August 2, 2009
one more day!!
I WAS going to continue my update on week 7 in Cortecito, but at this point, I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say anyway and am too lazy to use any brainpower to remember. I’ve been in the monkey house in Cofradia for the past few days and number 1 piece of news: acquisition of hammock has failed 
. I was told that I could buy one in town, but everytime we went to where the shops were, no one was selling them. I am greatly displeased. That’s one Spelman decorating scheme already down the drain. Secondly, howler monkeys are incredibly cute, but do absolutely nothing. They just sit in the trees all day napping, occasionally eat some leaves/fruit, and maybe poop on you (one almost managed to get us, but we moved out of the way just in time). My camera has a pretty crappy zoom though, so most of my pictures aren’t that great…it just looks like a black blob in a tree. The days watching monkeys are no picnic though, they’re much longer work hours than up here stomping through the jungle. Cause we’re helping collect data on monkey behavior and habitat, we’re out in the field for 7 hours, constantly staring at monkeys. It’s cool for the first 3 hours, but once the 4th rolls around, you’re like “yup…seen enough monkeys, and ow my neck hurts”. Not to mention when they move, you have to move with them, so that means more rampaging though forest, but unlike the nice trails already cut out in the jungle, following the monkeys means blazing your own path through brambles, thorns, and muddy swamps. I don’t think I’ve seen more evil looking plants than in the monkey forest. So there were some pretty tiring days down there, and since its so much closer to sea level in Cofradia, the temperature hovered solidly around 95-100 degrees. After the coolness of the jungle, I thought I was going to melt from the heat, and nights were absolutely unbearable. It reminded me of hot muggy China in the summertime, but without any relief from air conditioning.
Anyway, now I’m back in Base Camp for a grand total of 1.5 days before I leave…for good! I have a lot to do: pack (not sure how I’m going to cram everything into one rucksack and backpack…things seem to have expanded since I came here), figure out my export/import permits for my (dead) froggies that I’m bringing home, finish my presentation which I’m giving to tomorrow + write a one page report on my project, pick up some more souvenirs… there might be more stuff I’m forgetting. At this rate, I’ve put med school secondaries on the back burner, at least until I get home. I got flooded with emails the other day, so now I have about 12 secondaries to fill out, which is like “yipee, homework to do when I get back.” Oh joy. Okee…I’m off to do the million things I need to do.
July 20, 2009
and i’m off again…
I’m off again tomorrow morning to head to the west side, this time to a camp called El Cortesito. Because its all the way on the other side of the mountain, the journey involves a truck ride back down the mountain to the city, around and up the other side. And then another few hours hike from the point where the truck drops us off. So it’ll be a long trip tomorrow. But this coming week is my last for data collection, so essentially my project here is almost done. The last week I’ll be spending some time on a farm in a nearby town called Cofradia playing with monkeys. I was originally supposed to be in Base Camp the entire week 8, but since I figured I wouldn’t be doing much anyway, I opted to go down to the monkey place and hang out there for a while. It’s purely for fun, and to experience what Honduran town life is like. Being in the jungle is nice, but you don’t really get a sense of the culture of this country…its like being in Honduras without really BEING in Honduras. So given that schedule, I’m not sure when the next time I’ll have internet will be. I’ll probably come back to Base Camp next Tuesday, but that’s not for certain… Til then!
