerned over what they are planning to use for the release of Rosita. I set myself the task of building a stretcher. Leon supplies me with some discarded wooden polls from an old cage and I buy myself some rope from the local town. Despite never having woven a thing in my life I end up with a not too shabby little stretcher. It turns out my Mum was wrong, all those hours of sleeping in hammocks, my sub-conscious mind absorbing the patterns of the interwoven rope, has served me well after all.

My stretcher gets a test run. Santa Martha has a pride of lions (taken from a circus that was keeping them illegally) and one of the older males is no longer getting on with the rest of the gang. He's targeted for removal and will spend the rest of his days in a separate cage with an inbred, slightly blind and mentally disturbed female lion (not my ideal retirement either).

The usual process is carried out: Leonardo arrives, he blows a dart into the lion, and then we have to move him. The slight complication this time is that the lion we've just darted is in a cage with three other lions and two, three-week old cubs (the result of some Ecuadorian planning, where the neutering of the male was done after the females became pregnant). As luck would have it the male, after being drugged, wanders down to where the cubs are and passes out practically on top of them. The females are not going to be too happy with us messing around down there but there's little choice.

I volunteer for the retrieval mission: the lion is damn heavy and it makes sense for us males to do the lifting (political correctness is generally ignored by all in these situations, particularly by the women). We enter the cage. Johnny goes in first, waving a stick and making a lot of noise. The rest of us follow behind with the stretcher while one more volunteer stands guard behind, keeping the path to the doorway free. Johnny, all of about five and a half feet tall, manages to put the fear of God in the cats and they lurk along the back of the cage. As we approach the cubs however, they snarl and begin to approach and Johnny quickly grabs the cubs and propels them towards the females. They are placated enough for us to get to work with Johnny on constant guard.

We load the lion onto my stretcher. He weighs a ton and four of us lifting is barely enough. I begin to have doubts about the strength of the stretcher. It was designed for a much smaller weight: none of the young bears weigh anything over 150 kilograms. This beast must way two or three times that at least. Despite my concerns the stretcher holds true and we heave the lump of muscle and fur up the hill and out the door and into his new retirement home. All the while Johnny fends off the female lions, using his stick and force of will alone.

I continue my work with the bears as the day of release draws steadily closer. The top of the bear enclosure is open and it's only the presence of electric wires running along the top and bottom of the walls that deters the bears from climbing. The bears know that these wire zap but they frequently test them anyway. At least once a week one of the boys sniffs tentatively at the wire for a while before nudging it with a wet nose. The zap they get scares the shit out of them every time and without fail they give a startled yelp before scrambling up the nearest tree.

With the rainy season well and truly settled in, blackouts become frequent. Of course there's no generator or backup power supply for the enclosure (that would be both well beyond the budget and well beyond the limits of Ecuadorian long range planning). One evening I arrive at the enclosure to find the entire length of electric wire (some 40 meters or more) torn down from the fence and being used in a game of tug war between Beto and Gabriel. After a quick check to make sure all four bears are still in the cage I run back up the hill to tell Johnny.

Johnny sends me back down to the cage with orders not to let any of the bears escape while he gathers tools and workers to repair the cage. I spend the next hour maintaining a careful vigilance over my would-be escapees. I'm armed with a sturdy length of bamboo, a mighty weapon indeed against four restless bears should they attempt a breakout.

Eventually Johnny arrives with two other helpers. It's dark by this time but we push into the bear cage anyway. Before entering we manage to get all three boys into the small feeding cage and lock them in. Johnny works his way around the fence, reattaching the wire and repairing any breaks while the other guys keep watch on the prowling Rosita, occasionally fending her off with their trusty staves.

I'm assigned guard duty for the boys. The door between the small feeding cage and the larger cage is flimsy and slides into place without any locking mechanism. Left to their own devices the bears can work out how to slide the door open and escape back into the main cage. I stand over the door rapping the paws of the boys with my staff as they pull and play at the door. Johnny's left me with an electric cattle prod but either its not working or the voltage is too low. Each time I try to zap one of the boys they end up licking the end of the prod and trying to play with it.

