Don Myer was my favorite guide. An old guy without any teeth who had lived in the forest for hundreds of years, I swear. He would lead us through the forest and when he heard something, or saw something, or we were getting close to a place he knew had something cool he would crouch and we would crouch, knowing we were close to something cool and he would find what he heard and point it out to us. Monkeys, snakes, birds, bats nests, fallen baby owls… just some of his finds.
We went on a night hike with him, which was great. We found (he found and showed us) a hummingbird nest, giant spiders and crickets, frogs, and a crazy long snake.
He told us a couple legends, excuse me true stories that happened to his friends, about the forest. About beautiful women stealing away young men and people coming back from the dead, but only at night. I actually believe all of them because they have this pretty strong hallucinogenic tea that the medicine men use all the time. Get your hands on some of that and you would be seeing forest people too!
The only time Don Myer steered me wrong was when he accidentally bumped a wasp’s nest on the back of a leaf in the path. We both got hit twice, once right under my eye and the other on the side of my face. Man that hurt! Fwwooo that sucked, but it died down in about 30 minutes and by the next day I could hardly feel it. Luckily im not allergic cause apparently my whole face would have swollen up, and we were quite the hike away from the station and any benadryl. But that was my only painful run in with nature for the week.
Other cool things we did: We did the light trap again, but it was a full moon so didn’t work so well. We hiked to oxbow lake and canoed around in the rain. We collected all kinds of bugs and seeds. We also did a monkey survey in the area, where everyone between 2:30 and 5:00 walked along different paths and recorded where when and what monkeys we saw. My partner and I didn’t see anything but we still had a good time.
The researchers at the station were Dan, from Canada, and Ricardo, from Colombian. They were spending a year at the station, basically following monkeys around the forest all day. They would find the group they wanted for the day using the radio collars on the monkeys and follow them, collecting fecal samples and recording their activity. Sometimes they would tranquilize them and “catch” them in cloth in order to measure them or put the collars on. Seeing the life of a field research for real, without the glamour only made me want to do it more.
The person in charge of the station, Juan Pablo, is also in charge of the sea turtle research on the coast and offered me a position for my independent study project for the last month that I am here. I am now communicating with Gabriela who works with the hawksbill and green sea turtles on the coast as well as the shark by-catch research. Hopefully it will all work out so that I can get a real taste of marine field study, which would be increadible!!! We will see.
All in all the Amazon is an incredible ecosystem with unbelievable diversity.
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