Monday, December 16th

Today was overall a good day! The group got off to a fairly rough start this morning, as there were some incidents last night, but after jumping over the initial hurdle of talking about it, the day moved along rather nicely.

It was a long, long laboratory day. Most of us were in the lab from right after breakfast, all the way until dinner time, myself included. One of the only breaks from the lab and data analysis I had today was right away this morning when I went out to the field to collect the last two cameras and kestrels. After that, it was all loading our data onto our computers and compiling it into one easy-to-read spreadsheet.

My teammate and I had a few hours of collaboration on our project, and we got to share some really good ideas about our presentation and our project! We got to take a first look at all the camera footage we got, and we were so pleasantly surprised! We saw a band of coatimundi on a couple of our trail cams. Everyone in the lab took a quick break from their work to come look at our footage, I guess we were making it sound just too exciting to ignore!

In the afternoon, right after lunch, we took a short break as a group to join the Ngobe and Embera as Armando performed a ceremony and showed us different plants and their medicinal uses. Even though we don’t speak the same language, it was really refreshing to walk with them as they taught us about their plants. Because they’re so expressive when talking, it almost feels like I can understand what they’re saying before it’s translated. Maybe not all of it, but I get the general idea.

Photos of plants taken during our walk with Armando. 

At the end of the day, we all gathered for a quick sharing session. It was really nice to be able to openly share our positive feelings about this adventure we’re on, especially since I know so many of us are starting to feel the affects of being on the go for so long. Personally, I’ve been feeling very homesick for the past couple days, wondering how I’m going to make it through this next week. It really seemed to lift a weight off my shoulders to be able to talk so positively, and to hear everyone else say such nice things about the limited amount of time we get in this amazing country, and on this wonderful station. 

I truly feel like we all walked out of the reception room with uplifted spirits, ready for whatever the rest of this trip has in store for us.