Day 13 - Thu, Jun 19, 2025

Today I skipped work and we went to the jungle for the day.  Ali is actually doing a project for school credit, and she has trail cameras set up in a biological preserve. 

It was a fairly uneventful hike, we went about five or six miles in to a cabin some poachers had built.  On her last trip they had found a dead calf, so they tied it to a tree and put the trail camera on it. Sure enough, there was a leopard on it one night, and a panther on it another night.  Totally cool.  I'll try and post some video if I can get her to send it to me. 

Not much else today, so I thought I'd post some random facts ...

Everyone here drives "tuk tuk's", where they quite literally cut off the back wheel of a motorcycle and weld the frame to a rickshaw.  I have no idea why it's a thing.

I haven't come across a piece of concrete that doesn't have dog prints in it, including my bedroom.  I don't know if people don't care, or if the dogs just think it's funny. 

The difference between a rainforest and the forest we have is that in ours, you typically have vegetation on the bottom and at the very top.  Here, because it rains all the <goddamn> time, vegetation is able to grow all the way up and down ... Hence animals and insects, etc can live all the way up and down, which creates this crazy biodiversity.

People here use "Buenas" as a greeting, which makes no sense in Spanish. 

They also call an injection a "pollo", which means chicken in Spanish.  The first patient that asked me for a pollo ... I was like wtf 😳

The exchange rate is 1 USD to 3.5 Sol, and things are already cheap in Sol.  Tonight I went to the store and bought a package of hot dogs (don't judge me), 5 fresh rolls, ketchup, mustard, 3 lg bottles of water, and 2 ice cube trays and it was $20 Sol 🙄

These are the hardest working people that don't make money I've ever seen.  At least half of the stores are open until, well, after I go to bed.  At least a few of the farmacias are open 24/7.  But I never see anyone in them, just some poor person sitting by themselves behind the counter. 

That roosters crow at sunrise is a myth.  They crow all f'ing night long.

The frogs here make the same exact sound as a crosswalk in the US.

The snails are as big as a croissant.  And there's lots of them.

the beginning of the jungle

my next door neighbors.  we're gonna have fried chicken one of these nights 😡

10 at night.

It's a thing