soggy boots and windy heights
I'm on the bus from El Valle de Antón on our way to Portobelo. Our time in El Valle was amazing. When I found out we were going to a valley, I didn't think I'd be able to notice I was in a valley. But the town was situated in an extinct volcano crater, so the mountains surrounding us were very obvious. The weather was interesting because it was incredibly windy and most of the time there was a light drizzle, but the humidity was around 85% at all times so I was sweaty even tho it was cool. When we arrived we had a free day so a lot of us walked from the hotel to the main part of the city. We found a cafe and a crafts market where a LOT of people bought presents for themselves and people back home. We also got a good view of La India Dormida which is a range of mountains that has legends attached to it because it looks like a sleeping girl. In all of the places we've been, there's been at LEAST one dog that follows us around. We've been naming all of them and are even keeping a list of every dog friend we've made. At Hotel Campestre (in El Valle), we had two dog friends: World Wide Web and Frog Dog. Don't ask me why they're named that haha the dogs at the last hotel were named LeBron and Cookies + Cream.
I had very mixed feelings about the amphibian unit. We got to work with one of the leading people in amphibian conservation in El Valle and maybe even Panama as a whole which was amazing! We also got to do night field work which was a completely new experience for me. BUT, my boots are still wet. There was a miscommunication among Aly and Edgardo (the amphibian prof) which lead to only three people (out of 27) bringing their rubber boots. This meant that for the groups that worked in the stream, we had to wear soaking wet hiking boots for 48 hours. Even though my boots were above my ankles, the water was knee deep in some places :(
I was in the tadpole abundance group which meant that we had to count every tadpole in thirty 1m^2 plots along a 100m transect up Rio Anton. We counted over 1000 tadpoles!! It was trial and error but we eventually got the routine down to a science (pun intended). By the last night, we were done counting our transect in 40 minutes (the first time we went out it took two hours to do 7/10 of our transect). It was slow going but someone always went ahead and looked for cool frogs. Some other groups saw very poisonous snakes and spiders but we just saw some harmless wolf spiders. To make it go faster, we also tried to parody songs with frog hunting related lyrics.
In between class and field work, living nearby everyone proved very convenient. Almost every night we hung out in the outdoor hallway between our rooms. Two of the nights we even watched movies in the designated mega bedroom (mega bedroom: pushing two queen sized beds together).
After our extremely hard test and our presentations, we had a full free day. I decided to go on a hike with eleven other people and even though the hike was extremely difficult, the views were more than worth it. We overlooked the entire valley! BUT towards the top there was the worst wind I've ever experienced. Some of us were even blowing OVER.
In Portobelo we're starting our ichthyology unit which means we'll be snorkeling all day! We're staying right on the ocean again. Recently, me and a few friends have been trying to organize a talent show for the end of our excursion. I think I may have been elected the MC so I need to start writing a script. Also, we're all trying to solidify more details about our ISP (Independent Study Project) which is coming sooner than we'd like. I think I finally have my idea: studying the effect of vibrations on the behavior of ants. I hope this next unit goes well! I'm trying to soak in the last two weeks of being in a big group like this since I won't see a lot of these people until we're all back in the city giving our ISP presentations.
these are the views from my room in Portobelo!
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