Farewell Barro Colorado Island

It has certainly been an adventure! I met gracious and brilliant people, learned about a new culture, enjoyed delicious local cuisine, and made memories tip-toeing around to catch brief glimpses of amazing rainforest plants and animals. The fascinating sights, sounds, and smells will also be with me. Goodbye Barro Colorado Island!

Smithsonian Research Institute from docks

Our dorm room

Stairs, stairs and more stairs!

Research Lab

Dining Hall

Welcome to the Island

60 of us shared 2 locations of bottled water.

Insects du Jour

Scientists place a bright light and large white plastic sheets onto this outdoor lab to see what types of interesting insects come to hang out. I found the moths to be very interesting. 

Beautiful Plants

I'm sitting here basking in the island's glorious greenness knowing soon I will hop on a plane back to winter's harsh browness. I wish I could take some of the warmth (not all of it!) and overwhelming lushness back with me. Here are my plant photos of the day.

   This is not a boa constrictor but a liana, woody vine, that has grown around a tree trunk.

Animal pics

Black and green spotted poison dart frogs jumped around our feet near a small stream our first morning here. Surprisingly these smooth skinned amphibians are only about an inch in size. Can you see it on the top of the rock?

Again, if you have the sharp eyes of a hawk, you'll see the blue morpho butterfly with its wings shut. The underside of its wings is brown and you can see eye spots. When blue morphos fly around, their scales are an iridescent blue. They are an amazing flutter of color. The bottom photo is of the great tinamou. 

On our night walk we saw cool nocturnal animals such as a flower eating kinkajou, a wooly opossum, bats, turnip tailed geckos, and the creepy hill of tarantulas! 

Animal Pics

 

What is the last thing that you want to see when you're walking around in sandals at night? Dr. Willis' husband shined his flashlight near the dining hall to reveal a hill full of tarantulas! Yikes! My toes may never recover! We found a gecko on the side of the building laughing at me. Before dinner, a troop of spider monkeys passed by our room.

Animals

You have to be quite stealthy to sneak up on rainforest animals using an iPhone! So far I've seen troops of loud howler monkeys, mischievous spider monkeys, a lazy tamandua anteater, two varieties of squaking toucans, large turkey-like birds called the great tinamou and crested guan, tiny black and green poisonous dart frogs, white geckos, brown agouti, bats, shimmering blue morpho and brilliant orange tiger wing butterflies, and a variety of lizards and small insects. I'm not quick enough to capture fantastic photos, but here are a few of my attempts.
 
Don't strike this punching bag look-alike or you'll be covered in termites! At the bottom of the log is a brown termite trail. 

Here's an agouti eating nuts for breakfast.

Tools Scientists Use

 

Here are some tools that scientists use in the rainforest to collect data. The basket captures a variety of materials that fall from above such as leaves, berries, seed pods, flowers, and small branches. Cameras are used to track the activities of both diurnal and nocturnal animals. Scientists check the photo feed from cameras every day. Yesterday we saw some very cool pictures of three large mother iguanas that were digging a nest to lay eggs. These cameras help Dr. Willis track the activities of her beloved ocelots.

There are scientists and research students here from all over the world. The BBC is here filming the ocelots for a documentary on wildcats. 

Plant Adaptations

As I'm sitting here enjoying the Rainforest oxygen bar, I'm reflecting on amazing plant survival strategies. Many of the plants that are low to the ground have large sized leaves stretching toward the sun. Can you see the large leaves on the trunk of this spiky palm? Speaking of spikes, we have to look before we touch the trunks of trees! Notice the huge spikes on the white Kapok tree. The spikes protect the trunk from hungry peccaries.

Four Hours in the Rainforest

To my second grade friends - poison dart frogs invaded the stairs on our way to breakfast! They were very tiny measuring about an inch. This species was black with green spots. We made it past them safely without touching their poisonous skin. I didn't get my camera out quickly enough, but now that I know where these dangerous amphibians hang out, I'll try to capture an image for you.

