Back in Boston!

...Just in time for the rubber match against the Yanks! Puerto Rico was a great place to visit, but it is great to be back. Unfortunately, my luggage failed to return with me... hopefully I will get it tomorrow! I tried to bring back some sunshine, but I guess it didn't quite work. The airplane circled Boston for 30 minutes due to the cloudy, rainy weather.

Below are some more pics of Old San Juan. This little city truly is beautiful. I literally walked around and took pictures of every building. I love the balconies that decorate the streets. By chance I wandered into this unique craft store where Jose, an incredible Puerto Rican artist, was making little masks called vejigantes (vay-he-gone-tays). The vejigantes are worn during an annual celebration called carnival. After exchanging stories for nearly an hour, I learned tons about Puerto Rican culture from Jose who is a retired high school art teacher. I brought some his creations back with me...

Can't wait to see everyone tomorrow!

View from the balcony at the guest house I stayed at on Saturday night.

Beautiful balconies in Old San Juan.

A new friend: artist and teacher, Jose.

One of Jose's mini vejigantes.

Cobble stone streets and sunshine in Old San Juan.

This little dog made this balcony come alive!

Old San Juan es muy bonito!

After saying our goodbyes and wishing each other good luck in future adventures, we each headed into the Puerto Rican sun. I went into Old San Juan to visit this beautiful little city. It is located just north of San Juan, but has its own unique and historic character. There are two old forts on the coast that date back to the 1530s when the Spanish were trying to protect their colony. It is neat to go into the fort and pretend ships are coming to attack... check out this website for more info.
http://www.nps.gov/archive/saju/morro.html

This is the view from El Morro looking east.

... inside the fort. Can you find me?

The streets of Old San Juan...

Meet the Earthwatch team!

Friday in the forest...

Today, we ventured into the rainforest one last time as an Earthwatch team. We continued to measure trees. I was working with an Australian woman, and a college professor from Albany, NY. Our task was to once again use the clinometer to determine the height of the largest hardwood trees in the forest. While I stayed on task and managed to record measurements for almost 50 trees, we occasionally got distracted by forest creatures, like this stick bug below. There is something unique about the stick bugs here... I think they like me because I keep finding them on me. After we hiked back to the research station, some of us went for a swim in the river. One last night to exchange stories, then we are heading out tomorrow.

Friday and Saturday Plan

Tomorrow is our last day in the forest collecting data. We will then come back and debrief the information we collected and ask questions of the scientists. On Saturday, our time in the jungle comes to an end. I have really enjoyed being here and learning about this amazing place, but I am ready to return home (my pillow seems to make a better sponge!) Before I head home, though, I will be spending one night in Old San Juan to get the feel for city life here in Puerto Rico. Then, I will be on a flight back to Boston on Sunday.

I just figured out how to add some of my video clips to this blog...they are located on the right. They are linked from youtube.com, but there is no need to go the site. They will play directly in the blog. Don't worry if you can't play them, I will show them to you when I get back next week.

The first video is of a n anolis lizard hanging out on a palm tree. The lizard doesn't do much, but you can get an idea of how still they are. With luck, more to come, enjoy!

Webcast! (attempt)

This morning we tried to do a webcast from the research station in the PR rainforest to the Kiwi Team at Curtis Middle School in Sudbury, MA. It is a pretty amazing idea... and it worked for the most part. There were some difficulties with knowing if/how/when the students could hear me, but overall, I think it went well.

Here I am doing the webcast from an outside table. It stopped raining long enough for us to do it, but we kept getting disconnected... this is life when relying on satellites.

Successful frog survey!

We found hundreds, if not thousands, of frogs on our survey. We tried our best to count all the frogs in a 100 meter section of the rainforest. The total numbers have not been calculated yet... but it took us three hours to do the survey. Check out the pictures below. In addition to frogs, we found other creatures too.

Looking for little frogs...Watch your step!

One of the more dangerous creatures in the rainforest... a scorpion! It's only about two inches long, but I was sure to avoid it.

Another amazing stick bug. This one really wanted its picture taken!

Yes, the coqui do come in small sizes! This is a baby coqui that we found on the forest floor.

Adult male coqui frog (about 2 inches long)