inundable!

I will try not to inundable you with information about my last two days, but come on, the title is "inundable" (Spanish for inundated, or flooded... one of my many forestry/conservation vocab words)!

Yesterday was the last transect for Karen and me (the 19th of 20 in real life, though). We went out with a bang, literally! Around 75 meters out of 100 of assessing forest damage, the thunder that we'd been hearing rumble all morning decided it would be a good time to arrive over our heads and start raining, after 18 transects without any rain, in the rainy season. Ludicrous. It was a tough transect, too-- selva baja inundable (lowland inundated forest, lots of young trees, lots of brush, very wet, and lots and lots of bugs). Thankfully, we're equipt with waterproof field notebooks, which actually work! You can write on the pages in the rain. Nothing smears. Nothing runs, except the water. Incredible. Bracken was bracken, but it was really rainy for the rest of the day. I somehow came home more caked in mud than everyone else, despite all walking and working in the same places.

We had a farewell dinner out with Karen. Marco and I dropped her off at the bus station late last night; by the time I woke up, Juan-Pablo had arrived from Colombia, been picked up, and had settled into our casa on Av. Bugambilias.

Today, Alex and Irene went to finish the last transect in Los Divorciados while Marco and I took my pair of interns west to train them to do my work for the next six months. What's that? You are also surprised, shocken even, that I have been given a pair of interns? I know, me too! But it's true. I have two interns: Angel, the tall outgoing one who speaks a slight amount of English, and Alberto, the shorter rounder shyer one who did not say a single word in English. They are clearly buddies, but they're required this internship in order to graduate from college, so it's a nice mix of hilarity and productivity. Also, did I mention, they are going to collect data for me for the next six months?

I had a great time in the field today. Most of what I did was troubleshoot the form Marco and I wrote for the interns to collect information with, questions about land use and fire history and all of the other things I won't bore you with that my thesis will be about. Ahem. Anyway. We were at an ejido called Nicolas Bravo, which my advisor worked at quite a lot for her Phd dissertation, so everyone there knows and loves her. In fact, our ejidotario named his daughter after her. So they were all excited that I, Laura's student, was there.

The coolest part might have started with our ejidotario saying, "Oh, there's an old Maya house." We just drove past this crumbled house sitting atop a mound (the Maya liked to build up the land they built their structures on). That house is more than twice as old as the country which I hail from! Just sitting there, in the middle of the ejido! I learned the words in Spanish to inform the interns that "I am a student AND a tourist" before I took that photo. At the next plot, what do you know? More ruins! Unguarded, un-roped-off... Marco mentioned casually that I could go up and see them if I want, so I clearly climbed on top of them and did my intern-supervising from there.

It rained on and off throughout the day. The rest of it was spent getting filthy by walking through burned helechals (plots inundable-d with the helecho, which is Spanish for fern) and standing around on Maya mounds surveying the awesome landscape. Don't worry, I was sure to leave my camera in the truck for the last plot, when we stood on a particularly high mound that offered a complete panoramic view of the landscape and horizon. (I'm so dumb.)

The day ended in an intense workout to prevent Marco, the interns, and my untimely deaths in the torrential downpour. I was behind the wheel in the Chevy truck, which is about 10 years old and only marginally better than The Monster. Shifting that thing was a pretty intense physical workout to begin with, but driving in that storm was a big workout for my brain. The streets in and around Chetumal were inundable-d. Also, the Chevy had crappy windshield wipers and the vent system did nothing to defog the windshield. I drove into town at about half the speed limit, and we clearly survived without incident, as I'm writing about it all now. The streets are still flooded here even though the rain has mostly stopped, but we're all home safely and planning on relaxing a bit tonight: tomorrow is an Ecosur day, Marco's last day, and Juan-Pablo's birthday!

Don't worry, this one is much shorter!

After telling you how kind and helpful everyone has been along our way, we were blown off by the comisario in Los Divorciados today (yes, that means "the divorcees" but I'll tell you about it when we actually go there to work). He didn't tell anyone else we were coming and was out of town at least all morning so we couldn't work. Irene and Alex will return on Tuesday while I'm out galavanting with Marco and my pair of interns, so I'll return at a later date.

So instead, we visited some Maya ruins in Chacchoben. They were delightful. We were the only ones there.

Tree of the day: ceiba.

Also, for everyone who kindly requested that I not catch swine flu while in Mexico, there are three confirmed cases at Rutgers... and I'm still flu-free in the Yucatan!

back to Bacalar tomorrow

Not much to report here. We worked from home after several failed attempts to get permission to work on ejidos in the area. Tomorrow, we're doing damage transects and bracken hunting in Bacalar starting at 6.45AM! Thankfully that only means we have to leave here around 6.15. Oof. And at the end of the day? Not playing in the laguna, sadly. Shower, pack, and drive up north to work there for a few days. We got our tree tags today!

By the way, when I say "up north" I kind of mean central Quintana Roo, the state I've been living and working in. I work in the Southern Yucatan region. So we're going to the sort of northernmost part of the southern part of the region, if that makes sense. I felt I needed to clarify. I am a geographer, after all.