July 14, 2009
a brief brush with civilization
*Edited with pictures: click on the links or go to the gallery at bottom*
It’s a funny thing, but after 5 weeks in the jungle, you start to realize how unclean and messed-up things became after man arrived and started wrecking havoc on untamed nature. Civilization has its own dangers, sometimes a lot crueller than those of the wild, but we’re just so used to them that they don’t bother us anymore. Two incidences this past week to illustrate what I mean:
Animals in the jungle are usually running in one direction: away from you. That’s usually the opposite of what we want, especially when we’re trying to catch them, but when it comes to large cats and snakes, its really a blessing in disguise. At any rate, you’re pretty confident that no animal in its right mind would seek out humans and attack them. We’re just that scary (ha!). This rule doesn’t hold in a village of people. There, people keep animals as pets (namely, dogs) and the abundance of human and animal cohabitants creates an environment where animals are no longer afraid of their two-legged counterparts. So dogs, chickens, snakes, frogs, cockroaches, scorpions (etc etc) all live together in unhappy harmony. Unfortunately for me, the home I was staying in (we all shacked up with a local family for the week…more on that after I finish this story) was at the bottom of a hill, past a house which had a pair of skinny, mangy (and probably rabid) dogs. Daytime doggies were fine (who knows where they were, probably wandering around the village), but come nighttime, they turned into savage beasts. If they were locked behind the gate, they would bark and growl at you as you walked passed, with their beady little eyes glowing in the dark like some demon from hell. That really freaked me out. One night, I was walking back to the house alone and was slowing inching along the path, hoping the dogs wouldn’t get too crazy. It was pointless, cause they still barked and growled like mad, and I got to a point where I thought it would be wiser to turn back and wait for some other people to walk with me. As soon as I turned around to head back up the hill, I swear I heard them right behind me, so I didn’t even think and just RAN. The farther I ran from the dogs, the closer they seemed to be, almost right at my heels and stilling barking and growling all the way. That 25 meters or so back up the hill was probably the scariest 10 seconds I’ve ever experienced, I totally thought I was going to die (ie. get bitten and get rabies). I think I scared all the other students when I charged back into the patio area where we eat/hang out. But when we finally went back down, we (the 3 girls who live down the hill) took 3 guys with us, armed with sticks. The dogs were locked behind the gate. In retrospect, they probably had been the entire time and I was just freaking myself out, but I wasn’t about to stop and check when I thought I was getting attacked by rabid dogs. It all seems less scary and more stupid (on my part) now, haha.
By God’s grace, for the 4 weeks that I’ve been in the middle of the jungle I’ve been both safe and healthy. Given that there’s such potential for uncleanliness here, the camps are uber-sensitive about washing hands with bleach water, etc. But back in town, rules get more lax, all supposeduly because things are more “civilized”. And so of course, that’s when I get sick: in a village. It could’ve been something I ate, something I picked up on my hands….dunno. But something I definitely noticed was that the first few days, there was no bucket of bleach water for washing up before meals. And unsurprisingly, after I got sick, said bucket appeared. After a day of sleep and some Ciproflaxin (antibiotics), I felt mostly back to normal, and now I’m totally fine. Praise God that it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could’ve been (same w/ the dogs).
Those were the two most exciting things this week. So…onto more mundane details: the village of Buenos Aires is lower in altitude than Base Camp, but it happens to sit right on the side of the mountain, so that if you look out you can see an entire range of valleys and mountains scattered across the horizon. There are some breathtaking views, some that can be seen from the main road, and even though its “lower”, its still high enough that we were literally living in the clouds. Mists would roll in and at first I thought it was smoke or dust from the road, but realized pretty soon that it was just a cloud was passing through. They don’t call this a cloud forest for nothing. I got pretty lucky in terms of accomodations. The family I stayed with was one of the wealthier ones, evident by the fact that they owned a truck. I got my own bed/bedroom to share with another student, with an attached bathroom that had a flushing toilet and shower. Given, the water was only on for a few hours per day, but the one time I did manage to catch the shower when the water was running (I didn’t know how to ask since my Spanish is nonexisitent…) was like heaven. Base Camp showers are way to cold to stand under (this one was still cold water but not as much), but this one was amazing and I actually got to rinse my hair properly.
The food wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be. Strike one against it: there was absolutely no peanut butter. I LIVE off of peanut butter and tortillas for breakfast (so yummy…) and was deprived for a week. As soon as I got back to Base Camp today, I loaded my lunch tortilla with peanut butter. We did have chicken, quite a few times actually, but only one was it actually cooked in a way that tasted good (fried). Usually it sat in a puddle of oil and detracted from the novelty of having meat. There was a slightly different variety of food though, which was good (less beans, more eggs, more potatoes). The best meal probably was one breakfast where we got fresh mango, pineapple, watermelon and orange. Yummm.
I slept a lot in BA. Or at least assumed a (mostly) horizontal quite often. I blame this on the hammocks that were there. After a morning of hiking and sated with lunch, we’d usually retire to the patio and lie in the hammocks all afternoon, reading or listening to music. They are soooo comfortable, enough that I want to get one and hang it in Spelman next year. Wouldn’t that be sweet? All the froshies would come to our room cause it’d be the “room with the hammock”. Haha. I also played a lot of cards…we had a huge Rummy tournament going on.
