The Last 3 Weeks……!!!!!!!

Alright. Here are some excerpts from my journal from the last voyage I was on!!!!!

10 Julio Yesterday we had the day off, so we wint to Caracas for the day. Linda and I went to the rich fine arts part of the town to walk around and to go to some museums. We were walking and to begin with came across a really big nice park which we walked in for a while. It was very hippie there, all the venders had long hair and hippie garb. In the park there were lots of games, mostly soccer, and also some outdoor work out locations and people running and biking and stuff like that. Also, some martial arts. Summary: Nate heaven. Next we went to the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, which was kinda disappointing but which had a cool exhibit about native langages of Venezuela, and a really nice reading room open to everyone. The whole thing was free! We also wandered around that part of Caracas for a while, it was a pretty safe area, and eventually went into a resturant bar thing to watch the world cup futbol game. It was really fun cause everyone got REALLY into it and the room was pretty well split half and half. IT was all good natured bickering. These two guys came and sat by us and talked to us, which was fun cause they were really nice and not creepy or wierd cause we’re americans in a sexy gringo or a I hate Capitalism kind of a way.

11 Julio Yesterday we traveled through to the Andes and south to near Merida. We got into the hotel at around 10 at night. There’s a lot more farms and plantations here than by Caracas. Today we began butterfly transects, which consist of a grou of 3 or 4 people driving to a location given by the GPS and then catching butterflies with nets in that area for 30 mintues. One person records temperature, humidity, wind, cloud coverage, altitude, and butterflies observed, while the others run around chasing butterflies with nets and putting them in little envelops (dead). This continues for 6 intervals of 5 minutes each. It’s pretty fun for now anyways, but it’s kinda grusome to be spending all day long killing butterflies. Kinda an odd version of conservation in my book, but I guess it is important to know what’s out there? Still an ethical dilemna for me. Anyways, not really what I want to be doing all day…. watching for beautiful amazingly living creatures and squeezing the life out of them. On a more fun note, I’ve had some time to stare at plants during breaks and stuff. Right now we are basically in the lower Andes, with lots of cattle farms and fields. In the lower clord forest region there are tons of huge ferns, including fern trees which are sweet and basically as big as the trees! Further up there are less trees and more sun loving plants with huge leaves. And there are Lycopodiums! It’s good to see a familiar plant!

14 Julio Today I went on a different transect which took me through the Paramo, which is like the high altitude high andes area. It was super interesting because I really am interested in the plants of this habitat, and because Jose Rafael, the boss, was really nice about taking time to teach me some stuff! Some cool facts: There is one kind of Pinaceae native to Venezuela, but it has more of leaves than needles, and doesn’t produce traditional pine cones. It’s a small tree. However, there and tons of Pines and Eucalyptis cultivated along all of the main roadways. There is also a Bracken like fern that Jose said is a Pteridium. It seems a bit more brittle than Bracken, and apparently is a bit problem because it invades in post-burned areas and a lot of people use burning to clear the vegetacion by the road sides and in farm fields. The most prolific Paramo plants belong to the genus Espeletia in Asteraceae. They kinda look like Mullen with big fuzzy leaves and a stalk of flowers growing up, but the actually flowers are totally different. There is a lot of farming up here, mostly potatoes, strawberries, flowers, bananas and coffee.

Also we learned today about the pedestrian rules in Venezuela. It goes like this: Cars are allowed to drive on the right side of the road, or on the left side of the road, or in the middle of the road (side note, this is because roads are so bad here and everyone swerves all over the road to avoid potholes. Generally when passing someone you must honk cause you never know when they might randomly swing across the road to avoid a hole. My favorite is that there are places where there is about 20 meters of pavement in a dirt road, so everyone drives off the road to avoid the bump or entering and exitting the pavement….). So anyways, equally much the pedestrians can walk on the right side of the road, or the left side of the road, or in the middle of the road. If you hear a car coming, at about 1 km away you keep walking. At about 500 m you keep walking. At about 100 m you cross the street. At about 50 m you cross the street again because the car just switched lanes randomly. And as the car passes you wave and the driver waves back. The rules are the same for bicycles. And for the goats. And the cows. And if you are ever in doubt about which side of the road to be on, just watch and do what the cows do.

19 Julio On the 17th we drove from Bailadores (our last transect) to a little dingy hotel in the middle of nowhere. We didn’t get in till super late in the evening, and when we got in to the only hotel not full, the guy running the gate came out in his underwear. Rebecca and my bathroom was flooded so we got a new room. And we weren’t given keys to our own rooms, the guy in his underwear kept them. So then once we got in Tatiana and I spent two hours, unil about 1 in the morning, putting little spoonfulls of human feces into netting and closing them up with rubberbands. When we got down we were so stinky that we walked into my room and my room mate, who was sleeping, woke up from the stench. So I spent another hour washing my body and my clothes several times, before going to bad at about 2. Only to get up at 6 the next morning and head out to set up poop traps! For the dung beetles, we have plastic yogurt container type things which we put in a hole in the ground and then put a bag of poop over them and a lid. And come back the next four days to empty the traps and sort dung beetles into bags of alcohol and everything else in to other bags to be investigated by other people. Most of it isn’t so bad appart from the poop part.

24 Julio We finished the previous transects and headed to Maracaibo for our day off (mostly). The city is mostly pretty dingy with a lot of small cheap looking houses. The part we were in was not very rich seeming, and had about 10 pawn shops within a block of our house. We went this evening to a graduation part for the brother of Jose, which was really awkward cause we know noone and several of us stick out sorely as americans at all times, even when not talking with horrid american accents because of the blond hair. So we mostly just hung out together in an awkward looking group. There was some dancing later on, but mostly borning rap and only 3 salsa all night.

27 Julio We spent the last three days in a Peninsula on the northern coast of Venezuela, actually we drove by the northernmost location in mainland Venezuela. It was nice to see the beach and the desert like xerophitic conditions, but man it was hot to be running around chasing butterflies and practically every plant there had some sort of spines which I was constantly running into or missing butterflies because I didn’t want to break my net! There were SOOOO many goats all over the place and also Donkeys. As we entered the area they were giving out little flier with safety information and one of the points was to be careful not to hit donkeys and “remember, donkey’s can’t think. You can”. So we finished up the last transect and returned to IVIC. Overall it was super fun and interesting to see more of Venezuela! And I have become super duper close with some people from the US and some Venezuelans and have some connections and am learning about what I want out of life and all that good big idea stuff. I’m thinking I may want to do some sort of agriculture research, regarding more sustainable and ecological ways to farm.

So now I am at IVIC for today and tomorrow cleaning everything and making tons of more stuff to prepare to leave again probably Sunday. It’s crazy cause we don’t know yet what groups we’ll be in or where we’ll be going and it’s like I just got really close with a group of people who I feel like are my brothers and sisters, and now we’re all spliting up and some I don’t know if I’ll ever see again. So that’s kinda wierd. But either I’ll be working again with them, which will be fun, or I will meet new people and learn more about cool new stuff and make new connections.

I don’t really have much time to download my pictures, but here is the website which hopefully will work for the pictures of Rebecca who was also in my group, so pretty much we have really similar pictures anyways. If I have time tomorrow I will put a few on here as well!!!! http://share.dell.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b33fd5b4844f&sid=8AasWjFu3cNXIA

Oh, and by the way looking at the pictures reminded me that I’m not allergic to oranges apparently! And they taste really good!