After two or three hours in the dark and in the rain Johnny is finally happy with the fence. He connects the power once again. I'm at the far end of the cage when this happens and, rather than walk over, Johnny yells at me to test the wire. I've only got one tool to use for this: my hand. Gingerly I tap the wire. Nothing. I yell out to Johnny and he fiddles with some more wire. Still nothing. I keep tapping my hand on the wire yelling to Johnny, "Nada ... nada ... nada ...". Finally the power kicks in, a jolt runs up my body, makes my hair stand on end and frizzles my teeth. My "nada" becomes "naaaaaaargh fuck!" and Johnny gets the confirmation that the fence is working.

After this near escape the bears are put back onto their original diet for a day while we work out a plan. Eventually Johnny comes up with a solution so simple I feel stupid for not thinking of it earlier. For each meal we lure the three boys into the smaller cage and shut the door while keeping Rosita outside. Once in the small cage we can feed the boys as much food as they can eat while Rosita is given the bamboo and bromeliads. Rosita has never liked the close confines of the small cage and keeping her out is not overly difficult. The dumber, hungrier boys go where ever we put the food.

This works well and the boys begin to calm down somewhat. They are still restless but no where near as aggressive as they have been. Despite this they still escape one last time, only two days before Rosita's planned release. It's obvious that it's more than just food that's driving them to seek freedom. The boys are coming of age and it's natural for them to want to wander. Male bears in the wild roam massive distances looking for adventure, for food, and for a little lady action. These boys need space.

The final escape is on a Saturday evening. The other volunteers have this time off, but my bears need feeding twice daily - they don't know what a weekend is and after a month of this work, neither do I. I'm up preparing their evening meal when Brenda (Johnny's wife) comes in and tells me that the bears are not in their enclosure. It's all too familiar for me to be overly concerned but this particular escape is badly timed. Armando has organized a stack of media and police officials to attend Rosita's release on the Monday. Nothing would be worse publicity for both Santa Martha and the Bear Project than Rosita not turning up for her own release party.

I rush down to the enclosure with my bucket of mashed fruit, dog biscuits and oats. Sure enough the cage is empty and there are no bears in sight. With a weary sigh I put down my bucket and begin to unlock the cage door. My plan is to leave the door open with some food in the cage while I go in search of the bears. With any luck they will wander back on their own as before.

I'm fiddling with the lock when I hear Leon's voice behind me, "you better open that cage quick mate." I turn and less than a foot away and completely blocking my escape, are the three boys all lined up around my bucket of food like pigs at a trough. Carefully I open the door and then slowly drag the bucket into the cage with the three boys following close behind. Leon follows me in and using some apples that he's brought down we manage to distract them long enough for me to empty the bucket and for us to make good our escape.

Leon's closing the door when I spot Rosita wandering up the hill. I head over to her with some apples and some of her beloved dog biscuits. She trustingly follows me back down the hill, slow step by slow step. Leon opens the door again and using his basket of apples distracts the boys so I can bring Rosita in. She hesitates on the threshold and for a moment I think she might bolt but the lure of the dog biscuits is too strong and she follows me in. Leon has the three boys almost climbing up him as they try to rip the basket out of hands but we throw the food around the cage and then dive for the door, bolting it shut behind us.

We find the escape point. This time they basically just ripped the fence out of the ground and then dug under it. It seems the bears can escape almost at will, it’s just that they've not bothered to put the effort in before now. Johnny finally agrees that it’s more than just a problem with food and makes plans to rebuild the bear cage completely in the coming weeks. In the meantime we spend another late evening fending off bears with sticks while Johnny makes repairs to the cage. This time he drapes electric wire along all the potential escape points. It's a temporary solution but should hold the bears until the repairs can be made.

While we’re repairing the cage, reports begin to trickle in from workers around the farm that several monkeys have escaped. We go to investigate and discover that the bears have been on a bit of a rampage. The roof of the Jaguarindi (like a house-sized Jaguar) cage is completely bowed from where a bear (or two) has obviously climbed up and tried to get in. Luckily the cage is still intact and the Jaguarindi is cowering in its box when we arrive. The squirrel monkey cage is in far worse shape. The bears have completely demolished this and have torn large holes in the thin mesh cage. Two of the little guys are deep in their box, shivering with fear but the rest have escaped to the nearby trees. Luckily Leon is able to recapture them all and after a quick head count we are relieved to find that all managed to avoid being eaten.

