It's Been a While...

Alright, so it's been a solid 5 days since the last substantial post.  This may take a while.  Feel free to just look at the pictures.  But be warned, you'll miss the fun stories.


Monday:

We packed into the bus at 7am for the 2 hour drive to San Lorenzo Protected Area, our last field site.  Most people took these hours as an opportunity to sleep, rightfully so.  I did manage to wake up for when we crossed the Panama Canal through a lock.  Pretty cool.  After waiting a 20 minutes for a huge container ship to pass through the lock, we drove right below the massive steel doors that were the only barrier between us and a watery wall of death.

Once we arrived at SLPA, it was again time for a ride in the other of Panama's two canopy cranes.  This one was a bit taller than the last, and this time, we were on the Caribbean side of Panama, so the views and the tree species were slightly different.

The Chagres River, flowing into the Caribbean Sea - from the canopy crane

The guy in the red shirt is Professor Yves, back in the 90s

Once back down on the ground, it was time for more field work.  SLPA was a bit more treacherous than the last two forests because once we left the path on the transect, the ground dropped off about 10 meters in.  A lot of climbing and falling was involved.  Additionally, in literally every single transect we did, an orb spider was lurking within our study area.  Not awesome, especially when you don't notice them until you're almost touching the web.

Gorgeous view into the canopy from the ground

Once we were done with research for the day, we headed for the town of Achiote and our "accommodations", about which we had no idea what to expect.

Turns out we were going to be staying at a pretty sketchy hostel in the literal middle of nowhere in the tiniest town I have ever seen.  Like Springfield, IL in a way... (just kidding, but the rural-ness felt just like home).  The Centro El Tucan is a hostel/base for research programs like ours since it's pretty close to SLPA.  Apparently, it's a hot spot for birders as well.  

It was quite the place.  There were two rooms, one for guys and one for girls, with twelve beds each, two bathrooms, a study/seminar room, and a covered porch-like area.  It was, what we could call, "rustic" if we're putting it mildly.  There was only cold water, no air-conditioning, poor lighting, no internet, bugs, and you couldn't flush toilet paper down the toilet, but fortunately for me, I'm used to living on sailboats where all of these issues also exist.  (Yep, we've got a badass right here.)

The sign for the hostel

The hostel in all it's yellow glory

Grated windows, outdoor seating where we could study

Cool mural on the front wall

Once we got settled into our (very very) close quarters, we headed into the town to the restaurant where we'd be eating all our meals for the next three days.  The town of Achiote was essentially a single road lined with very small, colorful cinderblock houses.  There were cats, mangey skinny dogs, chickens, horses, and cows wandering around everywhere.  The people always seemed to be out on their porches or in the street chatting.  It seemed like a place where everyone knows everyone else.  

This was truly another side of Panama, however.  I've seen the city slums, the ritzy areas, and now the epitome of rural poverty.  Though the town was in a beautiful area, the houses were well kept, and the people were genuinely kind and pleasant, it was clear that the people here were living off very little income.  Many houses had signs advertising things they sold (ice and ice cream, for example) or had small amounts of coffee beans drying on tarps in their front yards to be sold later.  Where we had our meals was the one of two businesses in the town, the other being the convenience store/bar.  Definitely an experience.

The town's welcome sign

Cows playing follow the leader

COW!

Christian with the cow.

So many epiphytes

Typical home in Achiote (this one has satellite TV)

The convenience store/bar

Restaurant where we ate every meal - it was really just a small kitchen with three long tables outside

Tuesday:

More field work on tuesday.  Not much to report, except that we were so incredibly motivated that we did two days worth of work in a single day. Eight transects!  Whoo!  We had to stay a little later than everyone else, but profited on that account too because Yves took us back to the hostel in his pickup and let us ride in the back for the entire drive.  If you haven't ridden in the back of a pickup yet, add that to the bucket list.  It's so much fun!

Lukas, being a nerd

Simone, during our ride to the hostel in the back of the pickup

Ryan likes bugs...

Wednesday:

Since we'd finished our work early, we were able to stay at the hostel Wednesday morning to get some work done on our reports.  We spent the time up until lunch running statistical tests on our data, and then it was time for our surprise break, organized by Yves.  To Fort San Lorenzo and the beach!

Sunrise on our last morning in Achiote

Yep.  This happened in the middle of the road.  People were staring.

 We all hopped in the bus, said farewell (or good riddance, depending) to our lovely accommodations, and headed toward the Caribbean coast.  On the way, we had to stop at a ranger station, where we were told the road ahead was "broken".  Most of us were imagining just a bunch of pot holes, or some asphalt damage, but not this:

The road to Fort San Lorenzo literally was broken

Nino, our excellent bus driver, got us around this opening to the pits of hell on an off-road dirt path, which was exciting.  Can't say I've ever seen a road that actually just fell away.  The Panamanian infrastructure is really killing it here.

