Day of Confusion

Culturas Indígenas de Puerto Rico Museum

View from the Dry Forest

Same as above

 Magueyes!

Our room that the three of us shared - I don't know how to flip it on here

The Kitchen

More of the ocean at Magueyes

The second day when it was rainy and we couldn't go snorkeling again :(

A chewed up arm of an iguana - yummm

"The sea was like Earth but underwater"

"I wanted the ocean to be like my excel spreadsheet but instead it was like the ocean"

Some great quotes from Elegance Giovanni

A bird's nest just out in the open on the ground

Diana - one of our lovely TAs

Me being carried down to the bat caves 

Bat Cave!

As we moved further into the cave it eventually opened up to this view

Some of the guys in the first few days of the trip... before their beards came in 

View from the Streamhouse, which is 3 minutes up the road

Turtles

Huts at the indigenous site

Greg scratching his butt

The fish museum at Magueyes

Iguanas everywhere

Where we stayed at Magueyes

This picture is so amusing to me. Omar and Jose taking a picture of the same bird

A bird watcher at this place where salt is harvested

The mound of salt

Niv and Nicole!

Both are hands of males

Iguana Iguana Iguan Iguan Iguana

Yesterday we woke up and ate a quick bite before heading to Magueyes! We stopped at an indigenous museum where archeologists are still doing excavations. We got a tour from the guy, who was a little coo coo. A lot of the stuff he told us was just not true at all. He gave us a lot of laughs though. Then we stopped at a dry forest and got smothered by mosquitos - noticed the differences between the rainforest and dry forest in puerto rico (orographic rain shadow!).

Took a little boat to the island and set up camp. It's so beautiful here! As the title of this blog says, there are iguanas everywhere. We saw one that only had 3 limbs and it was hilarious. They also fight each other, which is kind of frightening. It's also a lot hotter here than it is at El Yunque, so we wasted no time and went swimming. We all proceeded to get stung by jellyfish. Yay. I'm actually excited that I can now say that I've been stung by one. Some of us actually peed on ourselves too. Not me though.

Dinner in the "town" - red snapper, rice, and beans. mmmm
We played Uno and Nick's game, which didn't go too well because we were all so tired and some got a tad belligerent.  I slept pretty well and we just had a lecture about the native flora and fauna here at Magueyes. I learned that I should not be touching most things in the water.

We are going snorkeling later today! Checkin out some coral and the fishies. Maybe an octopus or a sea horse?

I'll download some new pictures a little later.

Old San Juan

Breakfast and then lecture from Ashley. Then Greg and I walked a bajillion hours to look for flowers. Took pictures of lots of em and then walked back a bajillion miles. We are doing our project on pollination and its been tricky finding which flower species to observe. Dinner and then the alumni reception for us and alumni from Columbia. Drank wine and ate hors devours. Yummy.

Old San Juan - bar hopping, a fort by the shore, peach beer, cigars, and rum. Back to the station at 3 am and then to the stream.

We all woke up late today and had a nice breakfast. Ashley's hanging out with her fiance today. We miss her already.

The fort

Night life

The view at the end of our flower hunt

Greg and Nick

An orchid

Crammed in a van part II

As I posted yesterday, the plan was to eat breakfast at 6am. So we set our alarms for 5:50 and got ready. But, we were not informed that breakfast was actually at 8. What a waste.

Bus ride to El Mercado. I bought two mangos and then we walked around to the University of Puerto Rico and visited the Museum, which had air conditioning.  Back on the crammed bus to a coffee shop. I got an iced mocha. Yumm. Then a quick trip to the outlets mall for people who needed to pick up stuff. 

After we got back to El Verde, we cooled off under the waterfall. Dinner, skyping with Mom and Dad, paper on Aloe vera, banana grams, and bed time. 

 El Mercado 

 University of Puerto Rico

Parrot nests!

Oatmeal Masks and Mojitos!

Nicole, Yvonne, and I walked this morning and did some abs. Shower, breakfast, and lecture by Jill Thompson. She talked about her research on Puerto Rico which involved canopy cover and hurricane destruction. Then we all went through our powerpoint presentations from the lab yesterday. Ashley talked to us about ethnobotany, which was really cool. She told us about the history of medicinal plants. Lunch and then the coolest lab ever! Herbs, plants, spices, honey, and everything like that was laid out on a table. We made teas, pesto, mojitos, cinnamon-honey paste, and oatmeal face masks. I had to crush cinnamon sticks into a powder, which took forever because the mortar and pestle wasn't very good. It's okay, it was worth it. The best was the chai tea. Niv told us about a special Hawaiian drink with urine that cured one of his friend's cysts. Sorry - gross.

Then a really great, intense workout designed by Dom, our personal trainer. He's our olympian swimmer. Dinner, shower, banana grams, and a then a two-page paper about cheetahs. They can accelerate from 0 to 60 mph in three seconds! Yeah.

Tomorrow, breakfast at 6 because we are going to the University of Puerto Rico, Plaza del Mercado, a Coffee Shop, and Pinones Area. I'm super excited to get away from the field station and see other parts of the island! 

 Nick sleeping in the hammock with pink nails

 Desmond doing the duck face

Rose, Clare, and Greg extracting the DNA from strawberries