Daily blog entry 2:

I fed a lot of critters with my blood today. I had around a dozen 4 mm long leeches on me this morning, and I also just applied anti-itch lotion on 14 spots on my legs.

It was a long day today. After waking up at 5:25 from all the noises in the rainforest, we had a nice breakfast courtesy of the Crystal Paradise Ecolodge staff (thank you!) and headed to Rio on Pools. I followed Adrienne and Scott to what seemed like a cool water-slide location, but I WAS WRONG. I just ended up getting leeches on my butt from all the butt-scooting I did on the rocks. Other than that, Rio on Pools was absolutely gorgeous. I was definitely thinking about the Pools at Caracol as I was sweating and struggling to climb up the pyramid. We reached Caracol after we crossed the Macal River and moved from the Pine Ridge forest to the Rain forest. 

Caracol was such an interesting place. I have never seen Mayan ruins before, and I was glad that I was able to learn about ancient culture while also observing the nature around me. In total, we got to climb two temples, enter a tomb, look at half a dozen beds, and enjoy the great view of the Rainforest. We even saw Guatemala. Leo, our tour guide, even got Guatemalan service. In terms of flora and fauna, we really got lucky. We saw banana trees, howler monkeys, wild avocado, birds and lots of ants.

At Rio on Pools I got to see one ant on my taxonomic card. It had a shiny golden streak on its abdomen. That was the only remarkable ant that I saw. We saw some leaf-cutter ants on the way to the sites at Caracol. That’s when I learned that they have extensive trails that they clear out. Then we went to Las Cuevas, and that’s when I saw the leaf-cutter ant nests. They were everywhere. We just gathered around one giant ant hill, and I got to learn so much. It’s really nice to have Scott as the ant expert because I got to hear a lot of information, such as the fact that no one has actually seen a leaf-cutter queen ant and a male ant mate in the air before. I also learned that there’s a death chamber for dying ants and used leaf. Scott said that there’s a pheromone that ants emit when they die, and when that pheremone is put on alive ants, other worker ants still move that ant to the death chamber. Pretty Nifty stuff.

I received a suction device where I can collect ants. I hope I get some pretty interesting ants tomorrow!