Week 2

Hi again everyone!! Hope you enjoyed the last blog from Team Trinidad ! Week 3 has now begun...and so has the RAINY season. At the moment it rains almost all the time, really heavy rain..much like standing under a shower in fact, and at night it rains so heavily that's its even hard to fall asleep because its SO loud on the roof of the house. The frogs LOVE the rain and we can hear the many different species calling all the time now as soon as nightfall arrives.

This past week has been very exciting, I'll tell you all about it, so lets start from the beginning..

On Sunday we decided to go to a swamp called Coroni Swamp in the north western part of Trinidad to see if we could see some cool animals. A swamp is a place where the water just stands still and flows into channels, usually lots of trees called Mangroves hang down over the water so it almost like a tunnel sometimes..and theres LOTS of cool animals there, we saw BIG green tree Boas hanging down from the branches, we thought they might fall on our heads sometimes! We were on a boat that sailed through the swamp into a big open space where we could see Trinidad's national bird, the scarlet Ibis. It was SO beautiful and big and it looked pink against the green forest. Another weird creature lives in the swamp, a four-eyed fish that can see above and under water..at the SAME time!

On Monday VERY early (6a.m!) we decided to try and climb Mt. Aripo again..remember it got rained off last time we attempted because it was to dangerous.

The climb to the top was estimated to around 4 hours so we knew it was going to be a rough morning, the 3 climbers Dan, Sean and Gail were going to set up camp on the top and then climb trees to try and locate the golden treefrog so the rest of us had to climb back down the mountain again.. before nightfall when all the creepy-crawlies come out... The climbing equipment is very heavy so they needed us to climb all the way back up again the next day to help them carry it back down. The climb to the top was rough indeed, lots of VERY steep cliffs and lots of us fell over many times (quite funny when it was OTHER people than yourself..!)

Half way up Dan spotted a really cool scorpion, and it had little babies on its back too, so everyone wanted to get close..untill we found ourselves face to face with a very venomous snake.. A Fer De Lance..RIGHT NEXT TO US, watching us..it was scary..but we got away safe this time!
The Fer De Lance is a pit viper, this means it has hollow fangs to inject the venom directly into its prey (or your foot!) also it can spit venom at you if you go too near.. Another Fer De Lance lives around our house so we have to watch out for it!

When we finally came down from the mountain we very VERY VERY tired(and soaked as the rains came!) after climbing for nearly 7 hours to find that some bandits had stolen the battery in our car..ohh nooo we all said out loud when we discovered the car would not start and we were very far from home! So we had to put our hiking boots back on our aching feet and start walking down to the main road to get help..it was another loooong 2 hour walk..no need to tell you we slept well that night!

On Wednesday we really needed a more relaxing day after the past days excitement so we went up north to a place called Grand Riviere hoping see the BIG leatherback turtles nest and lay eggs as its just the right time for them to come up to the beach..they only come up at night and once every 2-3 years so we took our flashlights and went to look for them. We had to be very carefull not to disturb them and NOT the shine light on them as that would confuse them and maybe even make them go back to the sea without laying ANY eggs! It's the first time I had ever seen a turtle like that..it was HUGE but if felt soft and it was very friendly. First it finds a good spot on the beach, then it starts digging a hole with its flippers so it can lay its eggs under the sand. It laid about 80 eggs...WOW! The eggs looked like small round balls..and the shell was not like that of a chicken egg at all, but soft and bouncy so they wouldn't break when they got dumped in the hole! After that it started to bury the eggs again, and here comes the coolest part, it made a lot of fake tracks and footsteps in the sand leading AWAY from its nest so that other animals that might want to eat the eggs would get confused and follow the false tracks leading away from the real nest..SMART TURTLE!!

On sunday 4 of us went down to the south of the island to look for sites for later collection of frogs and tadpoles.

Here's a video showing the 4 of us tadpole-hunting at the southern tip of Trinidad yesterday.

We were also searching for a GIANT tadpole thats said to be living in a swamps there. Its a FOOT long..can you imagine that!!?? We didnt find it this time(well get it at some point!!) but we found some big black tadpoles..the biggest ive seen so far!

Back at the house everyone is working on their projects, and were now sharing the house with American researchers that are here to do some work on different fish types, so lots of people doing different projects!

That's all for now , come back next week as im sure there will be LOTS of exciting stuff going on this week as well..!!