In between napping and eating, I did manage to do some work. One night we hiked to the river (down a horrible hill which was had to come back up…in the dark) and saw a motherload of stuff. Huge tadpoles, a giant cane toad (ugliest thing ever), a few snakes, salamanders, and glass frogs! Those are the cute little guys, one of which is featured in the header picture for this blog (that one’s stolen from the internet though). They have transparent bellies, so when you turn them over, you can see all their internal organs and even its heart beating! And they make this adorable “cheep” noise, sort of like a bird or a bell.
So that was my week with the civilized. Now its back to Base Camp for another week, but since I’ve already sampled from every single river/stream within walking distance, there isn’t much to do in the way of data collecting. Guess its time to work on my tan…
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- patio area with hammocks
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- mi casa for a week
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- views from BA
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- sitting ON TOP of all the bags for the ride back up to base camp…sweetest ride ever
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- cute little frog that we spent hours trying to determine what species it was
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- big ugly cane toad
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- coral snake…very poisonous
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- see its heart?
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- glass froggie!
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- vampire bat…and to imagine i could’ve been doing this if i hadn’t changed my project at the last minute
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- one of the logs we had to cross going over a river
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- view of the surrounding landscape
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- coffee beans!
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- all the guys fishing for tadpoles for me while i watched, haha
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- coffee farm
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- the room where we stayed for a week
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- headquarters: included office and eating area
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- where we ate
July 1, 2009
pictures galore
Pictures like I promised.
Here’s a few of the camp. There were two main areas (covered by the big blue tarp). The first two pics are of the cooking area.
This is taken from the cooking area, up into the other part of camp. You can see a few tables where we sat and a campfire.
The guides were helping the cooks make dinner. The two ladies were our wonderful cooks for the week (they’re married to the guides). This is such a cute picture!
Wonder what this is? See the shovel in the background?? This is the trench (aka the Black Cat), where you go to do your number 2. The tarp is to cover the toilet paper so it doesn’t get wet in the rain.
And this lovely cubicle is for number 1. It consists of a funnel on a stick.
On to more nature-y scenes. On one of our hikes up the mountain, we passed through a bamboo forest. My thought: what the heck is bamboo doing in Central America??
This is what our river climbing looked like.
A dead frog we found in the river pictured above. Dead frogs are always bad signs, possibly a sign of disease. It’s sitting in a jar of ethanol right next to my computer right now.
A lizard we found on one of our walks. Look at the beautiful coloring on its belly, all orange and blue and green. It’s in its full mating colors, all ready to attract females 
This is a jewel scarab beetle. Tiny, but incredibly coveted by collectors all over the world. Apparently, people will pay hundreds of dollars for one of these, and collect ones in different colors like other people collect stamps. Part of the reason why these animals are becoming endangered.
A snake on the path. This is one of the poisonous ones. Jon (my advisor) got bitten by one of these last and had to get evacuated out by helicopter. We found several of these while we were at Cantiles. Because of the temperature (cold) and the altitude (high), there was an abundance of snakes in camp. Thankfully we have trained herpetologists who know how to get rid of them.
June 30, 2009
Back to Base Camp
During the one week I’ve been gone, the rest of the world has apparently experienced some drastic changes. The first piece of news we got via radio dispatch one night while we were sitting around the campfire: Michael Jackson is dead. The next morning, we hear that the Honduran President tried to circumnavigate constitutional law and run for reelection, resulting in his subsequent removal from the country. Basically a military coup (although the US has not officially called it such) happened while we were happily traipsing through the jungle.
(And before you all freak out, yes, I’m fine. We’re all fine here. The middle of the jungle in the middle of nowhere is probably the safest place to be in this country right now. From what we’ve heard so far though, things have been pretty peaceful, although a lot of people have been on strike (an excuse not to go to work, basically). At any sign of violence, Opwall (the program I’m with) is supposed to evacuate us, so no worries. When I opened my inbox this morning, I also found an email from Dean Kanach from OIP at school: she wanted me to update her on my status and sent me the US Embassy contacts numbers and other emergency stuff. I found it pretty amusing, considering none of us feel threatened at all, but reassured at the same time that Princeton is keeping tabs on us.)
