The Azuero Peninsula

As far as field work goes, I don't think this last week will ever be topped - we spent Sunday through Friday out on the Azuero Peninsula working almost exclusively at beach-front localities. Azuero is about a six hour drive west from Panama City and is dominated by agricultural and ranch land, with occasional towns and surfing destinations dotting the coastline. Even Las Tablas, the provincial capitol, wasn't much larger than any given neighborhood here in the city. Along with the usual crowd (Aaron, Sam, Nicole, Pedro, and I), a student from the University of Panama who volunteers at STRI (Sara) came along with us, making our group, thankfully, too large to all fit in a single truck. Those STRI trucks have been in use for quite some time, carrying dirty, sweaty geologists from one place to the next and it is not fun to get packed in tight and stuffy. Our goal for the week was to check out a few exposures that previous researchers had encountered and to do a bit of exploring ourselves to see if we could find any fossiliferous units exposed along stream beds or at roadside quarries. The entire peninsula is not terribly well described since there is so little exposure of the underlying rocks, but those sites that have been studied have all been dated to around 40 million years old (Eocene). This was an extremely casual trip, with no particular rush to leave in the mornings and no rigid expectations on fossil collection; we really didn't know whether we would find units overflowing with fossils or completely devoid of them. Best of all, the climate along the breezy coast, although still hot, was downright enjoyable compared to the stagnant air and oppressive sun along the canal. Definitely a much needed working vacation for all of us.

Sunday was mostly just a driving day. There's a quarry near the town of Ocu that Aaron had worked in before and found invertebrate and plant fossils, so we checked in to a hotel just on the outskirts Santiago (the nearest city big enough to have a hotel) and would go to the site in the morning. Because the quarry was on private land, Aaron and Pedro drove out to talk to the owner and get permission to collect, leaving the rest of us to bide our time at the air-conditioned, cable TV, pool-equipped hotel. Not such a bad gig! I was in the pool from the second I was able until the sun started to set and it was nothing short of fantastic. We really should consider getting one for our apartment. Oh! And the rooms had hot showers! Even though the water pressure was only a hair above a trickle, I savored every second underneath it - it was my first, and probably last, hot shower in Panama. Once Aaron and Pedro got back, we went into town for dinner then watched Wall-E in Spanish back in the hotel. If ever there were a movie to watch in a foreign language, Wall-E would be the one. Not a single one of us had any trouble following along.

The quarry. It was oppressively hot!

Monday morning at the quarry was rough. Even though we were out working by 8:00 AM, the heat of the day had already set in and there was little shade to be found. Plus we were out in the middle of ranch land, with cows easily spotted in any given direction, so the bugs were pretty thick. To top it all off, fossil abundance was pretty low and the preservation quality left something to be desired, so we ended up resigning ourselves to concretion-cracking to find anything of worth, which was hard, shrapnel-spreading work. Concretions are areas within the rock bed that have been selectively cemented with a mineral precipitate such as calcite or silica, and so are much more resistant to weathering and rock hammers. By the end of the morning we had a few seed impressions, some complete shells, and petrified wood, and decided to move on to the next site, which was just down the road, in a creek bed. There were conglomerates and sedimentary units that had been sampled for paleomag (a dating technique) by other researchers, within which we hoped to find some terrestrial remains, but to no avail. Still, hanging out under the tree cover and romping around in the cool water was a nice break from the open sun.

A little piece of croc tail we found in the stream bed.

Our next stop was also in a stream, one that wrapped itself around the city of Macaracas (very fun to say) and proved to be equally unfruitful. Past researchers had reported limestones in the area so we had hoped to find some marine fossils, and although we did manage to find the rocks, they were the deep variety of limestone, without a single fossil large enough to be seen with the naked eye. No fossils means no time spent digging around, so we had some time to kill and at first hoped to go for a swim in the stream, which in areas had pools deep enough to dive into, but after getting in close to the water, seeing the thick coating of green algae, picking up the strong smell of ammonia, and watching a group of cattle relieve themselves upstream, we decided against it. Not to mention there were posted signs prohibiting the use of beer-containing coolers. Where's the fun in that?

