Panama Chronicles - First Contact

This post is part of a series called the Panama Chronicles - a rewrite/edit of an email log I wrote just before entering grad school. To protect myself and others I have disguised names and adapted various aspects of the narrative.  It is a work of fiction based on a true story.

 

 

Panama certainly gave me a warm welcome!  My first glimpse was breathtaking.  The plane flew over the Isthmus just as the sun was setting and sunlight broke through the clouds forming shafts of golden light in the humid air. The Panama Canal formed a blue ribbon through forested hills and lines of boats waited to enter the canal on the Pacific coast.  The bridge of the Americas spanned the canal at its southern end and to the east Panama City’s skyline lay bathed in orange light. 

I was met at the airport by my new roommate N and my new boss J.  Both women are intelligent and energetic field workers, as are my two male housemates M and A.  N, J and M are American and A is Panamanian.  Seeing that I don’t speak a word of Spanish, I’m happy that both M and A are fluent/native speakers and I hope to pick up a bit of the language.

 

Working in the rain forest is both exhilarating and a bit scary.  The first time I was in there on my own my heart was in my throat.  What if I got lost?  What if a jaguar attacked me?  Or a peccary (wild pig)? Or a monkey?  Did that rumbling thunder signal an approaching storm, or one that would stay distant?  On the other hand, the solitude was amazing - just me in the tropical forest, surrounded by the sounds, the smells, the amazing plants and animals that I had traveled here to see.

Despite my fears, I seem relatively able to handle myself in jungle.  It is a lot like the temperate forest but with more stinging ants and a whole lot of vegetation with nasty spines. The plot is pretty big and I will be working alone most of the time; however, there will always be other people in the area and if I do not return to the truck at the end of the day my fellow workers will come looking for me.

My first rainforest bird sighting was a Rufous Vented Ground Cuckoo.  This is a big deal as these birds are quite rare.  There were actually two ground cuckoos, strutting around rather like chickens, amid bicolored antbirds, woodcreepers and spotted antbirds.  The birds were following an army ant swarm.  Millions of ants crawling over everything, it was quite a sight!  And on the home front, yesterday I watched Geoffrey's Tamarins (monkeys) raiding a banana tree in my backyard!  Also present were a huge iguana and a toucan! I have a feeling I will be taking a lot of wildlife photos from my back window.