We do a quick check of the other animals and all the cages are intact. We're not sure what would have happened if the bears tried to face off against some of the big cats and we're glad we didn't get to find out. Only Annie, the Tapir, is missing but this is normal. She roams free around Santa Martha as she keeps escaping from her cage and no one can work out how. She's completely harmless and quite enjoys the company of the cows so she's generally allowed to get away with it. She has been known to hang out near the bear cage however and the bears have shown a more than friendly interest in her presence before so there's no way of knowing what happened until Annie turns up again.

The last Sunday before Rosita's release is a nervous time for all. No one will be looking too good if the press and the police turn up then next morning to find bears running lose all over the center, chewing on endangered animals. I spend the day at the cage on a quiet vigil but the bears are calm and spend most of the day snoozing (probably exhausted from their rampage on the previous day). I'm unable to sleep on Sunday night and have to get up and check on the bears every couple of hours until at five in the morning the media circus arrives and it's finally time to say goodbye to little Rosita.

A Rose By Any Other Name

It's not an offer you get everyday really. After extending my stay on the bear project for the third time, I'm finally on the verge of turning in my gumboots and taking to the road again. There's a whole continent of adventure still waiting for me and as much as I'm enjoying tracking bears it's time to move on. So is my thinking on the morning when, sitting in a clearing and watching a lazy, white cloud drift through the valley below me, Armando asks me if I want to rehabilitate an Andean Bear and then release it into the wild.

I consider my options. Sprawled out before me is a banquet of cultural and natural delights: the humid expanse of the Amazon jungle, Machu Pichu and the mysterious ruins of the Incas, the ski slopes of Chile, the fabled feasts of Argentina and the beaches, parties (and women!) of Brazil. While here, on the other hand, I have a chance to do something no other bum backpacker (and definitely no IT geek) has ever been able to do: a chance to work face to face with the shy, elusive creature that I've spent the last three months tracking without ever catching a glimpse of; a chance to do something really worthwhile, something that will significantly contribute to the conservation of the Andean Bear; a chance to do something pretty damn cool.

In the end there is only one choice, the sights of South America will be there when I'm ready for them but an offer to rehabilitate and release a bear is not coming along again anytime soon. I accept Armando's offer and then dedicate myself to the task of finding out exactly what "bear rehabilitation" actually means. I'm guessing it doesn't involve taking them to help groups and getting them to stand up and admit they have a problem but other than that it's all new territory for me.

The reason Armando needs me to do this work, as opposed to doing it himself, is that after months of working with government officials and the owners of Yanahurco in the Cotopaxi reserve (where the bear is to be released), the rehab of the bear now coincides with the time when Armando is off to Italy to speak at an International Bear Conference (it's amazing what weird and wacky things people do behind closed doors). Armando will be back for the actual release but for the bulk of the rehab he will be in a continent far away.

This is the seventh bear released by the project and Armando at least has some documents to help me out. They're all in Spanish but I surprise even myself when I discover this isn't a problem for me anymore. The basic concept is pretty simple really; the main focus of the rehabilitation is to change the bear's diet from the junk it is currently eating to what it will be eating in the wild. This is primarily so the bear can identify food sources in the wild and not starve to death but also to gradually prepare the bear's digestive system for the change (I'm familiar enough with the affects that a sudden change to a foreign diet can have to appreciate the need for this).

I head out to the Santa Martha Animal Rehabilitation Centre where my bear is currently living. Santa Martha is owned by the Fundacion Espiritu del Bosque (i.e. the Spirit of the Forest Foundation), the same foundation that runs the bear project. It's a centre that focuses on the rehabilitation of native animals with the aim of releasing them back into the wild. In many ways it resembles a zoo, the main difference however is that where zoos aim to collect as many animals as possible and keep them for as long as possible, Santa Martha aims to get rid of as many animals as possible and, in a perfect world, would have all its cages empty.

I meet my bears. Only one, the female, is going for release this time round but she shares an enclosure with three younger males. This is the first time I've ever seen an Andean Bear, apart from in photos, and I am instantly in love with them. They are like massive puppies: big, clumsy-looking balls of fluff that pull and play with anything they find in front of them. They're not exactly tame but they don't have that "I want to rip your guts open, eat your heart and floss with your entrails" look that most wild animals, especially the big cats, have. These guys want to play with me, it's just that their version of "playing" would end with me picking up my limbs off the ground.

