Hola mis amigos!
It's been a very first week here in
Panama, and I've been loving every single second of it. I'm also
currently entertaining thoughts of living abroad a couple of months
every year...always a crazy new location...Mom's not pleased with the
direction of this thought, I can tell already. I also might end up
missing Colorado summers like crazy. Bike rides and peaches and bbq
and long summer nights are all just as amazing as the things I'm
seeing here in Bocas.
Traveling here was fairly uneventful; I
flew to Houston (you can now buy access to satellite TV on domestic
flights, which I thought was crazy) and then to Panama City. If you
ever do fly into Panama City, sit on the left side of the plane! We
landed just as the sun was setting, and the whole city and the canal
was lit up red and glowing. It was incredible.
Immigration showed me exactly how well
my high school Spanish is serving me, and it's not well! I managed to
explain that I was staying for seventy-six days, and that I was going
to Bocas del Toro, but my explanation for why was something like:
Quiero a estudiar el mar y los animales en el mar a “Smithsonian
Tropical Research Institute.” (I want to study the ocean and the
animals in the ocean at Smithsonian etc.). Finally I think the
person took pity on me and just stamped my passport. Customs was even
better. The girl was highly puzzled by the crazy amounts of tubing I
was carrying down for Amber, and my explanation was something like:
es plastico, para más...uh...bolsas...para pescado (It is plastic,
for more...uh...bags...for fish). I've since learned the words for
tubes (tubos) and aquariums (aquarios), but the customs girl laughed
at me and gave up trying to understand what I was saying.
At least I didn't make the mistake that
Amber did, when she was trying to explain the tubing was cheap.
Instead of saying “Es muy barrato” she said “Es muy barracho”
which means “It's very drunk.” I guess the customs people laughed
their heads off about that one!
Sarah White, whose house we're staying
in, flew down with me and we shared a room in Hotel Santana in Panama
City. I wouldn't recommend it for anything besides a single night
stay like ours, but the AC worked and the beds were comfortable. The
next morning we flew to Bocas del Toro in a little airplane. I don't
know much about planes, but there were propellers on the wing engines
and there was one seat on the left of the aisle and two on the right.
My dad might be able to tell you from that information what it was,
but I just know it was small. I would again recommend sitting on the
left side of the plane, because you get to watch the coastline the
whole way up to Bocas. Our flight was super quick; only thirty-five
minutes. The landing strip is cut straight through a bunch of jungle
and what looks like sugar cane plants.
Sarah and I took a taxi to her house,
which is beyond incredible. It's around the corner from main street
and backs up to the water. The back of the house is the combined open
kitchen and living room, and the back wall is all windows looking
north over the water. Behind the house is their dock, which has a
deck built over the top of it for jumping off of and for hanging
hammocks in. It's easily one of the most beautiful places I've ever
stayed at. Next door on the east is a small garden and then several
hotels. Next door on the west is a dive shop run by a Dutch man and
his five-year-old son Shane, who likes to come over and play with us.
It's fun to watch them manage the dive gear and take people out,
although I've heard the diving here, while fun, isn't outstanding in
terms of diversity of coral and sea life.
Myself, I feel like I've seen an
incredible amount of sea life so far! I've been astonished by the
number of animals we've seen from Sarah's dock; lots of little fish
of course, but also probably a foot-long needle fish, an octopus,
several rays, and a large starfish. Sarah's also seen pufferfish and
eels here before. All of the houses along the water have decks, and
it seems that every family has a little motor boat they use to get
around. Water taxis are as common as car taxis (which are absolutely
everywhere; I think they outnumber personal cars). The ocean is
clearly a big part of life here, and I've been swimming every single
day. It's just so lovely to get in the water when it's so hot out!
It's not actually been brutally hot,
but when it's also super humid the heat takes it out of you. No one
here moves at all quickly, which I'm finding it very easy to settle
into. Most days have been a mix of sun and clouds, and the last two
days have been full of heat lightning and pouring rain. This is,
however, the wet season!
But I got distracted describing the
house and the ocean and weather. I was talking about Sunday, when I
got here. Mostly that day we lazed around the house; we also went
grocery shopping and walked down main street a ways. The last three
days we've been working at the Smithsonian, which has been really
fun. It's been a pretty lazy schedule; we leave the house around 9:30
or 10:00 and we finish up whenever we get too hot or the wet lab gets
too full of chichras, which are tiny evil biting bugs.
On Monday we spent a long time talking
to Gabriel and Plinio, who got us all set up and registered. Gabriel
is the administrative head of the institutue, and Plinio is an ex
scientist who makes everything happen. After listening to all the
rules and regulations, we started building the experimental set-up in
the wet lab.
