Exciting mammal sighting

Today while I was running in the late afternoon, I saw a large animal coming down the road toward me. At first I thought it was a big dog. Then I thought it was a bear. Then I realized it was neither, and must be one of the animals that occur only in the tropics such as a paca, tapir, or capybara. It was large, rotund, and black. Upon my return to the lab I consulted mammal reference books, and I narrowed it down to a tapir or a capybara. Unfortunately it happened so quickly and early into my run that I cannot remember what the nose looked like...the most distinguishing feature between a tapir and capybara. Everyone at the lab thinks it was a capybara (which are cuter, by the way) because they have never seen a tapir here. However, as more and more surrounding forest is cut to make way for shipping containers at the Caribbean terminus of the Panama canal, animals that have never been spotted at Punta Galeta are being seen. One person saw a large cat (panther, perhaps?) and a fellow runner saw an animal with a tapir-like nose. I will have to spot the dark stranger another time to come to a satisfying conclusion.

Sleeping sloth

Two-toed sloths are less common in low elevations than their three-toed counterparts (the earlier sloth video is a three-toed). You can tell them apart by their eye patches; three-toed sloths have circles around their eyes and two-toed sloths don't. Both have three claws on their hind feet; it is the front feet that sets them apart. Their claws allow them to grip tree branches and hang upside down without expending energy. Although they are not graceful walkers, sloths are excellent swimmers! Two-toed sloths are aggressive, so I avoided provoking this one. This is a sloth doing what it does best:

A knight in shining armor

This is my new best friend:

It is an hourglass tree frog (Hyla ebraccata). It lives in areas with heavy rainfall and its geographic range extends from Mexico to Panama. The name comes from the dark hourglass pattern on its back:

I thought this particular frog might be a prince, so I tried to kiss him but he would have none of it. Don't tell my boyfriend.

Boats

Here is a riddle: if you have a boat on the Pacific coast of Panama, and a marine laboratory on the Caribbean coast, how can you get the boat to the laboratory?

Could you rent a trailer from one of the yacht clubs on the Pacific coast, take the boat to the Caribbean, and return the trailer? Could you drive the boat through the large waterway that connects the two coasts, also known as the Panama Canal? Could you borrow a trailer from the Caribbean coast, drive it to the Pacific coast, and drive back with both the boat and the trailer? Could you take one of the eight boats at the Smithsonian lab further up the coast and transport it, over land or water, to the lab without a boat?

Answer: None of the above. For reasons I do not understand, the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute is incapable of using any of these transportation solutions. The marine lab is left without a boat, and researchers such as myself are left unable to do our research that requires boat transportation. If not for the large ships lined up to enter the canal and the oil refinery nearby, I would just paddle myself to the site in a kayak. Unfortunately, it is pretty far, the water can be choppy, and I don't have a kayak available any more than a larger boat. This has been the case for two trips I have taken to the lab in question in the last six months. I don't know if this is a reflection of bureaucracy in general, the Smithsonian specifically, Panamanian culture or the American government. Regardless, the idiocy of the situation is infuriating.

Sloths

Sloths are known for moving slowly, but this one is moving its jaws quickly. Notice how it is hanging upside down by one foot.

Mangroves and Manatees

We went searching for mangroves, and we found manatees! The sign said "Do not molest the manatees." We made sure not to.

The Magic School Bus

7.1.10

This morning I awoke at 6:10 to a torrential downpour. Of course this is not an unusual occurrence in the tropics during the rainy season, but it was alarming because we needed to be on an 8:00 flight from Bocas del Toro to Panama City, then take a taxi to the international airport in Panama City in time for Sierra’s 11:54 am flight. My flight to Miami would take off an hour later. We had plenty of time scheduled to get between airports, but the rain, thunder and lightning made it unlikely that we would take off on time from the Caribbean island we were on. When we left the Smithsonian station to go the airport, it took a few minutes to find a cab; this was enough time for our luggage to get soaked. From previous visits, I found it ineffective to call a cab early in the morning, especially because there are usually more cabs than any other type of car in Bocas del Toro. When we finally did get inside a taxi pickup truck, it also picked up 2 children in school uniforms. Then it stopped again and picked up 2 more. We were riding in a school bus taxi! In Bocas del Toro, taxis only cost 25 cents for the locals, so it makes sense that children would ride taxis to school. But what didn’t make sense was why, every few minutes, our taxi driver felt the need to bark like a dog. It was a pretty good dog impression and had I not seen his mouth moving I would have thought a dog was trying to go to school too.

The fact that students take taxis to school is not because there are no school buses. In fact, there are tons of American school buses driving around Panama. They are not yellow, but usually painted with a multitude of brilliant colors and portraits of famous boxers, Jesus, or family members of the driver. They often have bright flashing lights and plastic fins on top, which might make them look like some sort of strange sea monster if they were submerged in water. These are the local city buses. They are referred to as the Diablo Rojo, possibly because of the way they drive with no regard for other people on the road, lane lines, or the copious diesel exhaust pouring out of them. I have never been on one, but I have narrowly escaped being hit by one in my rental car multiple times. After years of riding a school bus in the US, I have no desire to be crammed onto a sticky bus designed for small children. I think the key lies in the fact that most Panamanians are rather short and thus are appropriately sized for the buses. It seems to function enough so that in Panama, taxis serve as school buses and school buses take adults to work.