At first the bears all look pretty similar to me but part of my assignment is to observe them while they eat and interact. I spend hours sitting next to the enclosure, in the sun and in the rain, watching them go about their day-to-day activities. It's not long until I can tell each bear apart from just a glance. These bears are called spectacled bears because of the white rings around their eyes. Each of my bears has a different look to their rings and once you get to know them, these are as distinctive as the markings on a human face.

The two big boys are called Leonardo and Gabriel. These guys are twin brothers and although they are only around two years of age and eight months younger than the female, they are half again her size. The markings on Gabriel's face form a thin little 'Y' shape and hardly circle his eyes at all. Leonardo's markings on the other hand are thick, shaggy and look more like a splatter of paint. You can always find Leonardo in a crowd because of his wet, orange ears. For some unknown reason Gabriel likes to suck on Leo's ears (making some very disturbing sounds of pleasure while he does it) and never once did I see Leo with dry ears.

The youngest bear is Beto. This little guy is the smallest of the lot when I arrive but in the month that I'm working with them he almost doubles in size and out-grows my female. Beto has very straight, thick eye markings that form a nice bushy mono-brow across his forehead. He's probably about a year and a half old and, being in that experimental phase of his life, can often be seen (and heard) pleasuring himself.

Bears have incredible flexibility and Beto regularly curls himself up in a ball and gives himself a bit of a lick and tickle, earning himself the nickname of "Willy" from the other volunteers at Santa Martha. Beto was high up in a tree one morning, indulging in a bit of oral pleasure, when he got so carried away that he fell backwards out of the tree, plummeting three or four meters to the ground below. Luckily bears are pretty damn tough and he was unhurt, but he has learnt not to give himself blowjobs in trees anymore.

And then of course there's my girl: a sleek little creature, almost delicate looking alongside the shambling bulk of the males. She's adorned with petite, little eye-rings. The one over her left eye forms a near-perfect half-moon but the one over her right eye has a distinctive break in the middle of it. She's nearly three years old and is just about fully-grown for a female. The males, when fully grown, will be nearly double the size of most females.

My first, and unexpected, obstacle is working out just what the female's name actually is. With each of the different little groups of the foundation she has a different name. On the bear project she's referred to as Colleen, in honour of an American woman that helped set up the foundation and was very involved in its early days, especially with setting up the volunteer program. At Santa Martha I'm told she's called Rosita. When I mention this to Armando, he tells me that it's actually Osita, a nickname meaning "little bear" but Johnny, who runs Santa Martha, is adamant that it's Rosita. Just to make matters more interesting, Dave tells me that she was originally called Maria, though he seems to be the only one who knows this. I decide to go with Rosita, it has a nice ring to it, and it suits her: the little Rose.

All of these bears have come to Santa Martha via the police after raids on homes where the bears have been kept illegally as pets or have been on their way to the animal black market. All were cubs when they arrived and have been raised at Santa Martha by volunteers, often being bottle fed for the first few months after their arrival. The two brothers were around three months old when they were found in someone's backyard here in Ecuador where they were kept with chickens in a coop.

Once the bears were weaned off the bottle they moved onto a fruit and oat mix. Two buckets of watermelon, pineapple, rock melon, banana and papaya are fed to them each morning and night. Once or twice a week the bears are given a dead chicken to eat to keep up their protein levels. This wasn't enough to keep them healthy however and in the last six months or so, their diet has been supplemented with a couple of scoops of dog biscuits.

Unfortunately for Rosita, this delicious diet can't be maintained in the wild. There just aren't any naturally growing dog-biscuit trees in the Cloud Forests of Ecuador. Out there she's going to eat bamboo, bromeliads, the heart of palm trees, the occasional bush fowl and as many grubs, worms and insects as she can find. So this is my job: to convince Rosita that the diet of sweet fruit and filling dog biscuits she's been living on (the equivalent of bear ice-cream) is no where near as delicious as the tough, fibrous plants and squishy bugs she'll get in the wild (the bear equivalent of rice and brussel sprouts).


