Entertainment in the Cloud Forest

We’ve been working pretty hard for the last couple of weeks. We’ve spent the majority of our time in the national park in El Salvador, doing plots and having interviews with the El Salvadorians whom live in the protected forest here.  Also, Monica and Cosme made a 4 day trip to Honduras to interview the local families who live near the cloud forest over there. Greg’s been helping out with some plots, organizing Monica’s data and making data entry more easy, and has also been studying Spanish when he has free time.

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

Stories

We spent Easter (Semana Santa) in El Salvador and attended the local parade in Majaditas El Salvador.  Easter is celebrated primarily from the Wednesday before through midnight the Saturday of Easter.  On Sunday there is not much going on.  On Good Friday we headed down to the village and helped make alfombras (carpets) out of sawdust, flowers and pine needles.  Traditionally these cover the entire road that a Jesus stature is then paraded over, however because this village falls in the park, only small alfombras near a chair in front of each house are allowed.  The chairs represent how many times Jesus stopped or fell while carrying the cross.   Each station is unique and made by the design of each family.  At each station the procession stops to pray and at the last station when Jesus is nailed to the cross, they hold a church service in the road with prayer, sermon and songs.

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

While doing one of the plots, Greg found a little bug on his arm that was self armored and camouflaged. It was a cool sight; the bug just crawled around on his arm and wrist while tripping on his arm hair.

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

Oh, and here's Greg changing out the bad tire for the spare:

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

The generosity of the people here in Central America is amazing. While Monica and Cosme were in Honduras sleeping outside in their tents at night, the family would begin preparing breakfast at 4:30am in the morning.  Monica tried to pay the family for feeding them, but they would refuse to take the money for that.  For the most part, the people don’t own the land they farm or the place their homes rest on. But the rich people who own the land, permit them to live there in exchange to working their coffee fields and they allow the locals to have a few cattle and other domestic animals for eating.  Some have some mango trees, banana trees, and also grow corn and beans. Monica asked, the day her and Cosme were leaving, if they could have a couple mangoes and bananas. The people said, Sure - and went out and picked 3 bags of mangos for her and chopped a banana tree to give her 2 stocks of bananas equaling about 150 to 200 bananas. That’s a little too much for all of us, so we’ve been giving them away too.

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

From Adventures in the Trifinio Biosphere Reserve

Last night (April 14th), the three of us witnessed a spectacular light show of lighting in the distance from the cabin just after eating some homemade fajitas (not customary to Guatemala says Cosme). We had some tea, and watched for the next lightning strike to occur which would flash lightning bolts across the sky and sometimes in various shapes (one was almost a perfect circle back into the clouds). It was really cool when the lightning hit, the sky behind a wide cloud passing just in front of us would light up.  We had conversions that this was our only TV we had now a wide open sky with shows of lightning.

Upcoming

These next couple weeks we’ll be doing more forest plots in the cloud forest in El Salvador and then meeting up with some family at the end of April.  Monica’s father (Bob Paulson) and grandfather, Papa (Llyod Paulson), will be coming. This is the first time Papa has been traveling so far and needed a passport for many years. Way to go Papa! We’re excited you are visiting!

Love  Monica and Greg

Honduras means broken lands

And we think that Honduras was aptly named.  Our first hike into the forest was straight over the top of the Point Trifinio into steep cliffs, loose boulders and vegetation covered suspended tree roots making hiking hazardous.  It was not uncommon on route to our first plot for someone to mistaken leaves on top of tree roots as solid ground and to find themselves up to their chests stuck in a hole between two massive roots.

But we started with the hardest route thank goodness and have since found a cow path changing a 1km hike from 4 hours into 20 minutes!  We have based off the trail and then bush whacked (an understatement for some plots) up to 2 km off the trail to find our randomly placed plots.  We have been fortunate to see wonderful scenes, impressive cliffs and inspiring large trees not to mention the delicate and peaceful parts of nature such as tiny hummingbird nests, salamanders wiggling under leaves and many birds.

From Visit photo gallery with newest pictures

My brother Mark has been a great asset in expertise and man power and with his help and the help of a Honduran botanist, my trusty friend Cosme and the priceless expertise and help of local guide "Chilo" in one month we have completed all 22 of the Honduran plots that were physically accessible (we had to drop plots that fell on the many cliff ridges throughout the forest as we were not equipped with climbing gear to safely reach and survey them).

We are posting some pictures of the Research Cabin in El Salvador which now "feels like home" to us, as many of you have requested photos of our home base.

In the research we have been blessed to meet without a doubt the best plant taxonomist I have ever encountered!  Jose Linares has helped us in plant identification and we have found three new species to science!  Two of which are in the process of being described and one which was discovered  by Linares the week we arrived (we just have to wait to find it in flower so he can describe it!).  It is so inspiring to me in a world filled with news of the loss of biodiversity that we are still finding new species -- and tree species to boot!

Spring Break 2010

With Honduras plots done we are looking forward to the next phase of the research which will be more forest plots intermingled with community interviews and stories.  In the interrum while we waited for permissions to clear and visas to be renewed, we took advantage of the time and had a "spring break" taking in lots of sun on the beach and learning to scuba dive with my father who came for a few days to visit--we are now Advanced Open Water Divers!  Highlights included diving on a shipwreck and diving in the Caribbean with squid, moray eels, an Eagle Ray and thousands of fish of dozens of different species, colors shapes and sizes.  We even did a night dive to see bio-luminescence and toad fish!

