Eight Battus!

On Sunday we headed to the meeting spot to see Marco and David at 9AM as we arranged. We saw them on the distance and they were playing with the butterfly net, when we finally got close David said: "we got eight!". So I said wow that's really good let me see. I went through the envelopes and check every specimen and in fact they all were Battus! Matt was also really impressed by the kids' butterfly collecting skills. While talking to them we saw a couple other Battus flying by but we couldn't catch them. We told them they could keep the net and payed them a bit more, we payed them $96 Lempiras.

In our conversation they mentioned that some of their family members had traveled illegally to the US and were working in construction and other low wage jobs. I told them: "guys finish school and then go to college, it's very important and do what you love. If you want to be an artist be an artist, if you want to be a nurse be a nurse, don't fall for what the other people says about professions and money, you gotta a do what you love. Keep collecting and learning about butterflies, we will keep your contact info and whenever any of our colleagues heads down here again you may work for them. Stay in your country and get a degree in something you like, and then you may go abroad, you will see that it's worth it believe me. They agreed. We shook hands and we say good bye...

Curla

So yesterday we went on a day trip to La Curla national park. It's a park that starts in the squirt of a large mountain range and have trails that go into it. Roberto an American teacher and naturalist that has been living here for more than 30 years picked us up at 830AM and we headed to the park. The trail was beautiful and the forest was in great shape, it was sunny and all the butterflies were out. As we gained altitude we got to a spot were we could see the low lands and at the end of the view the ocean!! it was spectacular. We saw crazy looking insects, I took pictures of plants and flowers, and we all got some new butterflies!

Marco and David

So today we went to look for this butterfly Matt wanted. It's a butterfly that may be a new species but we only have caught one specimen, and in order to have a new species described you need something around 10 males and 10 females. So we went to the spot where we had seen these butterflies and in fact we saw 3, but these guys are so freaking fast that it's is very hard to catch them...we got bored after trying and trying so we headed to the little town I discovered the day before. We went to Don Porfirio's pulperia to have a coke and I payed him his Lempiras and I got my dollar back. In the pulperia I saw Michelle again and we said hi to each other.

After this we decided to head to the main road and try to get a bus that would take us the beach. We rode in a small mini van and it took us to a town called Ceiba (Ceiba is a jungle tree that is huuuuuge). So we arrived at Ceiba and asked around where the beach was, finally we found the beach and we were disappointed...While in town some of the people in the street looked at us in a funny way, -we were in field clothes with long butterfly nets and backpacks-, a guy said as we passed him catch me catch me I'm a butterfly, I just though it was funny and smiled. Matt had no idea what was going on because he does not speak spanish. The town was very dirty and so the beach, we took a few pics and got some pastries in a bakery and then decided to head back to Pino. On our way back into the forest we decided to give another try and spend a couple more hours collecting. While doing so we saw two kids approaching and when they got to us we saw the butterlfy (It's called Battus) so Matt sprinted like a mad bull and swung the net a couple of times and he missed, the kids and me were laughing, it actually looked pretty funny. The kids asked us why where we collecting butterflies and we told them the we were biologists and that this was our job. They decided to join us in our collecting hike. I asked "what's you name?" One of them said I'm David and the other one said I'm Marco. Then I asked them do you live nearby with your families? Marco said I have no Mom or Dad, my Dad was killed when they tried to rob him... I have no family and I sleep where the night catches me...How about you David? I said David said: I don't have a Mom or a Dad I live with my Grandma, my Dad got killed in a fight...So I changed the subject and told them: do you guys want to help us? we can pay you 10 Lempiras for each Battus you get and we have an extra net you can use. They said yes!! we wonder around this forest all the time so we will be glad to help you! So we taught them how to catch butterflies, how to handle them without damaging their wing and how to store them in special envelopes. We continued our hiked and Matt spotted another Battus. He ran pretty fast swung the net and got it!!!!! I yelled yeah!!! we got one!

Marco and David took us to some really neat jungle spots we didn't know, then we headed back and told them to meet us again in two days in the spot where we originally meet. We shook hands like men and told them let's meet again on Sunday at 9AM. We'll see if they bring a few more Battus...

The perfect day!

Yesterday night it rained non-stop it was unbelievable. I thought men tomorrow it's going to be all dark and cloudy again...

