The Roaming Frijole: Week 6

Miles walked to date: 243.5

Hola! I can't believe I'm almost half way thorough my internship in Costa Rica - time seems to be moving so fast yet so slow at the same time and I'm already dreading having to leave this amazing place. Since I've been too busy to write lately, I'll try and fill you guys in to what's been cutting into my blogging time. Just to warn you, this post is very picture heavy!

Yesterday we went to the beach and practiced digging egg chambers.We're starting to dig decoy egg chambers whenever we come upon a nest to make it harder to find and poach the real nest with the eggs inside. We also need to know how to dig a proper egg chamber if we ever need to relocate the eggs (which we are waiting on permits for). We had a competition to dig two hawksbill nests and a green turtle nest, and John ended up winning a free ticket out of kit cleaning and data entry (I think it's because he has the longest arms)

Last week we went to the elementary school in the nearby village to participate in a bingo fundraiser. It was fun but we had to try really hard to understand the numbers being called out in Spanish and the bingo markers were beans, which I thought couldn't be more Costa Rican.

I was so excited to get ice cream in town but what I got instead was a frozen bag of pink milk. Close enough.

On the way back from San Francisco, we took these photos:

I've also been working on mammal surveys in the jungle once a week. It's rare that we get to see the mammals themselves so we look for things like tracks and droppings. The most commonly found species are the 9-banded armadillo, the white lipped and collared peccary, pygmy fruit eating bats (which make little leaf tents!) and red brocket deer. We were lucky enough to find the tracks of a Baird's tapir last week, which were huge, I can't imagine how such a large animal can lumber through the dense jungle.