Working in the dark is difficult at best and potentially dangerous in the jungle. The road back would be even more treacherous in the dark than the nighttime jungle, so we finished up in time to get our gear back into the trucks and drive back to the hotel before dark. Edgardo called about my luggage when we returned, but it had not yet been found. Back at home my wife had been working on tracking down my luggage, and she had made no progress either. At this point we also received word that a member of our planned research group, Karen Lips, had also lost her luggage and was staying in Panama City to attempt to retrieve it.
One last member of our research team, Cathy Pringle, had arrived at our hotel that afternoon after coming in on a different flight. She is an internationally respected researcher, a professor at the University of Georgia and has been more involved in advancing the study of tropical streams than almost any other researcher in the world. She has worked across the Caribbean, in Costa Rica, Panama, the South Pacific and Madagascar.
If somebody in the research community mentions “tropical stream ecologist”, Cathy is who comes to mind. She is an innovative person who knows how to get the resources she needs to do the research. Her brash and gregarious nature and deep desire to understand and preserve tropical streams have taken her to parts of the world that few have experienced. These qualities make her an extraordinarily interesting person to work with. She is an original and hard working researcher. I had worked with her for years on issues related to our stream ecology society. Among other things, Cathy loves little tasty tropical bananas and shopping. She has a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous nature, as well as a reputation for leaving pairs of dirty socks behind everywhere she travels. She also is the exception to the rule about not wearing sandals while working in the jungle.
Speaking of dirty clothes, mine were becoming a bit dodgy; I washed out what could be washed and we headed into town for dinner. After dinner we broke out a little rum, mixed it into some pina-guava juice, and got down to doing our chemical assays. Some of the local help thought the party would be fun but when they realized we were actually doing lab work and calculations for our experiment the next day, they drifted off to their own rooms. After a late night of planning, we turned in, thinking about our getting going early the next morning.
I pulled on my sodden clothing the next morning, followed by the usual fruit and cereal breakfast, and of course, my diet coke. The coffee drinkers were enthusiastic about the fantastic Central American coffee, and I almost regretted not having taken up the habit, the smell at least was quite pleasant. After repeated runs through our equipment lists, and a longer delay than we planned to discuss the experiment (more questions, it turns out Cathy, as well as Piet, is really big on questions), the group piled into the trucks and we started back to the field site. Matt had mentioned to me before we left the States how the steep rocky roads started to wear on you after a week, I was starting to understand what he meant, and this was only the second day of driving stiff-suspension 4 wheel drive trucks bouncing up and down the hills.
We got to Rio Maria without major problems and carried our gear to the upstream point of the nitrogen tracer experiment. We needed to pump trace nitrogen into the river continuously for a week, and that required us to carry 5 gallon carboys full of the chemical that we had dissolved in water the night before, a half mile up the stream. Five gallons is over 40 pounds. The jungle trail was always slippery, and the added weight of the carboys did not help. Our footwear was knee-high rubber boots which do not have the best traction. This was hard work, and we were grateful we made it before the heat of the sun peaked.
There were more samples to collect, so we had another full day of work ahead of us. The samples were taken and the tracer experiment started as planned. We had some down time between measurements and this time was used to crack open tins of food and crackers for lunch. I had brought my underwater camera and started to take pictures of the tadpoles in their native habitat.
Underwater cameras have recently become fairly inexpensive and easy to use with the advent of digital technology. They are a fantastic piece of equipment to have, even if underwater pictures are not desired; the jungle is always humid and drippy and the protection is helpful. I had spoken to professional photographers about using cameras in the tropics and they mentioned that fungus and moisture always work their way into lens systems and eventually fog them. At least the underwater cameras are protected from this and the desiccant packs placed in them help even more.
