Polochic Diary: January 9th, 2008/Animals and Polka In the Jungle
Woke Up today to the noises of wild animlas and birds. There was a large, colorful group of toucans near the station that really made alot of noise, flying and squawking about. After them the howler monkeys got going, with piercing shrieks coming in from all sides.
After breakfast, I decided to go on one of the established trails near the station(there are three).
Along the way I saw so many animals, plants, and trees that I had never seen before-and I was surprised to see so many, because it is supposed to be the off season now. Mammals I saw included: Howler monkeys(lots), river otters(called perro de aqua here). I also saw tons of turtles, fish, frogs, tree frogs, lizards, and what was the largest snail I have ever seen in my life!
There were tons of butterflies-incuding the very beautiful bright bluw Blue Morph butterfly, which is very large. At one point I thought A bird had landed on my head, or maybe it was a leaf? But no, it was an enormous butterfly-brownish orange, and it flew to a nearby tree trunk, where it stayed still so I could take it´s photograph.
There were the most birds I have ever seen in my life of very variety all at once-I don´t know thew names of all of them, of course–but there were alot of toucans of different colors, and lots of hummingbirds.
What there was the most of however, was insects-hordes of them. There were trails of leaf-cutter ants, dragonflies of every color, flies, enormous beetles,cockroaches, and of course-mosquitos.
The Mosquitoes here aree different-small, numerous, and persisitent. I was wearing the perfect clothes of this environment-Pyrethrin infused light in color, and so on-and had slathered myself in a generous helping of deet-but they landed on me anyway, even if they didn´t bite me. At certain points in my walk, I walked thru clouds of them.
That night, as we were making a dinner of rice and beans, I began to ntice how many bugs were living INSIDE too. The climate here is perfect for insects-moist, humid, and hot. Inside the station were enormous cocroaches, loads of ants(the kind that bite) and tons of other who-knows-what-they-are-but-they-probably-bite insects. I was kind of happy that the lighting inside was dim and just solar powered, or I´m sure I would have seen more insects.
We were content and settling in for what we thought would be our first night alone in the science sation-when two guys shoed up tyo spend the night! They were Alfonsos brother and his son, and apparently it was the custom for some of the men to sleep there, just in case anything happened during the night(like what?). On one hand, I was glad they were there, as we WERE a bit remote-but on the other, any hopes for a quiet evening were somewhat dashed.
They both spoke mainly Qúiche¨and some limited Spanish, so long conversations were out of the question. Anyway, conversations here do not seem to be the norm, as people just seem to sit around together alot and not say much-Alfonso being the only exception, as he likes to talk alot. Moira taught them a few card games with my pack of cards, and they ended up really enjoying Memory. So while they giigled away at Memeory, we got some quiet reading time in, to just the sounds of the wildlife outside. This WAS going to be a peaceful night, after all!
Then-suddenly-an organ was heard from the distance! Not just any organ, but a loud, out of tune organ, playing what sounded like a…polka? Then it was joined by two other instruments, one of which seemed to be a guitar. The singing then started, sort of a wailing sound in Qúiche´. Yes, it definitely was a polka! This was so surreal.
It turned out that this was the local Evanelical Church, who apparently had services every other night from 7 to 9 pm. It was very loud, probably because there werer no other noises(except howler monkeys) and mostly music, with some sort of sermon half way thru it-and it was definitely polka music. A bit off kilter and definitely out of tune, but definitely a polka. When it´s over, that´s when everyone knows it´s 9 pm and time for bed.
Our two Qúiche ´friends went to bed long before 9pm, since they had to get up a 4 am to bicycle to the maiz milpa to go to work.
I was really tired, so after spraying myself and tent with deet, went to bed.
gg
