Welcome to the Jungle

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My last entry only talked about the adventure of getting from Vancouver to camp so I really feel like I need to write about the jungle. I've been working everyday in the jungle for the last three weeks so its hard for me to recall my first impressions and first trepidations but I'll do the best that I can.

I came to Panama to do a seismic survey with explosives but there was a delay in delivering the explosives and so I worked my first day in the jungle with the resistivity crew. I didn't pick up much of the field methods of resistivity but I wasn't really interested in learning something that I could possibly confuse with my own array and hinder me. I basically stuck to carrying a car battery all day through the bush. It's pretty hot and humid and all the terrain is steep uphill or steep downhill. It was not too bad all things considered. We are forced to wear long sleeve shirts and hard hats and I carry field supplies in my cruiser vest so I felt like I was wearing a lot of clothes. But, it turned out to be alright, I didn't get too hot and didn't need to drink that much water.

I never thought of the Canadian mountains and forests as particularly friendly but I do now. Everything in the jungle is either poisonous or sharp or diseased. On my first day I lost my balance and grabbed a palm tree, wrong tree. It has these 2-3 inch spikes growing on the trunk that are basically thin nails. A couple spikes pierced my gloves and one entered my wrist and broke. I pulled the spike out of my wrist and had a huge bruise there for a couple days. There are ants everywhere and they all have really powerful bites. My colleague got bit by a bullet ant and his arm went numb and then had shooting pains for 2 days. There are spiders everywhere too, lots of different kinds. They're big, not tarantula big, but big and very colourful and poisonous looking. I also found a poison dart frog on my first day. When I was in Canada and was looking at a poisonous animals sheet I thought that I'd never see one but I've seen a ton of them. They're really small too so it's pretty unlikely for one to poison you through contact. I did play with one using a leaf to keep its poison away.

I've been learning to look at everything before touching it. Before you lean on a tree, you check to see if it's crawling with bullet or fire ants. Before sitting down on a log look for snakes and spiders. You check trees to see if they're spikey before grabbing them. I spoke with one of the explosives guys who is an ex-Navy Seal and he told me that the Panamanian jungle is as bad and dangerous as anything in South American. This was comforting because I still felt pretty good walking around, I felt like a lot of my Canadian mountain skills transferred. It gives me more confidence in my abilities if I can handle the worst of the jungle.

We were told that the area I was to be working in was crawling with snakes and the other crew saw at least one a day. I went days without seeing anything and thought it was a bit of an exaggerated danger when I wrote the last entry. I've had a few experiences since I wrote that last entry, I won't joke about a lack of snakes here.

Otherwise, work has been very busy. Long days in the bush and lots of work at night. I've been fixing and maintaining seismic gear and haven't had much time to write or relax, but hopefully that will change. I'll try and get some pictures up soon, but not I must go to bed.

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Photos

Blaster
Me with a blaster and seismograph.

Darn
Rhino beetle extraction

Comments

[Evan]

Wow Andrew, sounds intense there! Glad you are toughing it out and sounds like you're doing alright with all the sharp, poisonous, biting things around. You'll have to post some pictures of the 'wildlife' and such!