Also in down time, water samples needed to be filtered. We had only manual vacuum pumps and needed to filter large amounts of water to collect particle suspended in the water onto filters so they could be analyzed, and the filtered water also needed to be saved for analysis. The pumps kept breaking down; unfortunately my hand pump was still in my lost luggage. Emergency repairs with duct tape and epoxy were all that allowed us to keep using these pumps. Cathy Pringle is one of the few full professors I know that really enjoys sitting in the sun next to a tropical stream, eating the occasional small sweet tropical banana, and pumping water samples for hours. This is probably a good release from the hectic pace she maintains back in the states at the University running her large laboratory. We willingly allowed her be the official jolly field filterer.
As 6:00 pm approached (sunrise and sunset time are certainly predictable in the tropics) we had packed our gear and put some brush over the trail to obscure our path up Rio Maria. We knew that the thousands of dollars of gear we had up the stream would be worth nothing to the locals, but could not be certain that the gear would still be there the next day if we advertised the location where we were working. Making our way up the road carved into the wall of the extinct volcano, the setting sun illuminated the jungle draped rock pinnacle a few miles away, a breathtaking end to a good day in the field. All that was left was dinner, drinks, and more filtering and analyzing samples that evening. We also started entering data into our computers and making certain that the field notes were all organized with their data duplicated against loss.
The good news when we got back was that my luggage had been found and delivered to the bus station. The bad news was that it was Saturday night and the station was closed on Sunday. Try as we might we could not get the employees of the bus company to come in and open the station. I offered bribes, but they were worried that violating regulations would cause them to lose their jobs. My bribes were not big enough. Of course Edgardo was patiently mediating all this; I purchased minutes for his cell phone to reimburse him for all the calls he graciously made in pursuit of my luggage. The restaurant we ate at was right across the street from the bus station, so we went to look for my bag. Sure enough I could see my suitcase sitting there. My filthy jeans seemed a bit worse for the wear and did not smell pleasant. My trip mates would probably say they stunk. My suitcase sitting a few feet away, yet unattainable, did not help things much in my mind.
The next morning it was raining. Our experiment was taking place during the “dry” season, but we were in a rainforest. The rain made us very nervous because we needed to be certain that Rio Maria was not flooding and ruining our equipment and also we needed to carry fresh tracer solution and check that the pump delivering the solution to the stream had adequate power and was working properly. The clay parts of the road to Rio Maria were very slick from the rain.
Scheduling issues related to the rain caused tensions to rise that morning. Also, some of the crew was uncomfortable with the fact that all of the drivers were not experienced with four-wheel drive and manual transmissions. All our four-wheel drive trucks were manual, and driving them on the treacherous mountain roads was not a task for beginners. We got all the passengers sorted out and started up the road in four wheel drive (we usually did not lock in the hubs for the four wheeling until we got to the really steep bits but we needed it as soon as we left the pavement this day). When we reached the steep part, everyone but the drivers got out. Edgardo then tried to drive up the hill. It was a disaster. He would spin all four wheels up about quarter way and then get stuck, only to slide backward down the hill. Considering the steep drop-off on one side of the road, sliding in the mud backwards was not exactly safe. We were lucky none of the trucks, or for that matter, the people, were damaged.
Alex, Bob and I decided we needed to walk in to check the experiment. We packed up some tracer solution, batteries, sampling equipment, lunch, and put on our rain gear. A time was set for a truck to come back and pick us up. Getting up the steep bit was difficult, even on foot. The only good footing available on the greasy road was protruding rocks or vegetation growing along the edges. We slipped our way up that hill, and the next, and the next, to the top. Then we started on the road as it traversed down the outside of the ancient volcanic crater.
Every once in a while Alex would point out something interesting that I had never seen before. The guy is a fanatic for leaf-cutter ants and insects of all kinds. He has a fantastic eye for biodiversity, and by the end of the trip I realized that he is one of the best natural historians I had ever been in the field with. I have been in the field with quite a few well trained, expert biologists. We could hear birds and frogs calling in the jungle, but the thick mist obscured most of their locations. The frogs were calling even more vigorously than the day before, if that was possible, because the rain stimulated them. A couple miles later we were at Rio Maria.
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