Thankfully, our last work stop of the day (also a stream, just outside the town of La Guerita) did have plenty of fossils, so the roadside stops weren't all for naught. This particular locality was probably my favorite; since it's the end of the dry season, the water level was particularly low and on the exposed limestone bed of the stream you could see where eddies whirlpools had weathered away the rock differentially, leaving behind some really cool patterns. No one found any bones, sadly, but we all found some pretty good looking shells of oysters and snails and scallops. Aaron and I, when exploring pretty far upstream from the road, found two enormous and complete oysters side by side in the limestone, and they were on a shelf that seemed eager to break off from the rest of the rock body (you could trace the beginnings of fractures all the way around. And, sure enough, breaking the shelf off wasn't hard work at all, but it left us with the dilemma of having to carry a 150+ lbs rock through a stream bed and then up a hill to get to the trucks, all for some shells. We decided that the only realistic way of taking the fossils with us was to chisel the sheet in half, leaving us with two much more manageable pieces to carry. The only problem was: that rock was HARD. My somewhat over-sized rock hammer didn't even come close to what we needed; the chisel just bounced off the rock with every hit. Our 6 lbs crack hammer had much the same effect. The only way we could make any real progress was with the giant sledge, and all it managed to do was chip away a few flakes here and there, forming a little crater around the chisel - there was no sign of any fractures developing. With the afternoon growing late and still a fair drive to go before getting to our hostel, we had to make one of the hardest choices of the whole trip and let our little baby go. Surely someone more suited for the challenge will come along and give those oysters the home they deserve.

Our hostel.

We checked in to our hostel at Playa Venao (playa = beach) just before sundown, which was the perfect time to take in the unbelievable setting we'd be living in through Friday. The hostel was tucked away maybe a quarter mile back from the water, and looked exactly like what you'd expect for a beach get-away. The frame of the building way made of what looked like driftwood, with whitewashed cinderblock-and-plaster walls, the roof was constructed out of palm fronds, all the furniture was handmade, varnished wood, and there were hammocks tied up everywhere. I never managed to get a picture that quite did it justice, but everything about the place said paradise. And the beach itself was nothing short of phenomenal! Venao is set in a little cove and is entirely sand, seriously not a stray rock or reef to be seen. And the slope into the water is so gradual that I could walk out at least 100 yards and still be able to touch the bottom. It's a surfer's dream too; perfect waves were constantly rolling in the entire time we were there. In fact, the world surf championships were held in Venao in 2011. To top it all off, Aaron informed us that the low tides would be between 4:00-6:00 AM and 3:00-5:00 PM while we were there, and since the morning low was before sunrise, we wouldn't have to "go into work" until the afternoon! This had the makings of a very, very fun work trip.

Hanging out at the beach on the first night.

Tuesday through Thursday were all more-or-less the same. I was up by 6:30 or 7:00 each morning due to the growing light and persistent rooster living under my window and tiptoed around my roommates to make my way out of the hostel and down to the beach. Pedro, Sam, Nicole, and Sara filled their room entirely, but Aaron and I had three extra beds in ours that were filled by ever-rotating surfers and backpackers. I was only out early enough to watch the sunrise on one occasion, and it was underwhelming - the whole coast is usually pretty overcast and foggy before the sun breaks it all up, so there wasn't really much to see. But I had a wonderful time regardless, either practicing some soccer (I bought a ball a few weekends ago) or going for a beach run before taking a long, long swim in the ocean. The runs couldn't have been much longer than 5K from one end of the beach to the other and back, but man did running in sand make my calves and achilles sore! I thought my legs were going to fall off at the knees before I ever made it back to Panama City. The swimming was also pretty exhausting, but far too much fun to ever notice it until I had crawled back on to shore. Aaron and I both spent a good hour or two each morning letting the waves crash into us, trying to swim through them, and trying to swim with them and body surf. I can definitely see why surfers love what they do, especially with waves as consistent as these.

Bucaro.

As for the paleontology side of things, every day at about 11:30 AM we'd drive out to Playa Bucaro for some shoreline fossil hunting, much like what we do in Pina. Bucaro is supposedly a surfing site too, according to the road signs, but the stretch of it that we were working on was all rocks, so I don't see that working out all too well. A good 2-3 hours on either side of low tide each day, we were out prospecting for marine fossils on the rocky shore. Theoretically, the tide changes should have made the job easy for us (just as in Pina), exposing all the fossil material and just leaving it up to us to find it, but it turned out to be like some kind of twisted version of Where's Waldo. We did find fossil material, and lots of it, particularly turtle carapace, mammal ribs, vertebrae, and teeth, everything was either exactly the same color as the surrounding rock or the same color and texture as it's neighboring non-fossil inclusions (pebbles, petrified wood, etc.). On top of that, the rocky beach was clearly a thriving intertidal habitat, so algae and crustaceans obscured everything. The more experienced members of the group (Aaron, Pedro, and Nicole) didn't seem phased by these features, but the rest of us had a hell of a time finding anything of worth. However, the challenge only served to make it feel that much better when I did stumble upon the small handful of fossils I collected over the three days. And there's really nothing to complain about when you're walking around on the beach all afternoon searching for bits of bone (and maybe doing some beach combing on the side...). Here are some of the highlights from Bucaro:

The sea turtle.