The wet-lab is a concrete deck with
lots of drains and a corrugated plastic roof. There are overhead
pipes that carry seawater that you can then tube down into tanks for
any experiment that requires running seawater. For our experiment, we
set up six tables, which will each hold thirty-six tanks for a total
of 216 tanks. We also unpacked all of the supplies Amber had shipped
down, which included a lot of tubing, valves, pH regulators and
monitors, electricity timers, heaters, vials, and of course all of
those tanks. They're small “KritterKeepers”; plastic tanks
without lids, maybe twelve by eight inches or a little less. We
unwrapped all the tanks and discovered that far too many of them were
broken. The last thing we did were get the eighteen rain barrels,
which will act as water reservoirs, in place.
By the time we had everything unpacked
and sorted, it was about two and we were all too hot to do much else.
The rest of the day we swam and attempted to cook dinner, which was
aborted when the stove wouldn't light. Turns out the propane to the
house wasn't actually on, until Wumpi came over and fixed it.
A minor aside about Wumpi – his
family is the local family that takes care of the house between
renters. Wumpi is a professional surfer, surf instructor, taxi
driver, and jack-of-all-trades it seems. I've only met him briefly,
but Sarah treats him like an older brother.
But for dinner that night, since we
didn't have the stove, we made rice in the rice-cooker and mixed
cheese, black beans, and hot sauce into it. I normally don't like
beans a ton, but this was so incredibly tasty! I've decided it was a
mix of better beans in Panama (not as mushy and more flavorful) and
the fact that I was super hungry.
I spent most of the day on Tuesday
using a large amount of duct tape and silicon to try sealing all of
the broken tanks, some of which had gaping holes in them. I haven't
tested any of them yet, but hopefully they all hold water! While I
was busy with that project, Amber and Sarah cut holes in each rain
barrel and bought cinder blocks to raise each one up. This was a
great example of how I never want to plan a project like this; while
Amber shipped most of her supplies here, she couldn't possibly plan
for everything and she has to rely on getting some things down here.
That being said, this is a tiny island and we weren't sure any of the
hardware stores even carried cinder blocks, or if we would have to
get them shipped in from the mainland. Like I said, I'm glad I'm not
the one planning this whole thing.
Wednesday morning I put another layer
of silicon on my tanks, and then in the afternoon we all swam out to
a mangrove island off the Smithsonian dock to collect our first batch
of finger coral. The coral is considered a weedy coral because it
grows in lots of different water conditions and grows relatively
rapidly. The best part was getting to swim around with Amber, who
named nearly every species of sponge, coral, and algae that was
present.
Thursday we spent setting up the rain
barrels, which included drilling holes in them, teflon-taping the
nozzles, wrenching them into the valves, and wrenching that whole
setup into the rain barrels. It was an especially exciting job
because the drill bit we had was ever so slightly too small, so we
had to use a square head hammer to enlarge every single hole. A lot
of sweat, grime, and blisters later, we were all quite pleased with
ourselves. This is really what it means to do science, especially on
a budget; we just kept trying contingency plans until something
works. It's a great way to stimulate problem-solving, creativity,
persistence, and a lot of work ethic, and it makes it even more clear
to me how unrealistic labs are in high school, when kits lay
everything out for you.
Friday was a pure collection day; we
spent the morning gathering more corals and then in the afternoon we
took a forty minute boat ride to Isla Pastores, where the sponges
grow. On the way there we saw several dolphins, which was exciting!
We were all exhausted when we got home, after all of our swimming and
hauling buckets full of seawater and critters around. I also managed
to completely fry my back, despite the sunscreen I put on. I knew I
was going to do it at least once while I was here, so I'm hoping that
now I'm good and I won't have to deal with that again.
My first full weekend in Bocas has been
pretty mellow; Saturday was a downpour and so we spent most of our
time laying on the couch reading. It was nice for me, especially, to
let my sunburn recover a little bit. That night we went to the Sushi
place on Main Street (fabulous; I highly recommend!) and then took a
water taxi across to the Aqua Lounge, a club and hostel on the next
island over. It seemed like a pretty equal mix of locals and
backpackers, all enjoying their Coke-and-rums (which were at least
75% rum) and the electronic mixes of American music (LMFAO was highly
prevalent). My favorite thing about both European and now Panamanian
clubs: people actually dance!
Today I did all of the little chores
I've been meaning to do all week; folded laundry, washed my socks,
and organized my things a bit. There was also a lot of reading, a bit
of writing, and a leisurely dip off the dock. It's nice to never
have to rush while I'm here; everything is on island time. Even our
four-to-six hour work days garnered Plinio's admonition that we were
working too hard! So for now I think I'm going to keep lazing about
town; tomorrow we'll get back to the work of building and setting
everything up. Hopefully sometime this week I'll also get around to
taking pictures, and to stealing some of Amber's, so I can show you
exactly where I've landed myself this time. According to that saying
about pictures and words, even this minor novel is only worth about
two pictures!
Until then,
Ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment