Animals Galore

I've been all over the place since since Thursday, so there is plenty for me to write about. On Friday we did a half-day in the lab and in the afternoon went to a Smithsonian nature preserve called Punta Culebra. The park is located on a small island (less than a mile square) that has been connected to the mainland and to a few other islands by a man-made causeway. The majority of the land is just forest trails with signs pointing out different wildlife that you can expect to see if you have the eye for it. I certainly did not have the eye, but fortunately everyone else was able to guide my sight in the right direction.

Un perizoso en un arbol

We saw a whole array of different birds and at least five or six iguanas, all of which were fairly high up in the trees. There were also two sloth sightings in some of the lower branches, which was very cool. And I learned that the Spanish word for sloth is "perizoso" (translates to lazy), which I thought was really funny! Those animals definitely live up to the name. They use their claws to hang from branches, but the two we saw did so in such a way that their bodies were supported by a mat of leaves and intertwined limbs from below. It's seriously the most half-assed form of hanging I've ever seen!

At the end of the island there were a series of pools with fish, anemonies, seastars, etc., and one tiny little manta ray. It was adorable and just constantly swam around its tank in large arcs, sometimes splashing a fin out of the water. I said swim, but it looks much more like gliding - those guys can really cruise! One of the last tanks we looked in had a sea turtle, which, right when we got there, started tearing into a fish head for its lunch. For just a second it felt like I was at home feeding Guenevere!

"Noriega's Bar"

Apparently the whole island used to be some kind of military base, and at the very end there is a building that used to be an army bar which has been converted into an aquarium. But if you look behind the tanks you can still see the bar and the back room!

We rounded off the week by going to dinner at a place called La Rana Dorada, which turned out to be an Irish-style pub! The food choices left something to be desired for a vegetarian (soooo many garlic fries...) but it was very comforting to discover that micro brew exists in Panama. The beer carried by grocery stores and mini supers in this city is dominated by Hamm's and an awfully thin lager called Cerveza Panama, which Aaron assures me gets very old very fast. There's another place in town that makes their own brew, so I'm sure we'll be making a trip there before too long.