¡Arriba arriba!

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Hola de nuevo!

I'm back in the city of Chitre after a week of adventures in Isla Cañas. It was an amazing, if tiring, week filled with great experiences. I'll start by describing where we stayed. Isla Cañas is a small island community located about 100 meters off the coast of the southeastern tip of the Azuero peninsula. The island is a protected area because it is an important breeding ground for 5 species of sea turtles (all threated or endangered, I think) and is home to the largest, best-preserved mangrove forest in Panamá. It is a relatively poor community of about 600-700 people who rely mostly on subsistence farming and the harvest of sea turtle eggs (controlled pretty strictly by the National Envrionmental Administration, ANAM). It is a beautiful tropical island, complete with palm trees, parrots, monkeys, and one of the most beautiful black sand beaches I've ever seen. Also, because it is a protected area, it hasn't been developed much. There was nothing on the beach except for sand, crabs, shells, logs and the occasional pair of ATV tracks (the patrol to monitor the turtle egg harvest). No hotels, no cabanas, no barbecue pits, nothing. And that to me was wonderful and amazing. At the same time, however, ANAM's tight restrictions on development are a source of much frustration for the people who live there who want sanitary bathrooms and tractors to help them harvest their crops. It is an interesting example of the conflict between conservation and development, a conflict that is unfortunately common in such places. Does it have to be one or the other? I don't think so.

When we arrived at the island we were greeted by our host families and went back to our homes to get settled in. I stayed in a pink cement house that was probably one of the nicer ones on the island. We had a tv, electricity, running water and even a clean, very new-looking toilette and shower. My mother, Mumi, was very nice quite friendly and her son and daughter Daniel and Marisel (fraternal twins!) very talkative and a lot of fun. While there we learned about the turtles and the egg harvesting cooperative, saw a "junta" of farmers harvesting rice by hand, and learned how to cook tasty traditional foods. We went swimming and body surfing on the beautiful beach by day (at 6 a.m. the last morning as the sun was rising) and then went looking for sea turtles on the same beach by night. This was probably the best part of the trip. The first night we saw three turtles laying their eggs and got to observe the egg-laying process. I got to hold an egg and it was amazing the watch the long, complicated process that is an great example of the beauty of evolution. The second night, however, we saw one of the most amazing things I've ever seen in my life: an "arribada". Arribada is the spanish term for when thousands of turtles climb up the beach (arriba means "up") to lay their eggs on the same night. It was absolutely incredible. Under the light of the half-moon I looked down the length of the beach and could see the shadows of the turtles stretching for miles. We probably saw at least one hundred turtles while we were out there, but our guide told us the next day that about 1000 turtles had laid their eggs that night. It was absolutely surreal.

Other highlights included our trip into the mangroves, spotting a baby crocodile sunning himself on a branch, catching a crab with my bare hands and using it to fish with one of our host fathers and his 8 year old daughter, and partying with our families for Katie's birthday. I'm really tired, and am running out of time on this computer so I'll sign off for now. From here we're headed to Comarca Ngöbe-Buglé, an indigenous community. This will be my first experience with "extreme poverty". I'm sure I'll write about that next time I post. Hope all is well! Enjoy the fall weather for me!

Saludos,

Brooks

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