We’ve arrived! In the last couple days we have been settling into the ITEC field station, and becoming oriented to the area by hiking through primary lowland rainforest, snorkeling in a cove with coral reef and mangrove, and we will soon begin developing the group science projects. Everyone is doing quite well and adjusting to the muggier climate, the bugs and the new bunk accommodations fully equipped with mosquito nets, stream water pipped into the showers, and a filtration system for our drinking water.
Travel to Bocas del Drago went fairly smoothly, just a bit of a delay at the Panamanian border. After a flurry of making another set of photocopies of our passports (first time we have been asked to leave these with the border office) and then another hour and a half of waiting for the woman who issues bus insurance to return from her lunch, we were very relieved to be out of the intense pounding sun by the border town surrounded by banana plantations. We continued on for another hour in the bus (after about the 6 hour ride to get to the border) and finally met up with Pete Lahanas, who directs ITEC, and loaded into the boats in Almirante to across over to Isla Colon. The water was choppy and with all the baggage so our crossing was quite slow (we even had to have another small boat come take some of the gear.) It’s great to see Pete, Enrique and Enrique Sr. again as they navigate the boats past the mangrove covered islands. We arrived just before dinner time at Bocas Del Drago, and were soon setting ourselves up in beach cabins bunk rooms.
The next day we had a wonderful orientation to the “forbidden forest” a bit of lowland primary forest where we walked beneath the canopies of trees that were about 5-6 students in circumference and passed by plants that are able to survive in the low light of the forest floor and evolved in the jurassic period with sharp silica in their leaves to ward off herbivory by dinosaurs. We also encountered many poison dart frogs, rain frogs, borrowing fish in a temporary stream, newly forming ant colonies, wasp nests, morpho butterflies, helicopter damselflies, and a vine snake that has a laterally compressed body shape which allows it to stretch across from tree to tree.
In the evening the students rotated through three science stations to deepen our understanding of the scientific process, like developing a null hypothesis, looking for correlations of statistical significance and testing out a population estimate equation.
Our access to email is very limited we must travel into town since in is not available at the station.
In case you need to reach us, you can call Pete: 011-507-6853-2134.
We are still in the process of getting the course cell phones set up and we will soon post those.