I awoke this morning with the sinking realization that today would be our last full day in Belize. Today would be a day full of hiking, as we set out all of our time to retrieve our camera traps that we had scattered far and wide a few days ago. Today, though, we got through the first half of our hike much faster than we did last time, retrieving all of our traps from the bush with relative ease. On this hike, we saw a Golfo Dulce Anole (Norops polylepis) among the leaf litter, easily distinguished by the diamond pattern on its back.

We then returned a little early for lunch, so we knocked out our lectures before eating. After a nice lunch and relaxation time, we went back out to collect the rest of our traps from the Monkey Tail Trail. These were a bit harder to find in the denser vegetation, and it took us a total of five and a half hours to cover about six kilometers because some of the camera traps were harder to find than others. I didn’t manage to see any more reptiles on this leg of our retrieval.

Our trap results were eventful. Most of the traps came up empty-handed, but a few of them showed us a large bird, some mammals, and even two ocelots! What a great way to top off an amazing trip. It won’t be easy to leave tomorrow.