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Published: January 31st 2007
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This weekend we found ourselves at the La Milpa Field Research station. The station is part of a large conservation trust, and run by The Program for Belize (partnered with the Mass Audobon Society). The site is run off of the power grid through solar pv panels, and all the sewage is composted. The bus ride was about 5 hours as we had to drive all the way to Belize City before we could head north, but it helped that everyone was in very good spirits. We arrived at about 7:30 and sat down to dinner immediately. Afterwards we had the rest of the evening free so Chandler Courtney Laura and I headed into the forest for a night walk. Simply put, it was creepy. The jungle really does take on a new life at night, spiders the size of my fist were crawling all over the trail and me and Chandler could hear something creeping around the bushes just out of flashlight range.
The next morning we got up at 6 a.m. to do some bird watching. We were greeted by a pack of wild turkeys roaming through the grounds alongside some white-tail deer. The rest of the walk
was filled with some big vultures, an eagle and lots of green breasted worbblers (no idea if i spelled that right). The other group saw a toucan. After that we took a walk on the mahogany trail and learned about some of the native plants on the way. The mahogany trees were incredible, it's no wonder the wood has been such a prized commodity since the British first started going into the country's interior. We also saw a group of spider monkeys about 60 feet up in the trees, they seemed pretty uninterested in us for how much attention we were giving them. After lunch we hit the trail again, and this time we went to a different stand that was mostly filled with mosquitos. After we finished the second trail we had some down-time to play volleyball and chill in the hammocks (life aint easy in the western carribean afterall). Dinner was served, followed by a presentation by Ramon about the Maya site at the top of the hill. The site is the 3rd biggest in the country, and once hosted a population of 30,000 people. The presentation was followed by some night spotting. For this we climbed into
the beds of the pickup trucks on the site and plugged a spotlight into the car battery. We cruised around the dirt roads seeing night birds like owls, but I think what we heard was much more interesting. The howler monkeys were going crazy from the interior and they made some of the most unsettling sounds I've ever heard in a forest. After we got back, Ramon found a tarantula hole and started passing the giant hairy bug around for members of our group. Later that night, Chandler Gary Kate and I were sitting in the cabana when Kate started flipping out. There was a snake going across the sidewalk that had a grayish color with a triangle pattern on its back. We asked Ramon what it was and he said it was a fer-de-lance. Coral snakes are the most poisonous snakes in the countries, but ask anybody who knows and they'll tell you that the fer-de-lance (a type of pit viper) is easily the most dangerous as it doesn't hesitate to attack anything it feels threatened by.... we got Gary to touch it.
Sunday afternoon the group spent the morning at the archeological site. The place was incredible! most Maya sites have been heavily excavated and rebuilt after hundreds of years of forest growth and natural degradation. The temples at La Milpa were untouched (aside from the holes that looters had recklessly dug) and it felt like walking into a lost world. There were some underground caverns that the Maya had dug (presumably for storage) and we got to journey into those. I wanted to find some artifacts, but was only greeted by a family of bats. The loop that surrounded the main plaza took about an hour to walk, and we ended up seeing another group of spider monkeys on the way. Walking back on the road, me and Jamie were lucky to catch up with a pack of Coatimundi. These are animals similar to racoons, except they have a longer nose, a red coat and bearlike claws.
After eating lunch our bus pulled up and we rolled out, but not without a big thanks to the director of the research station Ramon. The work being done at La Milpa through the Program for Belize and Ramon in particular is top notch.
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