Yesterday, though, was pretty cool. We had to drive all over Quintana Roo to arrange our schedule (you can tell we're working in rural places without phones) for the coming week, so we went an additional two hours out of our way to see some ruins and the Caribbean Sea. Long, but lovely day!

Tree of the day: orange tree. Unlike pineapples, these do grow on trees! And, we have one in our neighbor's backyard that grows up and onto our roof, where we all like to sit when we're working on our computers. Nothing is ripe on it yet, but it sure smells nice when climbing through it to get on the roof!

If you like piña...

I wasn't going to write again before heading north, but we're still waiting for some forestry supplies and thus, will not be heading north tomorrow morning. Well, we are, but to rearrange our schedule.

Today: easy damage transects! We were in El Bajio, which doesn't have a lot of trees. We had about a third the number of trees to assess in each of two transects. We split into two teams of two, each had an ejidotario, and finished quickly. Bracken fern was easy, too, very condensed. When we finished our work, the ejidotarios offered us some pineapple (piña in Español). As in, fresh picked, wild pineapples. I followed our ejidotario into the plot figuring that pineapple trees would CLEARLY be the tree of the day, but silly me had no idea that pineapples don't grow on trees! The ejidotario kept piling them up in my arms, and talking to me in Spanish no matter how many times I told him during the day, "No hablo Español!" He would smile, then start talking again and giving me more pineapples. Once back at the truck, we immediately ate some. So amazing! (Besides it just being straight up delicious, I have a soft spot for food that is locally grown and organic. This was a beautiful moment for me.)

We got a lesson in Maya language on the way back, which was amusing. The younger of the two ejidotarios was really excited and yelled everything to us. "Yosh bo'otik!" (thank you)

I don't know why I bother sharing our plans for the upcoming days because they change constantly. But, because we didn't receive the tree tags we need for the damage transect work, we're not staying up north starting tomorrow. It's looking like Tuesday to Thursday, and working in Bacalar on Monday. Still heading up north to talk to the comisarios and hammer out a work schedule and check out Maya ruins and the beach at Tulum though... as a consolation prize when we found out the package would not be arriving today as promised and that our plans needed to change, Alex took us to the home of a woman he knows who makes really, really good ice cream. We picked up a container each of vanilla and coconut and enjoyed them very, very much. Fresh pineapple and fresh ice cream. I'd say it was a pretty good day!

Tree of the day: pineapples can hold an honorary position here, but the real title goes to guano trees, which are a kind of palm. They're a pain in the butt to get a DBH for, but hey, I can identify it! We noticed a lot of these around El Bajio today. (And yes, I know that guano means something else in English. Just wait till the boob tree wins the title.)

Pich-y keen

The six of us spent the weekend in Campeche with the goal of doing a little GPS training, using the anniversary of the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve as a good excuse. Friday was a day of seminars on different conservation research projects going on for the park. However, being that we're Mexico, none of the presentations were in English. By the end of 7 hot hours of presentations, I was a very frustrated girl.

We stayed in Zoh-Laguna this weekend, but since there aren't enough beds there or anywhere, Irene and I were sent over to a hotel. Really, our room was a little hut. It was very cute and very nice, although we found it a little odd that there was no distinct shower or bathtub, just a shower head next to the toilet and a curtain that went around both. Interesting...

Saturday was spent in The Monster, a 1996 or so Chevy Suburban that acts and smells its age. We drove all over the place in and around the town of Xpujil (pronounced Schpoo-heel, it's Maya, as most words with X's in the area are), where Calakmul is, checking some points on a land cover map (think: what kind of stuff is or isn't growing where. This is biogeography. This is kind of what I do.) and basically getting a crash course in local forestry from Birgit. I actually really enjoyed this. We never drove for long, then got out and hiked a little bit, talking about how to characterize different types of tree stands. I know, I know... I'm a nerd.

Today was a similar endeavor, except much, much longer and hotter. The temperatures were well over 100 and we spent over 9 hours in the car, very little getting out and a looking today. It was kind of a wild goose chase to find some types of land cover that we didn't find the day before. Our lunch break was really great though. We ate at a family restaurant in a town called Pich in Campeche. The man who seemed to run the place was very proud of it and would share tidbits about it every time he brought us more lemonade or tortillas. The building we were eating in was a 17th century church. The wooden beams of the ceiling were older than the US. After we finished eating he showed us some photos of some of the oldest families in town and then actually gave us a tour of the little village, taking us down by the Laguna. It was competely dried up. He said there are always turtles there, but not this year. This is the first time in 50 years that it has gone completely dry. At least it's the very end of the dry season at this point; any day now it should start pouring on a somewhat daily basis. Just in time for the intensive field work to start!

A quick language lesson (not even Spanish!): Pich (the town) is named after the Pich tree. There was a really huge, ancient one by the lake but several others around town. The Pich (tree) is named after its seed pod, which is shaped like an ear (which, in Maya, is "pich"). There are a lot of Maya descendents in the southern Yucatan, and we continually encounter them speaking something that the five Spanish speakers I'm working with cannot understand. Every time that happens though, they remember, this must be what Colleen feels like all day every day. And they're right, to a point, but I'm learning... after this weekend, my conservation and forest taxonomy vocabulary has grown quite a bit! (I know, I know... nerd...)

More photos posted!