It is back to work for us soon and we are missing the mountain and will be glad to go back rested and renewed

Arriving at the forest...

We've spent the last couple weeks in El Salvador in the cloud forest: hiking,  This posting is going to be a few pictures, but with more pictures and captions in the ...Photo Album...

Here's the entrance to the park in El Salvador:

Monica arrives at the point of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and takes a rest:

This is what it it's like to be in a cloud:

This is what hiking to the plots is like - finding our way to the plots in the very steep terrain:

A guide helping Monica to identify and measure the trees:

And here's a view from the research cabin we've been staying at in El Salvador:

Please view the rest of the album and captions at: ...Photo Album...

I guess that is how they do it here....

These are words repeated multiple times by Greg as we learn to drive in a different culture and three different countries.  Driving here would inspire road rage in the calmest of drivers in the United States.  Two lane roads become three and even four when needed.  Cars without tail lights and bikes rigged up with baskets big enough to carry fish to market. 

Our team has grown with the coming of my brother Mark and fun memories are intertwined with strategic planning. Because the Honduras forest is so hard to reach, we will be living in a research cabin in the Parque Nacional Montecristo in El Salvador and hiking over the mountain until we reach Honduras.  Mark brings new expertise to the team and will help so much!

We spoiled him, perhaps a little too much--we have been boogie boarding on the Costa del Sol beach for this weekend and talking about the grueling hikes to come while drinking coconut water straight from the coconut.  If only all my PhD work could be so enjoyable!

We are enjoying fresh fruit.  Greg even cut down his own banana tree for an entire bunch of bananas.  The banana tree grows to maturity in about 5 to 7 months and I believe each tree only has one flower at a time which is where the large bunch of bananas originates.  To harvest the bunch, a machete chop at the base of the tree sends it falling where you find your bananas in the rubble.  The tree then sprouts from the base again and in a few more months you have more bananas.

Here is a look at the forest from the Guatemala side looking across onto the Honduras side where we'll be studying.

Almost in the forest

This last week, Greg studied spanish in the city of Antigua, Guatemala. Before the week started he could not carry on a conversation. However, now after attending classes for the week and studying he can converse, but mostly only using the present tense. Monica traveled to Honduras and El Salvador to gain permissions to study in the forests. And following, picked Greg up in Antigua and stayed one night as tourists. This picture is from the rooftop of the hotel looking at the La Merced iglesia (church).

Supply Runs and Bananas

We arrived safe in Guatemala on Wednesday evening around 9pm. We are currently staying with Monica's close friends in Guatemala City. Interestingly, the time zone in Guatemala is the same as Central Time Zone in the US.

We've been in Guatemala for three days now, and have gone on several supply runs to get all the necessities for the research in the cloud forest. In the field, there will be no electricity, running water, or even a bathroom. On our supply runs, we've gathered everything from a 12 volt battery for the solar panel to toilet paper.

On our first supply run into the center of Guatemala City, we picked up the battery in the morning, and when we were loading it into the vehicle we saw green fluid running out from under the vehicle. AH!! This could be a bad situation. Guatemala is a unique place in which you can get just about anything fixed in the city. There was a local mechanic that looked at the car within minutes of this happening, and it was discovered that the reason for the green fluid was because a hose blew off due to a low level of coolant causing excessive pressure when starting an already hot car. The total mechanic cost was only $5.00 - officially the cheapest car mechanic bill we've ever had.

We're really enjoying the fresh produce from the markets, the sun (Monica already got a little red), and experiencing what it feels like to live in a foreign place and not just be the normal tourists. It's refreshing.

Here's a picture of Greg with the kind of quantity of bananas he likes. It's 7:30pm and he has already eaten 7 today. Pictured with Greg is Cosme. He is Monica's close friend and field assistant for the duration of Monica's research. Cosme and Greg are teaching each other Spanish and English. Two peas in a pod, don't they look kind of alike? Two monkeys and their bananas.

Welcome to our Central America Blog!

After hours of packing and re-packing and running errands and then running more, we have successfully placed the necessities for the next months of our lives in four carefully weighed 50 pound bags.  While much of the preparation was physical, the most preparation had to be mental.  To leave a constant life in Bloomington IN, pack everything we own into a 10x15 storage unit and prepare to live in the unknown future of research and life in Central America takes mental relaxation in a time of stress.

Celebrating the holidays with our families felt good.  They were also troopers as we ran errands and spread all our belongings out in every attempt to re-pack while taking up record amounts of floor space.  They also will be such a wonderful support network for us as we head out.

This time living in Central America is to conduct Monica's PhD research.  We will be in the region of Trifinio, also known as Montecristo and La Fraternidad as it spans three countries: El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  We will be taking to the mountains of the Cloud Forest to measure trees and interview people in my attempt to understand how local villages are interacting with the protected area La Fraternidad (a biosphere reserve) and which norms, customs, rules and laws best protect the natural state of the forest.

We will be writing more little by little and posting a few pictures on this blog site.  We hope you enjoy reading it and hope we can do justice keeping it updated as we will be living in the mountains without electricity and will travel into town to keep you updated.  Thank you all for your support!

Hasta Pronto: Monica and Greg

Oh! Here's a last chance for Monica to play in the snow and build a snowman: