The last few days have consisted of traversing through dense tropical forest and up and down rocky, slippery peaks full of boas, tarantulas and various crabs. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and Today began just after 5 am- packing up gear, trekking up a massive staircase to breakfast, and hitting the trails no later than 7am. Loaded down with lots of water, lunch and GPSs' we spent most of the morning and afternoon taking data points of wind speed, humidity, temperature, stem density, elevation, light infiltration, and more. The more dense the forest cover got, the harder it got to break through each ravine and be torn up by the tropical spiny palm forests (tika). For two days we had our "cocina" staff pack us lunches that consisted of tortillas filled with beans and some kind of Honduran hot dogs. Yummy. Adding to our already gnarly stomach issues, we still pushed on getting the data we needed to start our interpolation. The best part was finishing the day by jumping in to water and spending time with new found friends. We may have even taken midday skinny dips just to get rid of the tropical forest sting and the sun. How refreshing! Watching the sun go down at the end of the day and breathing in the salty tropical air as we fell into a hiking induced coma was the greatest feeling of each day... all to just to wake up and do it all over again- this time in a different snake infested area of the island. Today we finished up all of the data collection by lunch so we were able to take time and snorkel on the pristine coral reefs around Cayos Cochinos. After celebrating Thanksgiving tonight in our own way (drinking some fine Honduran rum...) we get to sleep in tomorrow and will take a boat to some of the surrounding islands to snorkel. After hearing about the snowstorms back home, we are certainly happy with the 80 degrees, palm trees and sunshine. Happy Thanksgiving everyone! (written by joel, edited by amy)
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