PIIP 2025 Sandy

 today is the beach day we all waited for im betting so wont be much to type looking forward to the beach and water. we got back and oh was it the best experience  to be on the beach drinking some fresh coconut water straight from the coconut. i couldn't  think of a better Friday now im dead tired and ready to sleep but still waiting for dinner and now im pretty sun burnt didn't even realize it tell i got back to camp now im all toasted and probably wont sleep good. until tomorrow.

 This morning i  woke up pretty sore and really tired from our hikes last night we are suppose go out and pick up the deer trail cams but honestly don't think i can do that and do the transects tonight so ill be resting up typing in our data from last night into a excel spreadsheet. I'm still new to this so not sure how it works and also have to learn the past software which is pretty cool. Dr Alberto gave me a basic run down of how he wanted me to put in the data so it reads rights little hard to read the handwriting so im just guessing what type of spider descriptions are written not really guessing but trying to read it so i can label  it and  mark how many spiders  we seen. seems like a pretty simple day today tell later on tonight. well we got more people going with us tonight so it should be way easier then just the three of us we seen alot of spiders and the second group found a beautiful boa snake it was a female from my understanding from what Dr. Alber...

 today we will have a tour of the whole research center well i guess the main parts of the research center and i look forward to learning more about this area. then we will go out on the evening hike and check out the transects for the amphibians and hopefully have better results. on the tour and now we are learning how they plant boton  de oro and got to learn how and see how they are clowning these plants and have rows of them they said with other plants they use the trial and error method where they find out what they need to do to keep it going or if it gets good results. We also got to see the little mill they have to cut and processes boards it was pretty cool to see compared to the mill we have back home teak wood was the wood they was cutting up and said India is the biggest buyer for it because they use it for boats and decorations which shocked me. We are getting ready tot head out and do our late evening stroll hoping to see some snakes or other amphibians and repti...

Today we are are going to type in our canopy cover data and then we will put this data into the past software and create some data graphs tonight will be the first official night it usually rains when we have to go out so we will see how it goes. Its about 7:30 and we are getting ready to head to the field to get our first set of data on amphibians. we got rained on pretty hard and didn't see anything really due to the excessive heavy rain Dr Alberto said we will call it quits for the day just cause its to wet and the amphibians don't like to much water so our chances seeing anything else at the other sites is pretty slim. Felt good to walk around when its nice and cool instead of it being really hot its still humid at night but would rather have that then it being hot. Got back to base a little early so another mentor jake showed us a card came called golf never heard of it tell now and i can say i liked it it was pretty fun and simple. We all played tell about 10:30 then call...

 today i woke up and thought about the 15 or so cameras we are going tot have to set up for our project and I'm not really looking forward to that only because of my breathing and my leg which seems to always gives me problems at the wrong times. We just ate breakfast got our lunches packed and getting ready to head to the first stop and start setting up our trail cams we will be setting 3 in a triangle formation then also have to to transects 2 per sight of 50 meter and man it sure was alot of walking. My leg decide it wanted to cramp which wasn't fun cause now i have to stretch it out we left at 7:30am and didn't return tell about 4:00 we did come back for lunch and then headed out again to set the rest of the cams and traps. now we are just waiting for dinner I'm dog tired.

 we are in David and will be our last day here then we will head to the station. we all are going ot walk to a grocery store and get what we need before we spend the next week away from the city and out in the boonies. when we got back from the store it sounded like they was having a parade which was right they had a lot of character floaties. One was Mario another was bowser also seen what looked like the white spotted firefighting dog was cool to see from our window. Now we are on the road heading out of David and to batipa which is about a hour drive shouldn't be to bad got snack and music going ready to hit the road. its 11:42 am here and we have finally reached our spot we got a lil tour of the place and where the boy and girls are sleeping we all have to unpack and get ready for the week they had lunch when we got there food is good here had chicken and rice with veggies I'm not that big of fan of vegetables cooked or steamed so i didn't eat them. We are having a intr...

today we had to get together with our mentors and introduce ourselves and kindve get a run down of what the projects will be like and who our mentor will be on the project we was assigned. then got to get ready to fly to david one more spot then make it to the batipa research center. getting tired of flying not sure how people can do this much traveling. we landed in david  and for the first time i tried a empanada de pollo sorry if i didn't spell it right but sheeesh that was really good going to try and get another when we get back to that airport.

 we officially landed in Panama today. was a lot of traveling it currently 6:38 pm and I'm just lying in my bed exhausted from all the walking to the different gates and on and off the plane. Glad we all made it safely to the hotel we are staying at i honestly can just lay here and go to sleep but it's really warm and don't think I'll sleep tell i get some food in my tummy:). we are about to go walk around Panama and get some food and check out some sights see how it is out here. It's a beautiful area me Kyal and kesen walked to the top of this hotel to check out the sky bar we didn't get anything to drink but mainly wanted to get the views. we just ended up walking back to the room after and calling it a night got to get ready for tomorrow we will be heading to David then to batipa. 

 We are still traveling we had some trouble with the flights but thanks to our advisor she got it all figured out. we are staying a night in Miami i look forward to going to the beach for my first time ever. I'm grateful for this opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and see these new places and meet new people but also getting to know students and mentors. you would think with all this flying i would Be used to it but I'm not I think it's my fear of heights I'm sure someday ill get over it but not anytime soon. we made it to the hotel and it haves beautiful views soon we will get ready to head down to the beach. it was breath taking the water was nice and warm cool in some deep spots i didn't want to leave i sat in the water and just let the little waves roll over me. one thing I wasn't expecting was how salty the water was it got in my eyes, and it sure did burn so i found out the hard way. Was such a beautiful day ended with some good food in my belly and...

packing wasn't as bad as i thought it was i managed to pack all my clothes in my bag. i had forgot my ribbon shirt which caused us to run pretty late wasn't the plan, but we made it. i was going to leave it but just didn't seem right to leave it but not looking foward to all the flying and waiting.