My last post left off with us in Gamboa, doing some day trips and lectures. There were some pretty great things that happened in Gamboa before we packed up and went on quite an adventure for a week.
As I'm writing this, I'm being serenaded by the grunts, panting and heavy foot pounding of a group of Princeton undergraduate students doing some sort of workout video in the next room, but sounds more like a really poor audition for the cast of Stomp. Somewhat distracting, given that the entire floor is shaking, but anyways, moving on. I'm nothing if not adaptable...
I didn't get to post photos last time from a night walk we did in Gamboa, looking for frogs. We saw some really cool ones, here are my favourites:
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| Male tungara frog, in-action mating call |
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| Red-eyed tree frog... so cute! |
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| Ridiculously photogenic red-eyed tree frog, take 2 |
The rest of our days in Gamboa, prior to our week long outing, were spent visiting Agua Salud (which is another research site the Smithsonian runs in north-central Panama) for a day. This day was also our first encounter with rain in Panama. And man, when it rains here, there are no holds barred! We were severely drenched by the rain, which was honestly kind of fun. We rode in the back of pick-up trucks and while learning about the plantation experiments was fun, I think getting a full body mud bath in the truck bed topped it.
Here are a few photos of Agua Salud (evidently the first is prior to the soaking)!
Once we got back to Gamboa, we got our first real evening off and went to the Panama Jazz Fest. This was basically a big grassy field with one main stage, vendors circling it, and a line of port-o-potties and food vendors along the back. Pretty standard for a music fest. Oh, and A LOT of Abuelo rum. They played some salsa music later in the evening, which I was super happy to hear! I did a little dancing, enough to get the salsa bug and I've been looking for a decent salsa place here since!
Here's a couple photos of most of our group together at the festival:
The next day we got to play with drones! This was super cool, because drone technology can be used for all sorts of research, especially getting high resolution photography and videography of a study area. It's definitely something I'd like to learn more about! Unfortunately for our visiting presenters, their first drone decided not to work, because technology doesn't like to be too accommodating, particularly when you're presenting to a large group of graduate students and their professors from around the globe. HOWEVER, they did get drone #2 going, so we got to see the general premise of how they operate... pretty cool!
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| The drone that worked! |
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| ...The one that didn't |
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| Trying to figure out why Drone #1 didn't want to work... |
That night, we went out to learn about the bat research the Smithsonian is conducting. There's radio tagging, mist netting, and behavioural modification experiments (basically how does a bat react when x, y, z is done, how do they sense toxins, what is their strongest sense [hint: it's not vision], etc.) all being conducted in Gamboa. There are many different species here, some of them are pretty cute... the bigger ones are a little scarier looking when they're unhappy. Observe:
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| Cute and little |
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| Bigger... and if looks could kill... |
Also, for more photos, check out below:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nicolaschatellaunay/
Each of us has written several blog posts for the past course, and these can be found here:
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