I woke up and the sun was out!! grabbed a quick breakfast and head to the field with Matt. We spent 4 hours hiking and I had my best day ever I got 18 of my butterflies, my collecting is officially done I'm soooo happy!!

Then in the afternoon I headed out again to look for butterfly aggregations and I got lucky again I found 2!! it was so easy and it was still before sunset that I decided to keep wondering towards the east in some off road trail. I heard some voices and loud bangs from either shots or some sort of fireworks I followed the noise and all of a sudden I'm in the edge of a soccer field of a local town. I went to the locals and asked for a little shop to buy some chips and coke (they called this stores here "pulperias") and they told me, yeah just keep going this way you are almost there. The town looked very poor but people was nice. The pulperia was a tiny window and the owner was called Porfirio. I told him I only had American dollars and he told me "No dólares no" (I don't accept dollars) only Lempiras (the local currency). So I told him just accept this bill and I will come tomorrow and bring you Lempiras and you give me my bill back, he said, how much is the exchange rate, I told him 19 lempiras for a dollar, so he said ok that's fair (the coke and chips were 10 lempiras). While drinking my coke there was a little girl buying groceries for her family and I asked her "what's your name" she said I'm Michelle. I told her I study butterfies and I just came out of the big mountain that is there (I pointed to the mountain range). I asked do you know how's it called? she said "pico, something" I told here It's called Pico Bonito "Beautiful peak".

After this it was dark already, so I headed back to the forest and of course non of the trails were recognizable. Luckily I had created a track route with my GPS and use it to navigate back.

Rainy Rainy Pico Bonito

So yesterday I had my first day collecting. I hiked all morning and luckily I caught a few of my butterflies. The weather is definitively not cooperating, it's been cloudy all the time and rainy. There is a lot of cocoa trees around the area so we tried the fruit. It's a big yellow fruit that grows off the trunk of small trees, the fruit is delicious and doesn't taste like chocolate at all. It's filled with big seed that are surrounded by a white pulp that you remove and eat, it's sweet a but sour like a mango-apple combination, very good!!


In the evening Matt and I went hiking in the evening to a nearby off road trail looking for butterfly aggregations but no luck. When it got dark all of a sudden we heard two angry dogs approaching and barking at us. I told Matt "man just be cool and don't run" , -I was freaking scared- they got really close to us barking like crazy and all of a sudden a country man showed up and took them away. He was just doing a round guarding his property. We also walked down hill to an amazing river where we chilled for a bit and took some pics.

Both nights we've had a lot of rain, in particular yesterday night. This morning was even cooler... I went searching for the flowers that my butterflies like but no luck...It was a very humid morning with some drizzle. Well that's the field... It's still raining and it's so cloudy that I can't even see the mountains...

PS: no places to rent a board :(

The Endless Summer - Honduras

Well well so as if 6 months of field in Costa Rica and Panama were not enough...after barely a month of being back in the US my advisor tells me he wants me to come and explore a national park in Honduras where they are planning to do research... what would I say? yes of course, trying to hide my excitement!!!!!! So today me and other 3 colleagues drove down to Miami and took a plane to San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

The flight was ok, I saw The Endless summer in the plane. It's a vintage surf movie that is really cool and funny at the same time, (loved it Bridge ;). The airport in Honduras was small and I didn't have any problems through immigration and customs. An already arranged van was waiting for us and after 2 hours we arrived to the lodge. The drive was very entertaining through curvy roads and with cool mountains in the horizon. A lot of poverty in this country, sad... The lodge is beautiful our cabin is very nice and we have internet!

The park is located in the north facing the Caribbean. I was talking to our driver and he told me there is a beach just 30 minutes from here and because of the tropical storm the waves should be nice! tomorrow, hahaha (besides doing my main mission, which is to explore the park and get some data for my disseratation) I will see if there is a place to rent a board in this beach called "La Ceiba" if yes, oh men I will surf every morning early and then go to the forest!!!

