More Pictures

Angelo was kind enough to give me a bunch of pictures he's taken over the last couple weeks, and they're up on photobucket. There are some of the fruit and fish markets in Puerto Lopez along with the ones from our trip to the cloud forest outside of town.

Last Friday's dive trip was awesome - we saw tons of different corals and fish. Afterward we took the kids in ecoclub out snorkeling and found an octopus and a stingray. They all loved it, but we were all freezing by the end of the day. (All last week was drizzly and cold.)

On Saturday Angelo and I took a taxi about 10 minutes up into the hills behind Puerto Lopez to El Pital, a tiny town in the Cloud Forest. Our guide was probably 17 or 18 years old, and he showed us all kinds of medicinal plants and even tracked down a group of howler monkeys for us. The uses of the plants we saw include: curing snake-bites ("if you boil just the right amount. Too much and you lose your mind"), curing fevers, stopping bleeding, and putting you to sleep, among others. It was a great day, but after hiking almost 10 miles in ankle-deep mud the whole way, we were exhausted.

Yesterday and today we've been working on repainting the mural on the front wall of the E. Azul house, which just needs a couple more details redone. And today on turtle capture I caught two more hawksbills! That brings my total to 7, and Jose Luis says I've captured more than twice as many turtles as any volunteer since he's worked at Equilibrio.

Other than that I've been wrapping up my hatchery report and some other work things, and tomorrow I'll be packing for my trip to the Andes and the Amazon. I probably won't have internet access again for about a week and a half, so next post won't be till the week before I get home.