Day 50?? What? When did that happen?
So far our time on Little Cayman has consisted of snorkeling, scuba diving, lying on the beach . . . and getting course credit for it. Honestly, this is pretty darn amazing.
As much as I want to launch into how amazing the Caymans are, and how I'm literally living on the beach, and how I came almost nose to nose with a sea turtle today, I'm going to attempt to go somewhat chronologically here and finish up Costa Rica first (consider that a taste of things to come!).
LA SELVA
La Selva was amazing. You will love my pictures. You should click the video of the Montezuma Oropendola from a few entries ago if you haven't yet.
I know I've been promising to talk about bullet ants, so here you go. Bullet ants look like freakishly large ants, since they're about 1-1.5 inches long. Apparently their sting feels like being shot, although no one tested that out (intentionally or otherwise). Zach did have one crawling on his back one day, which resulted in lots of yelling and jumping around and me whacking at him with a stick, but no injuries. They are also really, really stupid, which is basically what our project was on. They're a primitive ant species, basically just a step or two away from solitary foragers, and does it ever show. Most of my group did a project on army ants at Corcovado. Army ants work as a team: they will attack, kill, and carry away prey items as large as mice, if there are gaps in the trail ants will lay down to make a bridge, etc. They are amazing to watch. These guys, on the other hand, are very challenged.
Our experiment involved killing an insect (grasshopper, katydid, or praying mantis) and putting it on the ground 10 cm away from the opening to the nest. Then, we would place a bullet ant on the prey (we tried to let them find it on their own, but after watching them walk around it for 2 hours we decided to do it the other way). The bullet ant would then do one of three things: (1) haul the entire prey over its back and drag it back to the nest (and some of them could lift really big prey items), (2) hack off a piece of the prey and bring it back to the nest to recruit more ants, or (3) just go back to the nest to recruit more ants. Things got pretty special when the forager would go back to the nest. Ants would come pouring out and swarm everywhere - up the tree, all over the ground - everywhere, that is, but to the prey item. Eventually one or two would find the prey item, at which time they would begin hacking it into microscopic pieces (any individual ant could carry much larger ones). More ants would join, and they would fight over who got to bring back which piece. Eventually one would wrestle a piece away from the others, and promptly head off in the wrong direction, turn around a few times, and then make it back to the nest.
I think the best trial was when we put down a giant prey. About 100 ants were swarming all over it. They were so excited that some were cutting off parts of leaves and carrying them back to the nest, only to drop them once they arrived since they were not, in fact, a piece of the prey. The second best trial was when this one forager hacked off the grasshopper's head and promptly took off UP the tree, in the complete opposite direction from the nest. He came back down
12 minutes later and entered the nest, at which point everybody rushed out. And couldn't find the grasshopper. They searched for 15 minutes, before Zach and I shook our heads and gave up.
Anyway, bottom line: bullet ants are very inefficient.
SAN JOSE
I've grown to like San Jose. I'm not a huge fan of cities, but since we went back to the same hotel every time it started to feel kind of like home. Also, we stumbled across a fabulous pan-Asian restaurant called Tin Jo. We actually went there twice, once on the last night and once on the time before that. The first time it was a group of 5 of us girls, and we split three different curry dishes, Indian vegetarian curry, Indian chicken curry, and Thai chicken curry with coconut milk. The Thai one was my favorite. The second time we went I had coconut salmon, which was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten in my life. It was a piece of grilled salmon, sitting on a bed off swiss chard, swimming in a sauce of coconut milk (plus spices, curry and lemongrass maybe?) with pieces of fresh basil floating in it. So amazing, if I'm ever in San Jose, I will go back there and get the same thing.
THE DAY OF TRAVEL
I don't to talk about it. We hit some rough turbulence landing in Miami, and I spent the next two flights (Miami --> Grand Cayman --> Cayman Brac) feeling ill. Then we immediately hopped on a boat and had a very bumpy 1.5 hour drive over to Little Cayman (remember that storm that dumped a bunch of snow on you guys? Well, it found us after all). By the time we got here, I was a lovely shade of green. But not so ill that I couldn't appreciate the fact that the Little Cayman Research Center is ON the BEACH, literally walk out the back door and there you are. And it's beautiful here. And I will write more about it later. Hope things are good back in Vermont, New Hampshire, or wherever you are!