Ok I'm dead it's 10.28pm and I woke at 4.20am this morning, plus I just had an amazing weekend celebrating my birthday...gonna go to bed

Last day/ Babies can kill

So my last day in Gamboa and I went to the greenhouses to do my last round of experiments. I use some butterflies that are in a net enclosure that doesn't really have a proper door, basically there is a net that overlaps and its held by a hook and there is a lot of extra net on the ground so the butterflies won't scape. So I open the cage to get in and I saw a brown round thing, I then look closer and it was a small pretty snake rolled, I look even closer, and realize it was a fer-de-lance (talla-x in Colombia) so yeah!! finally I ran into one of these cool snakes. It was not aggressive at all, but I had to be reaaaally careful because I was in flip-flops and these babies can be even more dangerous than adults because they still don't know how to regulate the venom glands in a bite so you can get a huge amount -by the way these snakes will kill within 4 hours if there is no proper medical attention-. So I went for a big long tool to press it against the ground and put it in a jar, but in the process the snake slipped and escaped...too bad because I guess everyone is going to have to use boots for a few days ;)


woooooot to Mexico tomorrow!

Tree fall

Little story but pretty neat I think. The other day I was working in the greenhouses which are located just next to the forest. I started hearing a noise, like if someone was hitting a tree, then I heard a few cracks, like wooden cracks, I walked over the forest and saw a pretty large part of the canopy started moving, well a huge tree started to fall! it was massive and it destroyed a bunch of other smaller trees on its way down!! I ran over quickly to check the whole scene and the tree had a big sting-less bee hive and the little things were pretty alarmed, hahaha. Next thing I'm doing is removing a bunch of these bees from my hair!! Oh well now I know, if this happens in the middle of the forest you pretty much depend on your luck and senses because this happens really fast and you would need to run when you start hearing the wood cracking. Glad the bees were sting-less because I still found bees in my hair the next day!

I know I know my last post was a long time ago!!1

Ok quick update... the end of this field season is about to end...feeling sad as I did last year when leaving this amazing place. I will soon post pictures and perhaps a few more videos.

Lolo -our cat- stole the hearts of everyone in the house (Laura, Sergio, and me), besides being a cool cat, he is super well behaved and pretty much he earned the trip to Colombia, yes, Laura decided to take him to Colombia since Sergio and I pretty much had no certainty of whether we could offer him a nice place to live in FL or Canada.



I moved to a new house, my new roommates are a girl from south Spain, an American, an a guy from an indigenous Panamanian from Darién. They help in a Harpie eagle project, pretty cool. Again I got lucky and I have the best room in the house, yeah!

Beside this, and a few wasp and ant bites, it's been a lot of work lately and getting ready for Mexico, yes I'm going to give a talk in a scientific meeting in south Mexico, so it will be meeting and then a couple of days backpacking south Mexico, yeah!!

Derby Day

So there is a big traditional day that they celebrate in one of the stations here. It is called the Derby day. It is held at Barro Colorado Island and it's all about racing. Why racing, well there is a big horse race every year in Kentucky which is called the Kentucky Derby so here we pretty much have our own Derby but with big toads! yeah we race big toads and bet and everything.

So to make it even more fun the day is full of activities and of course some good alcohol. The boat picked us up at 8AM here in Gamboa, once we got there we chilled for about an hour and then we had a huuuuge brunch, never ate so much food I believe, hahaha it was like 4 heart attacks on a dish. We played volleyball, jump from the boats into the lake, and so on. At about 4pm everybody went to get ready for the race, girls got "fancy" dresses and hats and guys wore shirts and ties. The race was held at the heliport of the island. There were like 8 frogs in total and it was like 2-3 rounds, I didn't pay much attention to the details of the race, I was just having fun. After the race we had a big party until like 5AM, then at 6.30 we took a boat that brought us back to Gamboa. It was an amazing time!

Big boat!

LOLO's first bath!

LOLO, our new pet!!

Magic Gamboa round 2

Well, it's been 10 days since I arrived to Gamboa and things are going good. This year seems to be a lot wetter a lot a lot of rain, which is good because there are more butterflies but it makes the hikes tougher and overall we are always wet!

My roommate is and old friend from college in Colombia, his name is Sergio. He studies bats and we get along pretty good. The other day he went to the field and on the road he had take to come back he found a kitten and brought it to the house. The little thing is pretty darn cute, I have to say, but it's a big responsibility. The good thing is that Sergio seems pretty committed with the cat, so he's been washing him, taking him to the vet, etc. I'm definitively not good at these chores but I'm there to pet him when he comes to me whenever I come back after a long day, hahaha. His name is Lolo.

