Welcome to the Jungle!!!

We're in the rainforest guys!!!!!!

*AKA this pic is when I was walking in the rainforest and it was actually raining so I was really happy as you can see

I woke up feeling pretty great considering how I felt the day before with all the traveling (we don't need to talk about that). On the itinerary today we have two tours of the different forests where we will be doing our research and getting a lay of the land. There is the small forest and the large forest that is walkable on the reserve so that's where most research projects centered our work. My research group is setting up 18 trail cameras (9 in the small and 9 in the large forest) to catch some mammals and measure biodiversity between the two forests. Most mammals in this area are nocturnal and aren't used to humans stomping around so besides primates not many mammals were seen on our little forest walks.

So time for a little vocab lesson....

• Primary forest - a forest that has never been logged, burned, or essentially touched by the human cooties aka the.......... SMALL FOREST

• Secondary forest - a forest that HAS been logged or used in some way by humans that was not a natural process aka the............ LARGE FOREST

As soon as we started walking in the small forest you can feel like you're in a different world where you hear a bunch of animals but the outside world is nonexistent. Once we start walking people are immediately identifying insects and frogs on the side of the trail because there is such an abundance of everything. Our first frog was the blue jeans poison frog which yes is a poison dart frog and yes can harm you but they look absolutely adorable and are just living their best life. Just look up a pic of them and you'll see.

We spent around a good hour and a half just exploring the trails in the small forest and being vigilant to any invisible spider webs. One amazing plus in this forest is there is a hanging suspension bridge that animals will use to cross this ravine. So the mammal group immediately said yes we will be putting cameras up here. Overall an amazing hike and opportunity to see some cool animals.

Now for the large forest.....

So the large forest took a lot longer than an hour and a half. Our guide was trying so hard for us to find us some monkeys to observe (which we would see from the comfort of our hammocks later in the week) that we were literally in the jungle. I know we've been in the jungle up until this point but no this was if the guide left us and took his machete with him I would give myself less than an hour before I gave up trying to navigate and just started praying God would take me in a dignified way. There were maybe ten of us with our professor and at one point we were walking/sliding down a mini-mudslide and started holding hands like we were in kindergarten. Long story short we did not see any monkeys that day but our group was immediately bonded like nothing else from sweating in the rainforest together. Also I will do that hike a hundred times for that plantain taco salad we had for lunch afterwards.

Up next we've got the actual nitty-gritty of the the trip and getting some data. DAY TWO DONE!!!!!