Ides of March

Thank you all so much for your comments on the last post! Basking in so much love and support really helped me get through this unfortunate bout with sea-sickness. However, the lingering effects of vertigo did take a few days to subside. We took the terrible boat trip on Saturday, and on Monday when I was out in the forest all day, I still felt horrible. I was not much better on Tuesday, and to make matters worse, I got a bee-sting on my bottom lip and was all swollen up. So I was in pretty rough shape. I don't know if I was still sea-sick or what, but I ended up throwing up all night long on Tuesday night. Dehydrated and groggy, I probably should have stayed in on Wednesday, but for some reason, I’d convinced myself that I needed to power through. The good news is that I think I’m finally over that. Strangely, it appears now that I have a cold. I have been sneezing and with a sore throat these past few days, and I am wondering how it is humanly possible to get a cold when it is nearly 100 degrees and bone dry every day. I took a few Airborne tablets that I brought from home and am trying to stay hydrated.

In other news, I have confirmed that Wrinkle Belly is indeed alive and well. Today he even had a girlfriend briefly. Its still been pretty hard to get a picture of him, but here’s the best I could do. WB is on the left, and his “girlfriend” is on the right.


I also got a really great close up of this juvenile, who was my focal animal of the day. His mom was Wrinkle Belly’s girlfriend, although yesterday she had been really interested in another male, so go figure.


And here is an infant, standing up on its mother’s back:


At some point while I was out in the forest today, I realized that it was the Ides of March, which made me remember reading Julius Caesar in sophomore English class, and those funny little dog cartoons Mrs. S (who we loved so much that we later called Mama S) drew to illustrate Shakespeare for us. (I have a lot of time for thinking and remembering things while I am out in the forest). Luckily, nothing dramatic happened today, it was just hot, hot, hot, hot. It is so unbelievably hot. It has always been hot in the forest, but now that we’re at the height of the dry season, the heat is out of this world. Between the hours of 8:30am and 4pm, I feel like I am literally boiling from the inside out. The monkeys remain motionless for a good 4-6 hours during the worst of it, and I just try to keep myself from going crazy. It is too hot to eat anything, it is too hot (and too thorny) to sit anywhere, it is even too hot to read. When I come home at the end of the day, it actually feels good to take a cold shower.

Tomorrow I am going to collect some ecological data on food availability (I do this every month); it should only take me about half the day. I am blissfully looking forward to sleeping in at least until sunrise and having a real breakfast. And I’m hoping that maybe a little extra sleep and some decent food will help me get over this “cold” or whatever it is. I will leave you with some pictures I took as I left the forest today. The monkeys had changed locations, so I went home a different way than usual. This route is a lot steeper than the normal path, but there are some really amazing views. Especially now with all the leaves off the trees, you can see for miles.

Here is Volcan Concepción:



And just a reminder, this is the volcano we climbed!


Thanks for reading!