The first night of camping was not kind to us. We got struck with unusually strong winds, which gracefully (violently) picked up all the sand surrounding us and kindly (abrasively) placed it atop us as we slept in our tents. Our cliffside campsite didn’t last long – later in the day we ended up relocating to behind the professors’ dorms for some extra wind protection.
The sunrise view from our original campsite
Other than the beachy wake-up, today was excellent.
In the morning, we briefly visited the Olbalbal floodplain to set up game traps for an experiment. We want to study how biodiversity changes with proximity to water – both regarding species abundance and frequency; to do so, we’re setting up six motion-activated cameras at increasing distances from the Olbalbal lake. We first asked the local chief for permission to set up our equipment and then hired someone from the nearby Boma to supervise our cameras throughout the study; although they’re positioned inconspicuously in the trees, tampering by curious children is apparently a common issue in ecology fieldwork. We’ll collect our cameras next week to review our images and assess what types of/how often animals pass through each region.
BIOS/ANTH 323 at Olbalbal Floodplain
We returned to camp for lunch before taking the afternoon to rest. I took a wonderful nap in my tent; unfortunately, I don’t remember any of my dreams. Sorry.
Before I knew it, dinner was upon us.
In typical fashion, we concluded the evening with student taxon presentations before calling it a night at 10:30ish. Unexpectedly, getting ready for bed has been quite fun – it’s like a little party in the bathroom while we all brush our teeth together. Cute.
Returning to my tent, I can already tell by the absence of a sandy coating on my pillow that tonight will be better. Goodnight and sweet dreams!
