cute little guys headed for the ocean!
This is the species of Red Mangrove
A huge fig tree we found while doing our tree analysis. It reminded us of a dinosaur!
A howler monkey just lounging on the branch
A usual day of class for me means my prof using a mechete. We also got to swing from vines!
So last Monday I left for the Coast! It was about six hours in the bus and we drove up the Andes mountains through the cloud forest on very windy roads. I also started the book Three Cups of Tea during this time....so far I would def. recommend it. We stopped in this cute little town sadly I'm horrible with names and at lunch around 1 30 or 2 it was right by the ocean. I ate fish.... this is becoming a common thing here or at least on the coast I made sure to eat it with lots of garlic so it was fine. I got my first glimpse at Frigget birds, but didn't get to see the red pouches.
After lunch we hopped in the bus for about another hour and finally arrived at Lalo Loor sweating from sitting in a hot bus with 15 people and a bunch of fruit. We had to haul all of our gear a little ways to the cabin that we stayed in and we had a very nice welcoming committee of HOWLER MONKEYS. They were just lounging in the trees lazily scratching occasionaly. Later on Monday we had lecture about the Tropical Dry Forest compared to the Wet Tropical Forest (abbreviation WTF?) then we al ate dinner, played cards and later that night we went for a night hike. We saw tarantulas, a corn snake or corn snake wannabe, rat opposum, and a kinkajou but a group of 13 college students isn'tt that quiet so it was only a glimpse of the kinkajou.
Tuesday: At around 6 A.M. we were awakaned by the sound of Howlers, which is somewhat similiar to dogs barking or lions roaring. We hiked around Lalo Loor learning about our plant families (legumes and figs mostly) We spotted some toucans: Choco toucan "croaker" and Chestnut mandibled Toucan "yelper" , more howlers, Rofous headed Chacalaca (endangered). The landowner of Lalo Loor also talked to us about his reserve. Part of his land is used for farm and he makes yogurt. "Yogur" is a little different here it isn't as thick and it is drinkable....I prefere it. He talked about the difficulties preserving the land before when "green" wasn't in, but now other farmers in the area are doing similar things as him. Sometimes there is a threat that the governemtn will take away the land if you are not using it (such as preserving it) but a program called Sociobosque helps protect that from happening. sociobosque was set up by my profs, it is way so private land owners can preserve and keep their land and they get paid by the govt. 3 times a year to do nothing to it. it is kind of like REDD but on a local level . it isn't super efficient right now because the govt is paying with money they don't really have.
Wed: It poured all day and while we were doing some tree sampling. This was also the day I decided to wear my clean pants......they did not stay clean for long let me tell you, everything did remain wet all weekend. joy. We had to make plots and find the density of trees with a diametere less than 10 cm and than trees with a diametere greater than 10 cm. We also calculated the height of one tree which is really hard. In calc they have u do this but you can see the whole tree and it isn't covered up by other plants and trees. We also measured the canopy openess. WEd . night we had a lecture on insects. yay bugs!!!! ps. I corrected a professor for the first time in my life, I felt pretty smart let me tell you. Scarab beetles have lamallete antennae...not clubbed.
Thurs: We were seperated into three groups: pasture, forest, and edge and set off to collect bugs. There were several methods for capturing such as ariel night, hunting for them, baits, and sweeping. Then we went back and counted up the different orders we had. Forest had the most orders, and second most abundance of bugs. I was in the forest group and we also had a not of cooler bugs like a snakefly...not really a fly it is in the order Neuroptera. and another one called an owlfly? it appeared that it had two sets of eyes. COOL!
Friday: We packed everything up and by 830 we were off to see the Mangroves. The mangroves were really cool, we got to see tons of birds: ibis, friggets, little blue hurons, great blue hurons. There are three types of mangroves red, black, and white. After the mangroves we ate lunch and went to the beach!!!!! It was a beautiful hotel area and the beach was pretty much vacant except for our group. AS soon as we set up our tents we all hit the water and played in the waves.
Sat: Saturday around 7:30 am I got up because I had to go potty and one of my fellow classmates was taking pictures of baby sea turtles!!!! There were around 50 baby sea turtles coming out of their nest and making their way to the ocean. cutest thing i have ever seen! The man that had been living/working at the hotel for 14 years had never seen such a thing, so we really did get lucky! The rest of Saturday was spent lounging around on the beach, sadly it was cloudy but probably for the best because I still got burnt.
Sun: we played in the waves until 11 and also dug up the nest to take count of who hatched and who didn't. Back on the bus we went, and later that night we got ot watch the superbowl.