Since I'm in the field and tired most of the time I go the the lady that cooks lunch for me and for dinner and lunch I have something easy to prepare or get a protein shake and fruits. Also there is so many mango trees everywhere that whenever I want a quick snack I just pick a mango and voila! Sergio also happens to like cooking which is awesome because we have good meals whenever he cooks.

Ok that's it for now, it seems that we make have a little surfing trip with some friends next week, I'll keep you posted!

Fotos de Costa Rica!!

Back in Panama!

Well the trip from Nicaragua was quite an adventure. When I arrived to the bus station in San José all the people behind the counter had mouth covers, everybody is scared about the swine flu. All what I've been doing is just washing my hands as often as possible and avoiding people who has flu-like symptoms. We left San José at 12 noon and arrived to the border at 6.30 pm. When the immigration officers spotted my nice Pelican case they requested to open it to check it, obviously I had a lot of equipment and the officer said, you know we need to make a list of all these things but the office is now closed since it's Sunday and you don't want to pass the night here at the border ...why don't we help each other... Well yes, the mother F***er blatantly asked for a bribe and what else could I do?? He told me just be discrete please, so I passed him my passport with 5 dollar bill inside and problem solved.

Next day at 3am we arrived to the bus station in Panama city, obviously it was dark, and carrying more than 60 kilos (2 big bags and 2 small bags) in scientific equipment and some clothes at this time is not the best thing. I saw a kid and told him you want to earn a few bucks, well just help me push this bags over the bus stop hoping that I could get a taxi at 3am willing to take me to Gamboa (a one hour trip). Well luck hit me again and a nice pick-up taxi stopped and I negotiated the price and voilà! I arrived to Gamboa and my house mate (an old college fried from Colombia) opened the door and help me with the bags.

The house is nice, big, and my room is big and nice as well, not a lot of decorations but enough space for sure.

Yesterday and today I've been just doing all the paperwork to get going and doing some groceries and hopefully I can start looking for butterflies tonight or tomorrow.

Video de la Selva

Leaving La Selva

Well time is up in this field station. Weather has significantly improved, we now have more rain so days are cooler and there are more butterflies!

I'm leaving this coming Sunday. Since 3 other researchers are leaving as well we hired a van to take us to San Jose and spend the night there. On Monday I will take a bus a go to Peninsula Nicoya, a place that has a bunch of beaches perfect for surfing! I'm still not sure which beaches or towns I'll be traveling to but it should be fun regardless. I'm planning on coming back to San Jose by Saturday May 2 and then take a bus that will take me to Panama.

Animal List

Ok just for fun here is a list of some cool animals I've seen here: if there is something you don't know just google it!

Porcupine
Armadillo
Sloath
Coatí
Pecarí
Howler monkey
Jungle squirrel
Poison dart frog (D. pumilio)
Crested Guan (bird)
Crax rubra (in Colombia known as paujil, another big bird)
King fisher (martín pescador)
Grey eagle
Coral snake
Oropendola (bird that makes a crazy sound)
Toucans (several species)
Bullet ant (their bite is ranked 4+ in the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, it's a scale that a crazy biologist created to measure sting pain, the guy actually got stung by a bunch of animals to create the index, crazy!!)
Caiman or Crocodrile (They have bothe here, I just saw the shinning eyes one night near a small creek)

There are a lot more, specially birds but I don't know the name of most of them...

We are painting easter eggs tomorrow, I'm excited!

Todo bien por acá

Well, everything is going pretty good. My new replacement infrared camera is on its way from the US and it should be here in one week. Work is going as usual, nothing really new.

We are planning to do an easter egg hunt as well as celebrating some of the holy week days here in the station.

Check out the album, I post new pictures in there whenever is possible!!

FOTOS NUEVAS

The beach

Well, I'm going to give more details about the station where I'm living. The station is near a town called Puerto Viejo in the region of Sarapiquí. This is the town you go shopping or to find tools, etc. The bus from San José takes like 1.5 hours and goes through a mountain range, so there are pretty nice views along the way. My guess is that we are located at 100 km North of San José.

