As much fun as they can be, I’m pretty happy to not take planes or trains for a whileBy Brian Barkley

I’m wide awake at 6am. This is jet lag.

Although the flight back to the good ol’ 48 was late and the trip itself took almost 48 hours instead of (only) 30-something, I am back at home. There are many things I can say about the Le Grand Retour; I can mention that it’s colder here, that people don’t dress as well, or that bagels and cream cheese are amazing, but I’ll save that for later. There will be plenty of time for me to collect and detail my thoughts of what it is like to be back.

I haven’t been posting recently on Kosmo because, well, it’s a little tough to keep the site looking good when traveling. Luckily I have a decent list of all the things that I would like to write, so I’ll just keep posting them methodically as if I were still in France. Same stories, just a little bit of a wait for those readers who are hungry to read my writing (right…?).

I’ll also give my apologies for the fact that Study Ablog has gotten a little messy over the last couple weeks. Please give me some time to clean it up. Sorry, I know I’ve failed like a EvGen midterm.

The flies on the wall were living; the flies on the floor were dead.

There are two towers on the station’s land. This morning the guide took a group of us (composed of almost all of the boys) up to one tower while the girls and one guy went to another tower. Yeah, we’re more than half-way done with college and we still split ourselves up as boys and girls. The tower we went to was 45 meters up (that’s 150 feet). It was supported by a Ceiba tree. Ceiba trees are ridiculous because they’re so freakin’ big. Also on their branches really high up there are tons of other plants growing, like Bromeliads and vines. I’m really surprised when I see them because I can just imagine how much extra weight that puts on, and so far away from the trunk too. There’s also a lot of moss and lichen and vines that grow on them (like almost every other tree here in the rain forest).

From the top, we could look out over the canopy of the forest for a long ways in every direction. It rained for the first hour or so that we were up there, so we didn’t see too many birds, but once it calmed down, they all came out and we saw so many. Here are some of the ones we saw. I suggest you google image search these as well as any other animal I mention. The internet here is a little slow sometimes and a lot of people are sharing it so I don’t know if they’d be too happy about me using up bandwidth to upload pictures. I’m not saying it won’t happen, just don’t hold your breath.

We saw:
Scarlet Macaw
White-throated toucan
Chestnut-fronted macaw
Blue and yellow macaw
Orange-cheeked parrot
Fork-tailed winged humming bird
Greater yellow-headed vulture
…just to name a few

We also saw many butterflies other hummingbirds, bats, and conga ants.

Conga ants are HUGE. One bite can make a grown man cry. 3 or 4 can leave you sick in bed with a fever.

cross-posted at Joey’s personal blog

image provided courtesy of flickr.com user archer10 (Dennis)