We’re back! Sorry for the lack of communication, but we were all away on the island of Coiba for a while. Now we have lots of fun stories for you. We left early last week to go hiking as part of our Tropical Terrestrial Ecology (TTE) class up Vulcan Baru, the tallest mountain, and - as you can guess - volcano, in Panama. We left for the hike around 11pm so that we could make it to the top of the mountain by sunrise. After 6.5 hours, we made it to the top, sore, tired and hungry. Well, most of us made it; a couple people had to turn back because of altitude sickness. We were able to see the sunrise over both the Caribbean and the Pacific! Then we started back down the mountain. After another 6 hours, this time with some daylight, we made it back and went to sleep for the rest of the day.
We stayed at a hostel for another night and we were able to go into Boquete, the town there, for lunch and some shopping. When we finally made it to Coiba, it was amazing! I have never been to the Pacific so that alone was cool. On top of that, on our first day there I saw three white tip reef sharks and a hawksbill sea turtle. I was finally able to confront, if not partially overcome my extreme fear of sharks. The white tips didn’t move much and would only swim away if you came near them. This definitely helped me to become a little more comfortable with the idea of swimming in the same waters as them. It was also made worthwhile since the sea turtles were in the same areas!
I was instantly amazed at the sharp contrast between the Caribbean and the Pacific. There were definitely more apex predators around Coiba; there was even a saltwater crocodile named Tito at our dorms. There was much less coral diversity, but substantially more and bigger fish! The water was so warm that most of us didn’t wear our wetsuits unless there were jellies in the water. Even when we were on the boats (missing Eric and Sebastian, our Bocas boat drivers) going from site to site, we were able to dolphins and sea turtles. One day, we even stopped the boats and jumped in with a pod of dolphins as they swam around the boat. Overall, it was a breathtaking experience. I won’t give away all the stories since I know many more people will want to share, but those were definitely some of my highlights.