Anyways, after that mini adventure, we finally made it to the fort, which is built in the 1680s on top of a cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea and the mouth of the Chagres River.  Quite stunning.

A brief history of the fort:  In the mid 1500s, Spain had established a gold route across the isthmus of Panama, connecting Panama City to the mouth of the Chagres where the plunder from the conquest of Peru would then be taken to Spain.  Of course, when the pirates got wind of this, they began attacking. So Spain built the first version of Fort San Lorenzo.  In 1670, however, Henry Morgan left the fort in ruins, invaded Panama City, and used San Lorenzo as his base.  Spain regained control and rebuilt the canal in the 1680s.  It was attacked again in 1740 by the British, and Spain retreated further into the Chagres river to strengthen fortifications at Gatun.  By the 1750s, Spain had largely abandoned the gold trail, preferring now to sail around the tip of South America. Fort San Lorenzo was then used as a prison, and then later fell into disuse.  The Panama Canal was completed in 1914, a massive dam was built in Gatun, and the Chagres was permanently sealed off form inland trade.  The ruins of the fort are now protected under the auspices of the San Lorenzo Protected Area, part of the former Canal Zone territory.  Fort San Lorenzo sits right next to the also defunct Fort Sherman, a former US Army base built to protect the Canal when it was still owned by the United States.  Fort Sherman has now been turned into a marina, but the old, crumbling barracks are still there, creepily lining an abandoned road on the way to Fort San Lorenzo.

Exploring the fort was especially cool because you are actually permitted to walk around the entire structure.  There are no barriers, unlike many historic sites in the US, we we actually were able to walk around in the dry moat, touch the walls, explore the tunnels, and everything.

Ocean views

The view from in the moat 

Beautiful, creepy, moss-filled tunnel

After exploring, we walked down to the "beach", which was more like the bay where all the trash from Colon and dead wood from the Chagres ends up.  There were plastic bottles everywhere and the water was the grimiest I have ever seen the Caribbean look.  It was still pretty, however, lined with mangroves.  There was also a secluded lagoon/river on the other end of the beach where we could wade and watch the fish swim in and out of the mangrove roots.  Though we were hesitant, we went swimming anyways - a good decision too, because though gross on shore, the water was the perfect temperature out at the mouth of the bay.  I swam out and just let the waves carry me around.  It was heaven.  And for those who know me well, you understand how much I love the ocean.

The beach!

The group - photo credit to Chhaya

Sadly, we had to leave the ocean and head back to the schoolhouse.  On the 2 hour bus ride back, all the OA leaders on the trip lead camp/trail songs, and once those were exhausted, we moved on to Disney songs.  It was great.  We were still singing as we headed into the doors at Gamboa.

Thursday:

Thursday was a work day, and I spent all of it writing my report.  However, it was made slightly more interesting by the fact that the internet went out around 3:00pm, right when everyone needed it most for research.  Apparently, the fiberoptic cable that provided Gamboa with internet was laid through a pretty bad area outside of Gamboa.  On Wednesday night, someone had dug up the cable and stolen it, presumably for the valuable materials the cable is made of.  The provider had gotten this fixed quickly, which is why we had internet Thursday morning, but around 3pm, someone dug up the new cable and stole it again.  So a crew was sent to relocate the cable entirely, circumventing this bad neighborhood, which would take about 6 hours.  Good times.

Friday:

Friday morning was spent frantically finishing up reports and working on the presentations of our research findings.  Then, because we have 19 people in the class, we spent 4.5 hours listening to presentations.  It was cool to hear what people had found, but also a lot.  My presentation was ok - I've never been a fan of speaking in front of people and I hadn't prepared enough, but it is over.

Also, in case you were wondering, I got significant results in my study!!! There is a difference in epiphyte abundance between the forests.  As expected, I found fewer in the dry forest.  There was no difference between the wet and intermediate forests, however, which is not what I expected - experimental error may be to blame, but who really knows?  Also, epiphytes prefer to grow in canopy gaps over areas with a closed canopy, except in the dry forest, where desiccation is more of a problem.  It's fun to be able to say that I've done this research project, and also good practice for the senior thesis monster lurking around the corner.

Friday night, after presentations were all over and our first class was officially done, everyone, including the TAs and Professor Yves (and his insanely adorable 4 year old son) went out to dinner at Beirut, a Lebanese restaurant on the Panama City causeway overlooking the Pacific Ocean.  It was a wonderful way to end the class - delicious food, friends, and celebration.

I'll miss our TAs (Diana and Ioana) and Yves.  It feels weird that we only had three weeks with them, and now it's time to get used to a whole new set of professor and TAs.  And strangely, I think I'll miss the field work too.  There is something about spending that much time discovering and understanding the dynamics of the forest that I really love.  No one knows what to expect for our next class, either.  All we know is it'll be about tropical parasites and diseases.  But hey, that's the nature of the program, and it wouldn't be as much of an adventure if it was any other way.

The whole group

Love these guys :)