two weeks in review
It's taken me a long time to sit down and write this because I've been so overwhelmed at the amount of activity that happens in one single day. It's been exactly two weeks since I wrote a blog last but two weeks on the program is more like two months. I left off with writing a complainy blog about not being able to be with everyone else on the island in Guna Yala. I think I should have taken a day to read over it again and post it because I was throwing a pity party, invite only, and I didn't have much perspective. I am so grateful that I even was able to go back to the island because of the sheer amount of planning to took for Isa and me to get there.
Our journey started at 4:40am in an SUV. We sleepily got all of our bags into the car and I shut my eyes to try to start sleeping on the 1.5 hour journey to the entrance of the comarca. No such luck. Within 30 minutes we were stopped at a random bus terminal somewhere we had never been to and our driver Angel was telling us that now Carlos was going to take us the rest of the way. In retrospect, Aly really should have told us that we would be making this change, but I was comforted enough by the fact that I was with Isa (a fluent Spanish speaker) that I didn't have any objection to getting in another car. HOWEVER, Carlos' car had a family of three in it when we opened the door, so we had to squeeze in the back row. Right away, this was not a problem...it becomes a problem soon...and we start driving until we reach a huge highway fruit market?? Carlos randomly pulled off to the side of the highway to buy a watermelon, a pineapple, and a few other fruits and chatted it up with some vendors. We were on our way again and took another break before the comarca entrance. Here is where being in the backseat was a major disadvantage. The road was built in 2007 I think? But in 2023 it's being navigated by drivers who give no apparent heed to the fact that the entire road is made up of curves and hills. Let's just say Carlos had more near misses than I want to disclose to the people reading this that care about me.......
After and hour and a half of this, we finally made it to the port! Anthony (the son of the hotel owner) was waiting for us to take us to Porvenir. As we approached the island it was very heartwarming to see everyone coming to the docks to welcome us :) Even though we had been gone for five nights, it seemed like they had created another society in the meantime. Some of the new rules included:
-don't complain about the flies because they were MUCH worse the first two days before Yuri finessed fly traps from the city onto the island
-if you hear the conch shell, you RUN to the tables to eat
-every time there's a break you have to run and possibly push people out of the way to get to the hammock hut (the black hammocks are the best)
It was the most amazing place I have ever stayed. It was extremely small (.4 miles across) and had an airstrip through the middle for private planes from the city. The only things on the island were the hotel, the airstrip, and three Guna congress buildings. At any given place in the island, you could see ocean on all four sides! There was no water or electricity so we had to take around 25 5-gallon jugs with us and the hotel owners turned a generator on from 6pm-10pm everynight so near the only plugs on the island there were a MASS of cords and devices.
Anthony took a pic of us to send to Aly
I thought I was going to have a hard time sleeping because of how humid it was, but our rooms were open on the top and had plenty of windows, so there was always a very pleasant breeze. The first night Anthony came in to Isa and my's room and asked if it was okay if he played some music before bed. Of course we said it was fine, thinking it was going to be some quiet Spanish ballads. What Anthony failed to mention was that he would be playing a Latin radio at almost full volume the entire night hahaha Thankfully neither of us are bothered by noise, and Isa still couldn't hear out of one ear.
Quickly after being introduced to the island life, we started our coral unit. This included making threaded quadrants and then setting up transects in coral reefs. We had a total of three transects (each 10 meters) and we were collecting data on every meter. We would place the quadrant down, and talley what was under all 81 crosshairs!! It was hard work that took a long time (I even had a horrible mask tan that lasted a week after we left - it looked like I had a 5 o'clock shadow..) but it was the most fun unit we've done. The reefs in the the comarca were INCREDIBLE. AND WE EVEN SAW TWO SHARKS!!!!!!! Another reason I liked this unit so much was because on the third day, we were able to choose a unique project and research question. My group tried to find a correlation between sponge abundance and dead coral abundance.
(spoiler alert: there is none haha)
In between the field work, we had two classes a day as well as presentations. They were extremely long days, but we still found ways to hang out before bed. We would all chat by the hammocks and one night we went to the end of the airstrip during the full moon and took some really cool pictures!
On Thursday and Friday we had our final unit, mammals. I'm not sure if you remember, but we set up camera traps during the first week of being in Panama. During our classes, we were able to review all of the pictures our traps took and then run some abundance tests on our data. We got photos and videos of some super cool animals INCLUDING A JAGUAR. The classes were really fun because we knew it was going to be last time all together, so we didn't take everything too seriously.
The past few days, we've all been working on our proposals for our ISPs (Independent Study Projects) and trying to spend as much time as we can with eachother. I was supposed to leave tomorrow, but I'm not going to be ready, so I'm leaving on Friday. I'm going to be living in Señora Alina's home in a small town called Guadalupe in Cerro Punta with Megan and Ava from the program. I'm getting super excited to live Sra Alina because she runs a plant shop and lives with her two kids, her parents, a cat, ad a dog. I'm so excited to live with a big family! There's going to be eight of us in the house! Cerro Punta is the highest and coldest place in Panama..maybe I'm missing CO haha. In April, the temps are usually in the 60s.
I'm still doing my projects on ant vocalizations, but depending on if my microphone works, I may have to change it to ant behavior. Updates to come. Prep has been intense but we all got our equipment today and said bye for the final time. It was really hard to say goodbye to everyone that I've been seeing almost every day for the past two months, but I'm also very excited to have a more relaxed schedule and spend more time in a small group. Also I can't wait to get to know my new homestay family!
The trip to Cerro Punta on Friday is going to be a long one (around a 10 hour travel day with two buses involved). Soon I'm going to be writing all my blogs from the few cafes with wifi in Guadalupe!!!
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