Panama Tales 2 + Host Family!

My memories of Panama are already far back in my mind. I will tell you a little and progress to tell you about my host family without delay.

The three places we snorkeled in were coral reefs.  It is hard to describe, they are of all kinds of colors, with anemones, sea cucumbers, Christmas worms, purple fans growing on top of them. I took pictures with my disposable underwater camera, but I can only take pictures out of it when I get back to the U.S. because they do not have a way to do it here in Monteverde. It was fun to follow schools of fish. There were blue ones, yellow, and grey ones. When the waves were strong the school of fish would also change their direction. It was funny to watch. Parrot fish busied themselves eating algae from the corals, they keep them corals clean. Among other fish we saw a nurse shark, ray, lion fish (invasive), and sea urchins (not a fish). Orange and potato chip-like in shape, we swam right above fire coral, which can sting horribly. I tried hard to avoid it (and did). It was sad to see broken off and bleached corals. Corals on the Caribbean coast of Panama are considered endangered.

The fourth place was the most magical: Mangroves. From the surface of the water you see red roots of the trees with lush green foliage but underwater...All kinds of rainbow colored fungae grow all over the roots so much, you do not see the roots's original colors anymore. Some things are shiny of silver or golden colors. Corals do not grow here, but everything that grows on corals does. The water is shallow and turtle grass grows nearby. Some schools of fish reflect light coming through the roots, glowing silver. Sword fish swam here too.

We also visited the "bird island". It is a tall rocky island overgrown with bushes and trees. Literally only birds live there including the tropical red-billed tropic bird with its long showy tail, brown boobies, and frigate birds. We saw few nests.

The morning of the day I moved to my host family's house, I felt nervous. My host mom's welcome seemed insincerely polite, and the house - too heavily decorated. But with time all these doubts evaporated. Few days ago, I already cooked corn tortillas with my host mom. Everyday we ask each other about each other's days and eat breakfast and dinner together (most of the time). We have talked about many things and shared a lot with each other like close friends. She showed me her crafts, and I showed her pictures of sunsets that I took. She is a stay at home wife. She already has 3 grown up sons and a daughter who sometimes brings her daughter Valeria over before going to work. I played two times with her 3-year old grand daughter Valeria. We did each other's hair and the other time we played barbies. She is surprisingly intelligent for her age and likes to give out orders. I enjoyed conversations with my host dad about Arizona and soccer, who drives tourists all over Costa Rica. He actually studied tourism in Arizona and knows Arizona better than I do! What a coincidence. I met her daughter Sigrid, son Luis, and my host mom's parents among others. My host mom has 9 siblings and so far I've only seen three of her siblings.

All is well also with my independent research project. In fact I am about to put in data for the Clusia leaves I collected.

Hasta luego, friends!

The view on the way to the biological station where I am doing my project.

Inside the forest.

The Plant that I am studying, the one with the big oval leaves: Clusia

sorry I couldn't rotate it here : (

Panama Tales 1

So, tomorrow turned into a week later...Sorry for the delay of my Panama story, friends. A lot has been going on. I moved in with my host family!

A river divides Panama and Costa Rica at the border. Everyone has to cross a rickety bridge  with occasional gaps between the boards, or when a truck crosses - a rusty path on the side. Once across, loud merengue music played on the radio in the "Francophone" store. We stood around yawning, waiting for our coordinator Cathy, and then went back to sleep on the bus. We did not stay long on the mainland. After driving by chiquita banana plantations and the beach with white sand, we loaded the boats with our stuff and took a wet ride. We even had to cover ourselves with a plastic blanket. Our jaws dropped when we arrived at the island. It was picturesque. The crystal clear water had that perfect blue-green tint, coconut palms lined the coast and leaned over the white beach.The island we lived on for 5 days is called Colon, it is surrounded by Boca del Dragon (the water) and is part of the Bocas del Toro. Yes it gets a little complicated. Here we stayed in little cute 2-story houses painted in bright colors: blue, yellow, and orange.

There is not much to say about our first day here. We baked under the sun while writing down information about species, most of which we found right outside of people's backyards. But afterwards, I went for a swim in the Caribbean (so tempted to spell with two r's instead of 2 b's). Swimming in the Caribbean can be so effortless. The water here is saltier than on the Pacific side, so if you relax, you can stay afloat on your back. Long soft turtle grass grows on the bottom (my species Thallasia testidunum), and sways with the waves. It prefers to grow here because it is sheltered by the coral reefs. Also, green sea turtles eat it. The most exicitng part of our Panamanian trip was snorkeling of course. We swam in four different places. The underwater world is so different. It is like seeing another universe from above, even though it is small and right under you, not even meters away. 

To be continued...

Losing Myself (literally) and to the Caribbean

There isn't a feeling like the one I experienced when I realized I got lost in the rain forest. I was probably late to lunch, we were supposed to come back by 12. I wanted to pack light, so I stuffed my notebook into the camera bag (did not fit into my pocket), leaving the camera bag slightly open. It dangled on my back as I tried climbing the rock among the rushing waters of the river but every time I would slide back down, dipping the camera into the river. At one point, I really thought I was going to be carried away by the river and...But the gigantic slimy rock turned me back and I followed the path I took backwards. I was happy I was on steady ground. My sense of direction is awful and when I got to the fork I was about to take the wrong turn again when one of our teacher assistants found me. This is the last picture that I took with my R.I.P. semi professional cannon camera, luckily the picture card survived.

In zoo-like La Selva with concrete paths, we saw the great green macaw, poison dart frog (very common), about 20 peccaries wondering around as if they were at home, currosaws, guans, mama sloth with her baby really up close, hog nosed pit viper, and I am sure I missed an animal. After a day and a half we rode to Tirumbina, which is in Sarapiqui and more isolated. There, we studied forest logging practices and painfully slowly rode in vans among cow pastures. On one of those pastures, the cows almost ran over a couple people, I was really close. That was the funniest life threatening situation that has happened to us so far. We hiked to a tourist center at Tirumbina through a comfortably paved trail. The highlight of that was the hanging bridge over the river, which swung back and forth. 

In Parasmina we got the taste of the Caribbean in our first dish of bony fish. It was a frustrating yet awarding meal. Next day we were served a typically seasoned Caribbean rice. There couldn't be a place with more mosquitoes than here. The ate us all day long. 

Still at Parasmina, we spent a night walking along the beach in the darkness looking for nesting turtles. I remember the moon hanged in the sickle shape, like the horns of a cow and stars were very clear. I saw the Orion's belt, little dipper, mars, and constellations I did not know about. Excitement rose and fell as we ran and laid in the sand until our feet felt numb, awaiting  a signal from other guides about a turtle sighting. In the dark it looked like a mountain rising above the outline of sand. People crouched around it. Light and blocking the way could both scare the sensitive leather-back turtle back into the ocean. Once in the egg-laying trance, we could observe her, for nothing can bother the turtle during this moment. The turtle conservation team measured the dimensions of the turtle, tagged it and collected all the eggs in order to hide them away from poachers in another part of the beach. The sea turtle's head moved up and down, and the salt water excreted from her eyes looked like tears. We were allowed to touch her hard outer covering (leather back turtles do not have a shell). We had to back away far because when she finished laying eggs, the leather-back sea turtle swept the sand with her large fins to cover the nest (even though it is missing eggs now).  Later we saw another turtle. She was 1.6 meters long. MAJESTIC.

On the way to Panama, we randomly stopped by a boy's house. Elephant beetles swarmed the trees. It was hard to believe that this gigantic beetle was not so common anymore due to deforestation.

For the sake of shortness, I will post about Panama tomorrow.