It’s a little strange to come to a rainforest and see bare trees. After all, you probably would expect rainforests to stay lush and green all year round. Once you go bird watching, however, you find that the dry season is actually useful. Its really easy to see any bird that would ordinarily blend into the leaves sitting on a perfectly bare branch.

Today we were able to use our Science Skills™ to develop a research project, complete with question, hypothesis and methods. The perfect triad for beginning any scientific investigation. We were wondering how human trails and roads affect the presence of mammals, more specifically, how many mammals come through a human made trail, how many species and how many individuals of each species. So we set up motion-sensing cameras all around the field station, both on and off trails, and in a few days we’ll see what type of mammals show up in our pictures, and see if our theory is correct.

During our hike, I collected many different fruit and leave samples that I found on the forest floor that looked interesting to me. I found a green and brown round shaped fruit, a little smaller than a baseball. They might be the same fruit in different stages of maturity, but to confirm this I need to open the fruit, look at the seeds and do some research, which I intend to do as soon as possible.

The director of the Friends for Conservation and Development NGO (nongovernmental organization), Rafael, talked to us about what makes the Chiquibul unique, and about all the different threats that are posed to it. It’s very worrying to hear that this beautiful region may soon be deforested and developed. But hopefully, our friends at Friends for Conservation and Development can success in their quest to protect the magically Chiquibul, and all of the trees that keep this ecosystem alive.

Oh also we saw a 25 foot wide leaf cutter ant hill and an enormous boa constrictor. I gotta say the ant hill was slightly more threatening to me than the boa constrictor.

Today we walked 6.11 miles (according to my Fitbit). I have been told that we will walk more.

We went to a location on the Mountain Pine Ridge Forest Reserve called Rio on Pool, which means “river on pools.” I took many pictures of the pools and waterfalls (see pictures above). While doing some research on the trees of Belize prior to this course, I was pretty surprised to discover that a Tropical region had pine trees, let alone entire pine forest mountains. Unfortunately, a lot of the mountain’s pine trees had been destroyed by an infestation of the southern pine bark beetle, as well as frequent fires.

After Rio on Pool, we drove to an ancient Mayan ruin site called Caracol (which means conch shell in Spanish). We learned a lot about Mayan history, and saw some of the king’s and elite’s housing structures. We then climbed an enormous pyramid, and we could see Guatemala from the top of the pyramid. It was amazing when we were able to talk to people who were still on the ground- they could hear us and we could hear them, even though we were pretty high up.

We then drove to Las Cuevas Research Station, which we will be staying at for a few days. It was built in 1994 by the British Army and is used exclusively for research and not open to the public. It is an amazing opportunity to be able to stay here and learn all about the Chiquibul forest and all (read: some) of its inhabitants.

While driving out of Rio on Pool, we saw a logger’s trunk full of mahogany. Yay!