And then, this morning we get the news that Obama has finally declared that the US is pulling troops out of Iraq. Wow…so much stuff has gone but it all seems a bit surreal. I feel like I’m living in a bubble here, away from the rest of civilization, so much so that whatever is going on “out there” doesn’t affect us in any way. We’re still going about our days normally, hiking up and down transects, eating beans and rice, etc etc. Same old same old.
But, to recap on the past week: it’s been seriously awesome. I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of this place, and really enjoy being here. Being at Cantiles was entirely different from being at Base Camp. First of all, it’s smaller (fewer people), so the environment is a lot more intimate. There were about 12 of us doing our projects, with 8 more locals who served as our guides/cooks. We all ate together and sat around the campfire together, and really got to converse and live together in a way that just isn’t possible at Base Camp among a mass of people. A couple of nights, the Honduran guides would sit with us and we’d take turns teaching each other Spanish and English. They’re such eager learners and teachers, incredibly patient with us when we have no idea what they’re talking about and just gesticulating madly, and constantly cheerful hiking up and down the transects with us, even when we’re incredibly slow. One night, we helped the cooks make dinner. I learned how to make tortillas! It’s amazing how much people can work together even when they don’t speak the same language, and all of us chopping and cutting and kneading dough really brought us (Hondurans, British, American) together. There was an incredible feeling of camaraderie, and that was definitely part of why Cantiles was so great.
The entire camp is built on a hillside, so every night it was a muddy trek up the mountain to my tent. The camp is flanked on two sides by rivers, one big one, and one little one (more like a stream). We used the big river for group bathing/sun tanning, which we managed to do one day when the sun decided to show its face for more than three hours. It’s so relaxing just to lay out on a big rock and bask like a lizard. The small stream we used for private washing, and there was a little waterfall with a pool surrounded by huge rocks, so it was extremely private and pretty. Imagine those TV shampoo commercials where the girl comes out of a tropical pool in the middle of the forest, flipping her long hair…that’s what the place looked like. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of it, so you’ll just have to make do with your imagination.
As for my project, I managed to collect samples from about 20-something tadpoles, so I’ll be spending this week testing them in the lab. To find the tadpoles, we walked up and down the rivers, poking under rocks and leaves. And when I say walking down the river, I literally mean walking in the river, jumping from rock to rock, occasionally falling in and getting soaked. The entire experience was thoroughly enjoyable though, especially when your boots are already squishing with every step you take, so you’re just like, “screw it”, and splash around some more. We had some excitement one night, after a day of looking for frogs, when one particularly stupid (or cold?) one jumped right into our fire. I managed to rescue it before it got too charred, but unfortunately it had twitched its last by the time I got it in my hand. I hope to dissect it later this week and get some tissue samples.
There’s a lot more I can say about Cantiles, but this is a massive post already. Basically there were two instances/thoughts that really struck me this week: 1) during one of the hikes we went on, when we were practically clawing our way up a muddy vertical hillside, and my thought was “I really love this”. After a certain point, being dirty and gross doesn’t matter as much, dying of exhaustion isn’t as painful, cause you’re with people you like and ultimately, going up always means going down later (and go down that steep hill we did, doing crazy mudsliding stunts on the way. I think someone else has a picture of me on their camera.). 2) Just the fact that we are here in the jungle, doing what we’re doing, makes us incredibly privileged compared to the locals who live here year round. I keep thinking that because we’re not in the city, I don’t see as much evidence of poverty, but the guides and cooks who work for us receive a bulk of their yearly income from these few weeks of working for Opwall. They sell chocolate, cookies, and pop to us to make money, but are too poor to afford it for themselves. I thought I was deprived in not having eaten meat in three weeks, but talking to one of the cooks in Cantiles, the last time she ate meat was last year. Most of them have never been to San Pedro Sula, a mere two hours down the mountain by truck (because none of them have cars). It really puts things into perspective, and makes me appreciate so much more what all of these people do for us (aside from saving our butts/keeping us alive in the jungle), and makes me wonder what we can do for them.
Generator is going off in 5 minutes. As always, pictures later. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me a note asking how I’m doing. I know your prayers and thoughts go before me. Please pray for continued health and safety, and that I’ll be able to stay strong in faith and spiritual discipline.