- We found a modern sea turtle carapace washed up and half-buried in the sand. It was enormous and in great condition, but, even as envoys of the Smithsonian, it was illegal for us to collect it or even touch it without express permission and permits.

- I saw a beached yellow-bellied sea snake on two separate occasions. When they wash up on the still-wet, compacted sand, they can't get enough traction to move and look as though they're on a snake treadmill. I wish I had taken a video! They're extremely poisonous (as are all sea snakes, apparently), injecting 2-8 times the lethal dose of venom for an average person in each bite. Despite this, Aaron took it upon himself to return both into the water using paired driftwood sticks. He's a brave on, no doubt about it.

- I found a modern vertebra that to my untrained eye looked like it had to have belonged to a whale or a dolphin (it was very similar to one I've been preping in lab), but when I showed it to Aaron in all my excitement, he told me that it was just from a cow, washed down a stream onto the beach. What a letdown!

- A stray dog followed us around all day on Wednesday, I think it was. He had the most enormous, goofy ears, was incredibly friendly, and actually looked to be in excellent shape for a roamer. The second you picked something up though (fossil or shell or whatever), he immediately went into play mode and wanted you to throw it for him. It was insanely cute, but pretty distracting and unproductive. At the end of the day, Sara fed him her leftover potato chips and Sam pulled a few ticks out of his ears - the poor guy had a ton of them!

- I found the washed up plastron (underside) of a modern soft-shelled turtle. It looks so cool! At first I thought there was only half of it, fractured right down the middle and wedged between a couple rocks, but just a few yards down the beach I found the other half just barely poking out of the sand. This one we did take back with us, since soft-shelled turtles are not endangered.

- On the last day we heard howler monkeys crying out from the hill overlooking our beach. We climbed up to check them out and in no time at all we had found the tree they were hanging out in. They were not happy at all to see us, and we soon realized that there was a newborn in their group so they were on high alert. I decided straight away to give them the space they wanted and didn't get any photos.

- On the last hour of the last day, as the sun was quickly disappearing behind a hill, Sam spotted a little piece of turtle carapace sticking out of one of the rocks and started to pick it out. The only thing was, it just kept extending deeper and deeper down, ultimately coming out at about the size of a large dinner plate. It took us at least 45 minutes past sundown to extract the thing and we all had to pull out our flashlights and watch carefully for developing cracks and movement as we finally pried it from the rock. It came out in just two pieces, the smaller only the size of a deck of cards, which I think was a job pretty well done, all things considered.

On Friday morning we headed home at around 9:00, and surprisingly I was the only one who got up early enough to fit in one last swim. How many times do you get to be on a beach in the tropics?? Not least one as garbage-free as Venao (Panama is notorious for having dirty beaches, particularly near the city). I may have been a bit sleepier than the rest during the ride home, but let's face it, ranch land all starts to look the same after the first few miles; I wasn't about to miss anything by taking nap or two here and there. The highlight of the trip home was stopping at a produce stand just before getting on to the Pan-American Highway, where I went a bit fruit crazy and bought a papaya, a watermelon, two pineapples, and a bunch of bananas. Good fruit was hard to come by out where we were! Can you blame me? There was a lowlight of the trip as well: one of the trucks broke down. Fortunately, we were only about an hour and a half outside of the city. If it had happened when we were way out on the tip of the peninsula, things would have been a lot harder. Aaron ended up sending the rest of us home in one truck with all the gear while he stayed behind to wait for the tow truck to pick him up. He got home about four hours later than we did, and in an attempt to make up for that we all pitched in and made a lasagna dinner (with wine, of course) that came out of the oven just seconds before he walked in the door. The timing couldn't have been better! Things also worked out in my favor with that lasagna - whoever was in charge of buying ground beef forgot to get it, so instead of making myself a personal veggie separately, we made one enormous VEGETARIAN LASAGNA. And they all LOVED it! Muahahahahaha. It was a fantastic ending to a fantastic week, even for Aaron, I think.

(Here's a quick map I made to show you most of the places we went to!)