My job is to be made a little easier since the boys are being moved to a new cage, in preparation for the arrival of two other adult bears from another zoo down south in Ecuador. Rosita is to be left on her own in the old cage for a few weeks while the younger boys are moved into a re-furbished cage, previously home to a lion. I spend my first week working with the other volunteers at Santa Martha (mostly female, once again), strengthening the cage and making it bear proof. The work is supervised by a couple of Ecuadorian cow farmers and the usual Ecuadorian approach is used, i.e. no need for planning, just knock it up and see how it looks. We all have our doubts about the strength of the cage but we defer to the wisdom of the Ecuadorians who, in typical Ecuadorian fashion, claim expertise in every field they turn their hands to.

Leonardo, one of the foundation founders, the namesake for one of the bears, and the vet for both the bear project and Santa Martha, turns up on the designated day to drug and move the boys. I've spent a bit of time with Leonardo before this and he's one of those easygoing, likeable people that you never meet often enough. As with everything with this foundation, money (or rather, lack of it) dictates the proceedings and Leonardo has only a bit of PVC piping that he uses as a blow dart to drug the bears. He's also only got three darts so when he misses Gabriel with one of his shots, one of the volunteers has to run in and grab the dart while the rest of us distract the other bears. It's all very professional.

Eventually we manage to get all three of the boys drugged. Rosita is hiding in the far corner of the cage throughout the whole venture. She's familiar with Leonardo and his blow dart and the moment he nears the cage she's off - as quickly as any pet dog when it hears the word 'vet'. We enter the cage without having to worry about Rosita bothering us and drag out the boys. Again the tight budget is evident: there's no stretcher or anything like that to carry them on so we use the small, metal door to the cage. We have to hold the bears on by whatever we can get hold of, be it feet, ears or tufts of fur, to stop them from sliding off as we lug them down to the new cage.

Eventually we get all three of them into the new cage and shut the door. Gradually they come to and struggle onto their feet. They look like I do on a Sunday morning after a big night out on the town. They stagger around the cage looking well pissed off and understandably confused. They've lived in their old enclosure for over a year and this is the first time they've seen anything different.

They're hungry too. We've not been able to feed them for two days because of the drugs used to move them. We still have to wait a while longer before we can give them solids but we fill up their water bowl for them. They down this immediately and we have no way of telling them to take it slow. Within a few minutes they're all throwing up water all over their nice new cage. It's really not been a good morning for them.

We watch them for a while to make sure that they are OK and then leave them to recover in peace. The other volunteers head off to feed the monkeys, or clean the lion cages or whatever other unappealing job Leon has for them. I head off for bromeliads for Rosita but drop back in to see the other boys late in the afternoon. They are really not impressed with their new cage and they have stripped every bit of wood in it. They've also pulled and played with every loose bit of wire and every support beam in reach. When I come down Beto is hanging from the roof of the cage (some two or three meters off the ground) trying to pull it down. Still the cage seems to be holding up and I head up to have dinner.

Just after dinner the message comes in that a farmer driving past has seen a bear wandering free in a field. The boys have escaped. It's dark but we head down anyway to see if we can do anything. There are about ten volunteers along with the two Ecuadorians that were responsible for the cage building. Chiquita, my small puppy in training to be a bear tracker, tags along as well, despite my attempts to stop her. We hurry down to the bear cage with our torches and a few buckets of bear food.

Luckily the boys’ hunger has dictated their movements. We find them loitering around the cage looking for food. This is where they've been fed everyday for the last year or so and to them this is where dinner should be. Even though we've found the bears we still have the difficult task of luring them into the cage. We open the door and Leo wanders straight in and heads for the food bowl. Beto is close but won't enter the cage. Despite being a young guy he's pretty smart and isn't falling for such a simple ruse. One of the Ecuadorian guys grabs him from behind by the scruff of his neck. This isn't exactly the smartest thing to do but Beto is small enough that he gets away with it.

There's no way we can drag Gabriel in using this same method though, he's huge and he's still a little pissed about the whole bit where we drugged him and dragged him by ears into a new and scary place. A couple of the team head down behind him and try to scare him into the cage by yelling loudly and whacking the ground with sticks (of my precious bamboo!). This has the affect of scaring the shit out of Gabriel but instead of heading into the cage as expected he bolts. One of the Ecuadorian guys is in his way and he turns and runs, heading straight for myself and a group of volunteers.

It's dark enough that all we see at first is the Ecuadorian legging it up the hill towards us. He literally pushes over some of the girls as he bolts along the small path, yelling something unintelligible in Spanish. A few seconds later we see the bear: a huge bulk of muscle and fur thundering its way towards us. In reality the bear is just trying to escape and has no interest in attacking us but at the time there's little time to think this through and even so I don't think it would have made much of difference to any of us.

