Getting Familiar (Dec. 10, 2019)


Good Late Evening,

Today was pretty eventful, with getting familiar with the biological station area, the forest/jungle, our projects and with the Indigenous People of Costa Rica/Panama.  The trails, forest and jungle is such an amazing experience and very different than the Evergreen State of Washington State of the US.  It is breath taking, absolutely beautiful, very mountainous terrain but a great place to do research projects as there is so much plant, animal, bug, water and just flat out life all around. 
The lookout today was amazing to overlook the canopy of the area and can see for miles away, I am going to try and wake up early to see the sunrise at 5:00am as Juan recommended watching it, it is breathtaking and I’m sure it is.  I also learned a lot from an aspect of everyone’s projects today from, water quality, insects, animals, fungi, bacteria, plant life, and the purposes.  It is quite awesome to see such passion and excitement from everyone as well as Juan my mentor.

I asked Juan questions about his experience growing up and his love for nature has brought him into wanting to know more and learn more about the forest/jungle as he grew up in the city San Jose, Costa Rica.  It is pretty amazing to hear the passion he has for this place and all life and carries so much knowledge. I was able to listen to all of this and take it all in while learning the operations and functions of different trail cams and setting them up to catch some wildlife overnight.  We went into a more untouched part of the jungle which was great because the most exciting part was seeing evidence of an armadillo around, really hoping to catch that in our data tomorrow when we analyze the cams. 

Another take away from today was being able to get more familiar with everyone here, I met some people who traveled here from Switzerland and sparked up a conversation and they were able to share their pictures from their travels of bird watching and animals in general.  They were pictures right out of a magazine, they showed their interest in who we were, our purpose and shared who they were which consisted of Dutch and German they were quite the fantastic couple.  Being here there is so much culture, traditions and peoples that we all get to share who we are and why we’re here and there has been such a beautiful thing happening about it.  We all met, introduced and explained who we are as individuals, what we do and where we come from and that is such an important beautiful thing to see and share our culture with each other.  It is truly an honor to be here and meet with the indigenous community leaders and elder.  It is an experience I will cherish forever,  I can continue to write but I better get to bed, I have a plan to watch the sunrise early a.m.

Cheers 😊




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