Day 1 as an assistant researcher proved to be memorable. We SLOWLY crept along a leafy path with Dr. Willis observing plant adaptations, insects, birds, and  mammals. Do you think the rainforest is a quite place? NOT! The forest is almost as loud as the city! Cicadas make a loud, high-pitched chain saw noise, birds are calling, howler monkeys are warning, branches are breaking and leaves are falling. Dr. Willis could "name that tune" within seconds as she explained what we were hearing. Everything except the cicadas and howler monkeys sounded like a bird to me. Most of the animal action took place over our heads in the canopy. I did however capture some cool fungi and forest floor pics.

Accommodations

Many moons ago there was a western adventure movie called "Dances With Wolves." I'm on a rainforest adventure so I've decided that my rainforest name is now, "Teacher Who Sleeps With Big Bugs." Squeals and shrieks were the sounds coming from Mrs. Browne as we entered our room and were greeted by the scurrying of roaches, ants, centipedes, and a katydid around our feet, up the walls, and under our beds! We created a face paced fancy foot work dance in order to take care of the situation. Do you think we got much shut eye? This creepy crawler was around 5 inches long.

 

Barro Colorado Island Arrival

Before catching the boat to the island, we went to see the Panama Canal. Ships were raised and lowered through a series of locks. It was fascinating to watch! This year they are expanding the canals to accommodate ships that carry 12,500 containers! We can see the ships pass by our island on their way to the canal.

 

We caught a small speed boat shuttle to the island. Disappointingly, no crocodiles were on shore to greet us. We would have loved a toothy-grinned welcome. We've been told that the water is absolutely full of them and it is not safe to walk around the grounds near the dock. We have a second story walk-way to travel between buildings.

The Old City

Beautiful hand made appliqué pieces called molas are made by the native Kuni women. They dress up in their native costumes and you must buy something from them in order to take their pictures. They are shrewd business women.

 
It's almost time for Carnival. Check out the cools masks.

Panama City

As I mentioned previously, drivers here seem to be preparing for a new 2016 Summer Olympic Event called "competitive driving." Here are some hazards from practicing this dangerous sport. Mrs. Browne and I had to side-step wreckage along sidewalks.

 

What's faster that your average McDonalds? It's a mini McDonalds! Now that's what I call down-sizing!

Dining

The food here has been quite delicious and reasonably priced. The ceviche here is the best I've ever had. Their shave ice has flavoring, sweetened condensed milk and honey in it. The fried plantains are out of this world. I had a very interesting hamburger! It included a beef patty, pork, chicken, turkey, ham, cheese, and BBQ sauce! Now that's a meat lover's burger!

THE FIRST MOMENTS:
What do you call it when 100 or so fast moving cars rush away from the airport to cram into 4 toll booth lines? I call it close encounters of the vehicular kind! Cars were off the road; cars were three wide in a single lane; cars were literally inches apart as drivers strained ahead toward the toll booth line. There was a cacophany of honking horns. There were unkind gestures at close range and seasoned taxi drivers swerved and darted around like it was no big deal. All of this to insert 65 cents into the toll booth machine! Our first impression of driving in Panama is that the bravest, perhaps the craziest, driver wins! Traffic signals seem to be optional as throngs of vehicles turn two lane roads into three lanes of one-way traffic and cars drive on the wrong side of the road to dart around traffic jams before returning to the correct side! This experience left my colleague, Mrs. Browne, feeling quite nauseous and myself thinking, "How exciting! I've experienced this before in Naples, Italy!"
DINNER:
It was 5:00 PM and we hadn't eaten since breakfast in Houston. We walked into a lovely seafood restaurant that was totally empty asked to be seated. The host replied that it was Valentine's Day and that they were totally booked for the night. We did not realize Valentine's Day was celebrated in Panama. We asked if we could eat quickly before the crowds arrived. After several minutes of "I can't possibly seat you," the host finally gave in. Two hours later we were still the only two in the restaurant! Our seafood meal was fabulous and we enjoyed a tres leche cake for desert. Yum!