The group scatters in all directions. I'm at the front of the crowd and there's nowhere for me to run so I dive over the nearest bush. Only Chiquita stays behind either too brave or too stupid to run. Showing her true bear tracking spirit, she stands her ground barking her little puppy bark as the bear charges towards her. Despite the difference in size the bear is actually put off enough by the defiant, barking Chiquita that he slows before reaching us. This brief lull is all that myself and a few of the other volunteers need. We charge back towards the bear whooping and yelling. He turns back down the hill and, now surrounded by crazy, yelling humans, bolts for the safety of the cage. We slam the door shut and bolt it behind him.

With the bears all safely back in their original enclosure we head down to the cage that they escaped from. We quickly spot the point of their escape. The boys, in their frustration at being somewhere new with no food, have bent back some of the thick steal mesh in the corner of the cage. It's a decent effort; I doubt I could have done the same with the aid of a crow bar and a hammer. More amazing is that this cage was home to several large cats for years before the bears moved in. The cats never came close to escaping but these agile and strong bears were out in less than a day.

No harm has been done however. The bears are all safely back in their original enclosure and, after a decent feed, have settled down for a nice snooze. The decision is made not to move them again. Although we could fix the point of escape, there's no way to know whether the bears will be able to escape again. On top of this it's not real safe to drug the bears too often and we are reluctant to dose them again so soon. This is all fine except I'm once again left with the task of providing natural food for four hungry, growing bears instead of one.

I start with bamboo as this is the most important part, and in the wild usually makes up about 70% of a bear's diet. Having lived out on the bear project for the last three months I'm confidently expecting that huge swathes of bamboo forest will surround me on all sides. I'm a long way wrong. Santa Martha is south of Quito and is in an area famous for its lucrative dairy farms. The area is highly cultivated and, despite walking for days in every direction, and asking every farmer I can find (and earning myself some very strange looks), the best bamboo I can find is barely a centimetre in diameter. The bears think this stuff makes great toys and love wrestling with each other over it but there's no chance they're mistaking this for food.

I put bamboo on hold for a few days and focus on Bromeliads. These are the large flower-like plants that grow in the branches of trees. Here I have more luck, all along the river the trees are covered with bromeliads of all shapes and sizes. The trees are thick branched and, apart from the spiders and the thorny bushes, make great climbing. Each morning I head off with my sacks and my machete and spend hours clambering up trees and ripping down these plants. The shape of them form a natural bowl that catches rain water and when I pull them down, this stagnant, foul-smelling brew pours out all over me.

When I first start collecting bromeliads, I'm a little casual about where I get them from. I'm used to the friendly farmers of Intag who see you walking onto their land as a chance to make a new friend, show off whatever weird crop they grow, and convince you to marry their daughter. I expect these farmers near Santa Martha to have no problem with me climbing some trees on the edge of their properties to pull down a few useless bromeliads. Following the river one day I find out just how wrong this assumption is.

The river is the border of Johnny's land and I spend a good hour collecting bromeliads from his side of it. I spy a few tasty looking subjects on the other side of the river however and scramble across. I'm standing there on the neighbour's land, probably only about three meters from the river bank, looking up at my prey and trying to work out the best way to climb up to get them. Behind me I hear someone approaching and I look up the path to see a farmer descending towards me. I wave to him and offer a friendly "buenos dias". There's no response and it's when he's about ten meters away I notice he's holding a rifle in one hand and a machete in the other. He doesn't look too happy either.

He stops in front of me, cocks his rifle and then raises it about a meter in front of my face, giving me the best view I've ever had of the inside of the barrel of a loaded rifle and also a reason to buy new underwear. He still hasn't said a word and there's a healthy anger in his eyes, this man wants blood. I realise I'm still holding my machete and I drop it quickly. I pour out Spanish, explaining what I'm doing, who I'm working with and that I didn't realise it was his property (the last was a blatant lie but, given the circumstance, my conscience is clean).

