Back from Panama

Hi all-

I am back from my (great) trip to Panama! I just posted a summary of the work we accomplished on my research blog, but just wanted to update you on some of the other highlights of the trip:

5. Camp food
Hooray for textured soy protein, cowboy coffee, and copious quantities of hot sauce!

4. Howler monkeys
I loved waking up to the spine-tingling sound of howler monkeys yelling at the rain. It is of some comfort that my new place is right next to a mosque, so I am now being woken up by a muezzin call. Can’t complain.

3. Rainstorms under LAI=7
The canopy was so dense (leaf area indices (LAIs) of 7 are unheard of in the Appalachians!) that when there were down-pours of rain, hardly a drop reached us.
To experience such stillness in the midst of violent wind and rain can only be described as a spiritual experience.

2. Hiking to the boundary of Kuna Yala
Kuna Yala is an independent, indigenous province that borders Panama province. Our hike there brought us through lush cloud forest and a fog bank so thick we could barely see thirty feet ahead. The warm, moist climate had given the area an exuberance of life that is unrivaled by any other I’ve seen. Every individual tree surely supported more species than there are in an entire New England forest. Each tree, though small in stature at that elevation, seemed to be just dripping in epiphytes, bromeliads, orchids, mosses, lichens, insects, and birds.

1. The beauty of the rain forest