Gamboa, Panama

My first days in Gamboa

Well the town where I'm stationed is called Gamboa. It's located next to the canal and surrounded by another river (rio chagres). It's a pretty remote area with no stores, eventually a lady comes to a small shack and sells lunch for 2.50!!. The house where I'm staying is pretty basic, no phone, no cable, no internet, no drier. Clothes here never get dry, specially now because it's the rainy season. I usually go in the morning to the forest to get some mangos for breakfast and there is a little store where they sell me beer and other basic stuff.

Some foreign people have bought property here and there is a couple of really nice houses. They all have boats and fancy range rovers, so I'm pretty sure they go fishing and stuff. Apparently the locals are just realizing the potential and prices are going up super fast. I don't know exactly how expensive but I heard last night that you could buy a house for 100K or 200K and remodel or rebuild it. The town is controlled by some branch of the goverment-canal. I've seen several houses that looked abandoned... The place is super quiet, you only hear the birds. And if you need groceries or other stuff the city is just an hour from the town. Many people here have cars but there is also a bus that only charge 65 cents to go to panama city. I will post pics soon, I'll let you know when they are ready. Gas is a bit more expensive than in the states, but the rest of the stuff is cheap. I went to the city today to buy some stuff and I got two shorts and two shirts for 15 bucks!



Field work

We are doing 4-5 hour walks in the evening every day searching for the butterfly nocturnal aggregations. So far we have found 2, but yesterday one of them was gone.. go knows what happened with that one. My field assistant is pretty white and a little bit stubborn hahahah, he does not like to wear long sleeve shirts so he gets bitten a lot by mosquitoes, besides mosquitos overall seem to like his blood better than mine so that's good because they don't bite me, hahahaha. Anyway yesterday we were walking and I saw a quick moving animal, it was may be a little bit bigger than bunny. It was a small rodent called agutí, they look like a small capibara but with red ears. We also saw howler monkeys, they start making defensive noises when one gets closer to their range but when they realize we are harmless they stop. The night before yesterday night on our way back it started raining really hard, the flashlights had no penetration at all so we were pretty much guided by the GPS, my UF poncho sucks, jajaja, I didn't realize it was to short so my pants got pretty wet. Next time I go to the city I'll try to buy a larger size but I doubt I can find one because all panamanians are pretty short, well see... Me and my italian roommate are planning to go to the city and buy may be 5 bicycles. Our plan is to rent them here to the other researchers to move around the town, a bike make things a bit easier....