He keeps the gun aimed at my head for a good five minutes while I talk, occasionally he asks me questions such as Johnny's last name and the name of the reserve: questions to test my true identity. It seems a little extreme, I've already shown him my bag full of worthless bromeliads, I'm clearly a gringo foreigner, I'm wearing a white shirt and tan pants, my machete has a fluorescent orange handle and I'm wandering around in clear site in the middle of the day. If I truly am the cow-rustling bandit this man thinks I am, I'm in the running for the top prize on World's Dumbest Criminals.

Finally I convince him I'm not there to steal his cows and he lowers his gun (with a somewhat disappointed look on his face). Having decided not to shoot me, he now decides we can be mates. He engages me in a friendly conversation about Australia, about the bears, about Santa Martha and about Ecuadorian women. I answer all his questions as politely and in as friendly a way as I can (the gun is still loaded after all), all the while trying to work out whether I've shat myself or not. After a half hour chat he finally shakes my hand, calls me his "Amigo" and heads back to his farmhouse. I grab my sack of bromeliads and all but run back across the river and up to the bear cage. That's all the bromeliads the bears are getting this day and in subsequent expeditions I keep well within the bounds of Johnny's property.

Armando comes out to check on me before heading off to Italy. After showing him the pathetic bamboo I've managed to find he takes me down to a local reserve called Pasochoa. It's only a half hour drive from Santa Martha and has around 500 hectares of undisturbed forest, swarming with thick, green bamboo. The rangers here know Armando from years back and they kindly allow me to come down twice a week and cut bamboo for my bear. It's a beautiful little site and I'm not at all unhappy about working there. The place actually charges tourists ten dollars to visit for the day but I'm allowed in for free (all I have to do is show my trusty machete).

Johnny is suppose to drive me down to the site and pick me up after cutting for a day but the man runs an animal centre with everything from ocelots, to ex-circus lions, to a Houdini-like tapir that refuses to live in its cage and spends its days wandering with the cows. On top of this, Johnny has a hundred head of cattle that need milking and constant care. Despite his best intentions he has no time to help me on this venture. I end up walking down to Pasochoa each time, a two and a half hour walk. I then cut bamboo until the light begins to disappear. Sometimes Johnny picks me up, but usually I walk back up the hill and get him to come down the next day. By the end of it all I'm sick enough of waiting that I end up organising a local taxi (i.e. truck) to come pick up both my bamboo and me.

My arrival at Santa Martha inconveniently coincides with the start of the rainy season. Although the mornings are usually warm and sunny, everyday at around lunchtime the sky turns an angry black and the gods bellow thunder at me and hurl down lightning and rain. Most of my bamboo chopping is done with cold water dripping over my hood and heavy mud sucking at my boots. Most of my trips I do alone and the work is hard and slow going. Cutting enough bamboo to feed four growing bears is no easy task. The bamboo stalks are usually more than four meters long and they're heavy. Dragging thirty or forty stalks down the small paths in the pouring rain takes the full day. After setting off at six in the morning and getting home at around eight in the evening I usually have just enough bamboo to last my bears for half a week or so.

Towards the end of my stay there I finally manage to organise things with Leon (the volunteer coordinator at Santa Martha) and Johnny so that I get three or four volunteers to accompany me on the trip down to cut bamboo. We descend on Pasochoa with our machetes and set about hacking through the pristine reserve. The rangers look a little worried when they see us but they let us do our job so long as we stop chopping when other tourists come through. Every time they bring through a group of Ecuadorian school kids or a load of elderly tourists we sit down and try to look as inconspicuous as a group of machete wielding gringos can look while sitting next to a pile of chopped bamboo in an Ecuadorian reserve.

With this many people the job of cutting bamboo becomes a lot easier and we usually finish before the rains kick in at midday. This allows me to focus on my other assignments: worms and crickets, the bears need to learn that both of these are a food source. Crickets prove to be easy. The long grass fields around Santa Martha, which are used to fatten the dairy cows, are crawling with colonies of them.

I wander through the fields swiping at hapless bugs and loading them into my little plastic container. The bears love them. They line up along the edge of the cage like kids in a lollie shop, pushing and shoving at each other to get to the bugs. Their eyesight is pretty poor however and my attempts at throwing crickets into the enclosure in the hope that they will catch them fail miserably. I have to hand feed them through the cage and I'm amazed how delicately they lick the tiny bugs from out of my fingers without ever once biting me.