The station has a dinning room where they serve food just like when I was in High School. Food here is super high in carbs, they eat a lot rice, potatoes, fried things, etc. The most common dish for breakfast is called Gallo Pinto, which basically is rice, black beans, red bell peppers, cilantro, and a sauce based on soy, pretty good but not for every day. Breakfast is served between 6-7.30AM which sucks, I'm not a morning person, hahaha. Once you get out the kitchen you need to cross a river to get to the cabin and labs, to cross the river there is an amazing hanging bridge!!

The station has cabins for researchers like me that are staying over a month and cabins for people that is just visiting as nature lovers for a few days. I have my owwn room in the second floor and I share the bathroom with my cabin mate, who is a bat researcher from Germany.

The station has also a lot of lab and office space for researchers. My office is big with enough benches and shelves to put all my equipment. There is also a lounge to hang out with a TV, a stove, and some couches.

So what about the beach??? Well pretty much every other day we go after lunch to natural beaches at the river. The sand is grey-black and is pretty coarse. We hike 3km, then cross the river with a cable cart (will post pics soon!!) and them walk like 100m and hang out in a river beach for a little while. If you stay still at the shore of the river with you feet in little fishes will come and bite you, hahaha, not harmful at all, it's more like tickles I would say. Sometimes we also hike river up and then let the current take us down to the station, it's pretty fun, plus is a good workout!!

Long day...roary end

Well today I woke up early and left the hotel to get some money of the ATM. Currency here is called Colones and the coins are huuuge, they remind me of the coins we had in Colombia back in the 80's. I had enough time so I went to "El museo del Jade" (Jade Museum), pretty interesting pre-columbian handicrafts in stone, gold, clay, and obviously jade, apparently jade was as important as gold as it was for south american indians.

I then met with my assistant at the bus station and left to Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí. The road felt like home (Colombia) nice mountains, curvy roads, and reckless drivers jaja. We finally got to the field station after almost 2 hours in the bus. The station is very well organized and is just beautiful. My cabin has a balcony from were I can see the river Puerto Viejo, it's just beautiful, weather is a lot less humid and cooler compared to Panamá, so overall it's pretty comfortable.

We pretty much hiked through the forest trails all the afternoon then went back for dinner briefly and the continued to hike. My assistant is very knowledgeable about insects and has a well trained eye to find the butterflies (too bad she will be here for just a couple of days to show me around, she has been here before). We found one butterfly aggregation tonight!

It was about 9pm and we were hiking in one of the trails, it was all dark. We suddenly hear a roar pretty darn close in the forest patch in front of us. We stepped back immediately, it was either a puma or a jaguar. I never thought this would happen here but yes there are pumas and jaguars here, and they can attack people. It was not a howler monkey, they definitively sound different and they are up in the trees and none of the other large mammals like pecarís, agoutís, etc. would make a roar like the one we heard, it was a wild cat. My guess is that the puma or jaguar was no further than 10 meters from us. We then decided to go back to the station and carefully turned our heads back every other while to make sure that we were not being stalked by the cat. I'm definitively buying a big knife that I can strap to my leg just in case, because I will be hiking alone at night when my assistant leaves in 2 days.

Tomorrow we will go to a different forest I hope we find more butterflies...

Got here safe and sound/llegué vivo

Long trip via Houston, the hotel is not too bad, it's and old house in historic San José...Tomorrow I'll meet my assistant at the bus station and we will leave to the field station!

Field Season 2009!

This will be probably the last field season of my PhD. It looks like it will be even better that last year's one!! So here is a little list of where and what I will be doing:

March 16-April 24: I will be in Costa Rica in a field station called La Selva. Field work, field work, and more field work.

April 24-May 3: I will take a little break and travel around Costa Rica, my main goal here is to find a decent beach where I can stay and hire someone to teach me to surf!

May 4-September 1: I will be all this time in Panama in the same spot I visited last year. 3 weeks of this period I will be at Barro Colorado Island (hope I don't get to claustrophobic because the island is tiny) and the rest will be in Gamboa.

June 16-June 25: Another small break. I will leave Panama to go to Chetumal, a small city 5 hours south of Cancun in Mexico. After the meeting I will spend a few days traveling the Yucatan Peninsula and Northern Belize, yes Belize!!