Finishing up

Well, it seems that the story about difficulties with booking tickets isn’t over yet. After booking a new ticket on the phone with KLM, we thought everything was settled. We kept an eye on our credit card and found out that the money was still not taken of our credit card. Time for another phone call (of 8 euros). It seemed that KLM had made a mistake, the ticket was booked but they had forgotten to put the order to Visa. After booking a third ticket we can finally fly with KLM without any trouble. We also wanted to book our ticket from La Paz to Sao Paulo. That didn’t work either. We got a reply that everything was ok, followed by a sign that something went wrong. After three times booking a ticket this way, we received a mail from Visa that they had blocked our account. After calling them we found out that they blocked our card because the transaction was suspicious. Supposedly you cannot book a ticket in Bolivia on a Bolivian website. After noting that we would probably book some more obscure tickets we could use our credit card again. Why is it so difficult to book an e-ticket?

We would have been in the rainforest today, but after 4 days of sunshine it rained again all morning, so there were no boats leaving today. We will try to leave again tomorrow morning. Unfortunately we have planned a meeting on Saturday, so we have to shorten our holiday. We hope to be proper biologists for at least 3 days. We bring our binoculars, bird guide and borrowed plant guide with us and will be out in nature all day. After this trip, we will probably have some nice pictures to post.

We more or less finished the project for now. Last week we had an evaluation meeting with directors and teachers of the different schools. They were enthusiastic but we have to adjust several things. We were glad to notice that most of the people weren’t shy to give comments about negative points as well. The students were really enthusiastic. Each time they see us in or out school they wave and call, so we’re quite popular at the moment it seems. 
We have already made some plans for next year. We adjust our practical and add some theoretical classes about ecology. We hope to include workshops given by local people about topics like agro forestry and sustainable tourism. If we have enough time we will develop some lessons about waste as well for the lower classes. Unfortunately, most people have the habit to throw just everything on the ground and schools would like to change this as well. And then we have to develop a training for the guides and a training for the teachers. The amount of plans is no problem, to put everything in 2 months will be.