Worms prove a little more difficult. Despite spending my days digging through the soggy swamps that now surround Santa Martha due to the heavy rains, I find only a handful of worms. Eventually I am forced to resort to the undignified job of digging through the piles of steaming cow and horseshit that litter the fields. I have a little more success with this, but still, after hours, wrist-deep in shit, I have barely enough worms to feed one bear, let alone four.

There's only one option left: the massive pile of rotting compost. This wretched, foul-smelling mound is the result of years of volunteers dumping their organic waste. The rate of food scraps added to it far exceeds the rate of decomposition and the pile is over a meter high. I grab a small trowel and dive in and I am quickly rewarded with a seething colony of worms. I grab huge handfuls of them (mixed with rotting fruit, eggshells and other less pleasant and less identifiable scraps) and bundle them into my container.

I head down to the bears with my bounty of worms and the bears, recognizing my container as the one that provides the cricket goodness, come bounding up to me. I hand feed the worms to them through the cage wire but the bears are not at all impressed. The boys, especially Beto, gobble down a handful each before losing interest and wandering off to climb a tree or to have a snooze (or in Beto's case, a wank). Rosita is even less appreciative of my efforts. She takes one worm off me, chews it a little and then spits it out in disgust. She turns her back on me in disdain and wanders off. Such is the reward I get for my hours of picking through shit.

As well as the intensive, time-consuming work of the rehabilitating Rosita, I also volunteer myself to rebuild the website for the bear project. The biggest problem with this project is one of publicity. Since few people know they exist, few volunteers find their way here and few people who would otherwise donate to the cause have no way of doing so. I set myself the challenge of changing this and many a night I am up to the early hours of the morning trying to jam more information into the site. I even add an online donation section so that all those people reading my blog and feeling like they want to help out could do so from the comfort of their living rooms (and yes that was a blatant and shameless attempt to get you to donate. Don't make me beg).

I end up working at Santa Martha for a little over a month. My life begins to mimic that of a bear. I spend my waking hours climbing trees in search of the freshest and juiciest bromeliads. I get excited when I find a particularly large bromeliad as these are often crawling with small spiders, bugs and the occasional frog, all of which the bears love. I spend hours chopping stalks of bamboo and, since I need to test the stuff for softness and freshness, start to develop a taste for the fibrous stuff. I find myself chewing on stalks of the hard celery like stalks as I work. Most of my work (both the bear rehab and the website work) is done alone and, like the wild bears themselves, I have hours to myself, wandering through fields and forests and after a few weeks I grow more used to my own company and find myself almost uncomfortable around the other volunteers at meal times.

Eventually Rosita is ready. Apart from the bamboo and bromeliads I also manage to locate some palm trees on a small trip back to the main bear project. With a couple of volunteers from the bear project we chop down a few of these and I take the soft "hearts" of the palm trees back for my bears. Rosita loves them. It's the only food I've seen her fight over. Usually when the bigger boys approach she'll move off and leave what ever she's eating behind for them. With these palms however she runs up the nearest tree with her treasure and if the boys try to follow her she gives them a heavy slap, a snarl and sends them on their way.

As well as the palms I also get Johnny to take myself and a couple of other volunteers up to the nearby paramo (the mountain grass-lands that exists above the tree line throughout the Andes). The views from up here are spectacular, we can see for miles and the snow capped outline of the Cotapaxi reserve looms over the horizon. A few of the rare giant Condors circle slowly overhead as well and we are treated with a fantastic view of them.

It's not the views that we are for however. The bears use the paramo to move between patches of forest and they can sometimes spend days travelling along the border between the forest and the paramo. Up here there main food source is a special type of bromeliad called Puyas. We spend a few hours in these cold, windy highlands collecting these tough, spiky plants for the bears to eat. We load them into the back of Johnny's truck and take them back to the enclosure. The Puyas prove to be too tough for Rosita but the boys manage to crack a few open and munch them down. Rosita finishes off whatever they leave behind but never manages to open any herself. This is probably not a huge problem however, as the males are the ones that do the bulk of the travelling. Rosita should be able to survive without this food source if she still can't work out how to open them once she's in the wild.

Eventually my job is almost done. Rosita knows how to eat most of the foods of the wild and once Armando has returned from Italy he agrees that she's ready to go. As the day approaches for her release, I'm both a little sad that she will be gone and a little glad that I no longer have the exhausting task of feeding her. Only one last job is left: to release her into the wild.