Puerto Rico, Day 2

Sunday was a lot of fun.  We started the day early, with breakfast beginning at 7am.  Ick.  By 8:20 we were loaded onto the vans for the one hour drive to the park.  Once there we split into two groups and went on tours of the park.  This is a really cool tree that was at the entrance.

First we headed out to mangrove forests.  On the way our guide showed us some really cool nest things in the trees.  It turns out they were termite mounds.

After driving for about 5-10 minutes we stopped at a little bus stop type area.  There was a wooden path leading off to either side and the guide led us down one way.  This was the mangrove forest, where we saw Black, Red, and Buttonwood mangrove trees.  I don’t have pics of all the trees, just the Buttonwood, but I do have some of the roots.  Mangrove forests are also important nursery habitats for many fish and other animals.  Because they live in such salty environments they have to get rid of the salt somehow.  Black mangroves excrete it out of their leaves and Red mangroves out of nodules on their roots.  Buttonwood mangroves actually don’t need high salinity environments.

Black mangrove roots, used to get oxygen

Black mangrove leaves taste weird

Red mangrove roots

Buttonwood mangrove

Baby fishes

 

After the mangroves we drove around some more.  We got some great views of the island.  This is a beautiful place.  Puerto Rico is actually 100 miles long, which was bigger than I thought.  I was surprised, but I guess I was thinking it was close to Hawaii size, and those islands are tiny.  After a while we stopped at a beach fro 10 minutes or so, just to see.  While there we saw two green iguanas, one in a tree and one on the ground.  The green iguanas are non-native and a pest on the islands.  It was pretty funny because the one on the ground ran in front of us, and we all took pictures.  Then it moved near some bushes and people got a little closer, taking more pictures.  Then all of a sudden it turned around and ran straight at us, then veered off into the trees on the other side of the beach.  A few shrieks were let out when it started coming at us.  Those things are big.  But no harm done.

Every so often he stopped and put his head up like this. Probably some kind of warning.

Brain coral skeleton washed up on the beach

After the beach we once again got into the trolley tour bus thing and headed off to a light house, where we explored for a bit, met up with the other half of the group, and had lunch.  for your enjoyment I shall post more pics of the island before talking about snorkeling.

A manatee skeleton inside

The lighthouse

An anemone in an aquarium inside

Sadly, I have no pictures from snorkeling as I do not own an underwater camera.  But I shall do my best to tell you about it.  We went to this little beach with lots of rocks to snorkel from.  The swim out to the reef that rings a lot of the island was intense.  It was very long and went over lots of seagrass beds.  Sometimes the water got really shallow and you had to almost pull yourself carefully along with your hands because if you kicked your legs you’d wack your knees on coral pieces in the grass.  There were big black urchins with white spines too.  Finally we made it over the seagrass beds to the reef.  It was SO cool!  I love corals, and it was great to see them so close.  There were brown, yellow, and purple corals all over.  Red and black urchins were hiding in the holes and crevices of the reef.  Lots of little wrasses, damselfish and other reef fish were there too.  I even found a scorpionfish!  They are pretty poisonous so we were careful not to touch it but it was so cool to see it chilling out on the coral, just blending in.  When I get the pic from Leah I will post it, because she took one since she has an underwater camera.

So we basically swam around for a while until the program director said we had to go.  There are 70 people in our group so naturally we left late and got back to the hotel late where we showered really fast, or some didn’t shower at all, before heading off to meet the mentors brought in by ASLOMP.

Stay tuned.

Puerto Rico, Day 1

So getting here was an adventure in itself.  My last class on Friday, (Feb 11th) ended at 4pm.  Then I drove the hour and a half to get home to Beaverton, which actually took a little over two hours because traffic was INSANE!  At home it was eat a piece of pizza, transfer some things to my backpack, and head out.  I actually forgot my poster, which I am presenting, in the kitchen, so we had to turn around and go back.  Luckily we were only about a mile from the house when I remembered.

 

Once at the airport I checked in and just zipped through security.  I have never seen the airport so dead.  Yeah, it was evening but it was only 7:30 and I saw about 10 people total.  My first flight was to Seattle.  We left from a weird little terminal that was actually under the main floor, and the plane was teeny tiny.  I think it had room for 30 people.  And it didn’t have jet engines, it had big propellers.  After a nauseating hour ride we got to Seattle, where I left that plane and got right onto another.  That was a 3-4 hour flight to DC.  I managed to sleep a bit but it wasn’t very good sleep.  We got to DC early, making my hour layover there into 1 hour and 40 minutes.  Then I boarded my final flight, thankfully, and headed off to San Juan.

After a relatively uneventful flight we arrived in San Juan at 1pm, local time.  We are four hours ahead of you folks back home on the West Coast.  Happily on my way down to baggage claim I ran into the girl I’m rooming with, who also did an internship at the same place I did this past summer.  We got our bags, met two more people who were going to the conference (it’s easy to tell someone is going to a conference when they are walking around the airport with a poster tube), and took a taxi to the hotel.

Although I felt rather gross after the long flights, since we had time, we decided to go explore Old San Juan.  So a quick change and then a 40 minute wait for the bus and we were there.  We basically spent the next few hours exploring the city.  Lots of street vendors were selling various forms of food, and I was hungry.  It was the coolest thing when we found someone selling baked potatoes and you could put a bunch of stuff on them.  I had broccoli and other mixed veggies, butter, and ground beef on mine.  It was quite delicious.

Here are some of the pictures from the city:

There were flowers on the beach, we think for Valentine's Day

So, there are cats EVERYWHERE in Old San Juan. I mean, everywhere.

I don't know what this is, but it's awesome

El Morro castle

 

The HMS Bounty sitting in the harbor

 

The national frog, peering over a building

After our wanderings we came back, finally showered (woot woot!), registered and had dinner with the other ASLOMP students.  ASLOMP is the ASLO Multicultural Program, and they are the ones who paid for me to come here.  By the way, the conference I am attending is the ASLO conference, and ASLO stands for the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography.

 

Peace!