happy returns

To kick off Katy and Mike's spring breaks (and Brian's vacation and my general tagging along), we took a grand tour of Mohave County. We started with a drive to Oatman, where the burros were out in large numbers, including several babies (which we've taken to calling burritos) ranging from three weeks to about three months. We even caught the daily gun fight for once!

We took Old Route 66 to Topock on our way to Lake Havasu, where we stopped to see the London Bridge, walk along the water, and visit Barley Brothers. It was a lovely drive through the desert. It has "rained" (mostly been overcast and damp, more so than downpour, although the last time the skies deluged on Mohave County) all of three times since I've been here, which has lead to a lot of weird desert grasses growing, and all of the cacti and brush looking less dead, and... a rainbow of wildflowers have sprung up!

After a grand tour of where Mike's been living for the past nine months, we headed east to the Grand Canyon. It had snowed all weekend until we left Bullhead City, so we were greeted with a glorious, heavy, wet snow hanging onto the ponderosa pines in Kaibab National Forest (and thankfully, clear roads!). It was pretty cool to see the difference between summer canyon and winter canyon. The snow made everything very pretty, and it wasn't too cold out to walk around a bit. We mostly strolled along the south rim trail, catching sunset at Yaki Point, which was new for me.

On Monday (March 11), we went to Sunset Crater and Wupatki. Mike and I visited Sunset Crater Volcano in January, but this time we hiked a bit more and also explored the pueblo ruins. This pair of national parks was nuts. It was snow covered at Sunset Crater, but not the slightest evidence of snow up in Wupatki. The views were incredible, as were the hikes-- a very steep stroll up the side of a volcano cone, and a repeat of the good loop around the a'a.

The next day, we took all of Mike's people to Sedona. Katy, Brian, Mike and I hiked the perimeter of Red Rock State Park, like Mike and I did in January. It's such a beautiful park with great views. Hiking all of the trails is just the right amount of challenging-- a good workout, but not so hard that you can't do anything else for the rest of the day. It was nice to repeat this park, too, but we also managed to get in one more trail than we did last time (the Kisva trail along the creek). 

It was so cool to show Katy, Brian, and Mike's aunt and uncle around these parks that we liked so much. I never get sick of looking at these crazy rocks, either. It was nice to be able to add new elements to things we already enjoyed, too. This all served as a good foundation for the rest of the week in Utah!

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!

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.)

seaside St. Andrews with Sarsh

Not that we haven't been having a really great time on our vacation, but this is the first stop of the trip where Heather knew the person we were staying with ahead of time. Everyone else has been people I've worked with over the past few summers. Here in St. Andrews, we're staying with our friend Sarah, who we both went to summer camp with. It made for a pretty amusing time!

We walked around the city all day, checking out all kinds of things, including the gorgeous cathedral ruins, the pier, the castle ruins, the old golf course, and the beach. Heather bought some boots on sale in a shop, so we all had to dress up along with her to go to the student union. We made omelettes for dinner with gorgeous peppers like the ones I buy at home all the time, except they were a lot cheaper since Scotland is a little closer to Holland. We went out with some of Sarah’s friends again, and turned Never Have I Ever into a game that got us all a little silly by the end of the night. We stopped by a chip shop (French fries), where I mentioned to Heather that the very fit (good looking) boys behind us had bumped into me, which she turned into grabbed my butt, and started this whole, hilarious tirade about that and the fact that they wave two fingers instead of one, and called underwear “pants”. It was really, really, really, really funny!