Day 1

24 June 2016

So here I am, typing in the dark, with a headlamp that is attracting an exorbitant amount of mosquitos, wrapped up in 2 sleeping bags (it drops below 40 at night on top of this mountain) and shaking my head in ironic wonderment at the gig I got myself into this summer. Curse the people who are in charge of these volunteer applications (she exclaims, shaking her fist in the air). I was told I would be going to a completely different camp – one that was in the rainforest, which denotes hot weather & completely different living conditions – so I brought a horribly heavy bag with way too much stuff: most of which I don’t need and not enough of the things I do. I brought a week’s worth of clothes so I only have to do laundry once a week: half of which are shorts & tank tops (again: for hot weather). But I have been brought to the CLOUD forest instead, which – as the name denotes – is covered in clouds & rarely receives the sun’s warmth during the day. It’s humid from all the condensation & rains a lot but it’s at a higher altitude than a rainforest so it gets frickin cold. Essentially I have 4 shirts, 2 pairs of pants, a jacket, a long sleeve shirt (plenty of socks & underwear, thank goodness), shorts & a tshirt for PJS – definitely not enough warmth & definitely not enough to last me through a week, considering I get covered in mud, dead bugs (I’m getting very good at killing mosquitos – Mr. Miyagi would be proud), bird poop & all other forms of avian bodily fluids each day, & there’s no dryer, so in humid weather, clothes will take longer to air dry. (My mother is terrified right now.)

Laundry room out back

But it did start out with a bang! Shortly after getting here (which took 3 different forms of transportation, the last 2 of which I was amazed made it up the narrow, rocky, one-lane, cliff-side road up the mountain) we headed straight into the cloud forest to install a camera trap at the nest of a grass-green tanager (every time I see a bird, I wonder if Larry has seen it!). Within 5 minutes, I already felt so out of shape huffing & puffing up the muddy trail, but I’m gonna blame that on the altitude ;P Mario took out the tanager chick to install the camera, while Tatiana & I catalogued the little guy taking its weight, feet, wing & beak measurements before the parents came back. We sat around for a bit to watch the parents return to the nest; they had been screaming & dancing around us the whole time. Poor little chick was no doubt terrified. But I was elated to be working with animals again (& such cute ones!) and the cloud forest itself is just a sight to behold! Every shade of brown at your feet & an impossibly variety of greens all around you.

Adult grass-green tanager

In short: I’m glad I’m here; I’m very nervous about my rudimentary Spanish & how I’m gonna coordinate my return home w/o a solid end date or means of communication to the outside world (though I did try to prepare my mother & Nick for this). The project consists of 11 nest sites that are supposed to be monitored for a total of 2.5 days each before moving on to the next one (By the time I got here, they had already completed the 1^st 4 sites). So the project can’t end until all nests are done. Rain may cause delays or we might be done in late-July (keep in mind my, thankfully refundable, flight is Aug. 3rd). There’s no definitive answer as to when we’re done here & once the research crew is finished here, they will move on to another site on the other side of the mountain. They are assuming I will go with them, but like a lot of things in this project, this was never communicated to me & they don’t have a definitive end date as to when the second research project will be over either. So I’m gonna need to find a way to communicate this with Nick and readjust my return flight home or cut out early (i.e. not go to the second site) & maybe get Nick to come join me here for a brief vacation. UGH – my OCD brain is kind of freaking out about such loose details. But it’ll be fine; I have some time to figure it out while I get used to the living situation & practice my Spanglish.

Farallones National Park

Cloud Forest