We've been working a lot again this past week, trying to coordinate research projects. We had tests Monday and Tuesday, and then for the past three days I've been editing my paper, which I think is at 24 pages of actual text, 28 with the copy of my interview questions.

The staff decided that my group shouldn't present to the town, because they're worried that the fishermen in town will be jealous that the island guys are getting so much money and help from so many people. Also, their "marine protected area" sounds a lot like the "natural marine park" that is proposed for the entire bay and has people up in arms. So they're also worried that people will get confused and angry.

Today we had a cooking class with the cooks. They showed us how to make all the salsas we have (which are very easy-all a combination of chiles, tomatillos and blenders). Then we made empanadas. You get corn flour and add water until it's about the consistency of Play-Doh. Then you squeeze off a ball of dough, flatten it with your tortilla press, fill it with whatever you want, and fry it. Of course, the only tortilla presses readily available in the US are at Williams-Sonoma and cost like $200. So I'm buying one and packing it in my luggage. Goodbye 5 lbs of personal property. I'll definitely be leaving things here to try to lighten my load, or just to fit everything!

We also had a tour of the sardine cannery today. I have to say it wasn't that impressive. They weren't working at the time, and AJ said that when they're working there's fish guts flying everywhere and it smells awful and it's just really disgusting. Instead we got to see rinsed concrete floors and machinery. Not as effective an "ohmygod look at this" tool.

I'm not horribly excited to come home right now. Yesterday or the day before that I couldn't wait to come home. But now I'm a little depressed. I'm in Mexico studying ecology, and I get to come home to a country that just created a racist immigration law and had a massive oil spill.

Speaking of which, now for a bit of soapboxing. That oil spill is the size of the state of Rhode Island. Imagine taking Rhode Island and wiping all of the living animals (not even considering effects on plants) from the surface of the state. That's what that means for the environment. It's essentially ecological genocide. Some ecologists are predicting that the Gulf may never recover. Not just "not our lifetime" but never, in all the time you could give it. Now take the Arctic Sea. It's the migratory and breeding home of many species from all over the world, including important fishery targets and endangered marine mammals (such as the gray whale we've been studying all semester). An offshore drilling accident there, similar to the one in the Gulf, would be catastrophic. Not only would it be hitting really sensitive wildlife, but they probably wouldn't be able to get to the problem for much longer due to harsher conditions. So maybe you'd be interested in signing a petition to stop offshore oil drilling in Alaska. It takes 5 seconds, and doesn't cost you a thing. Off soapbox.

Finally caught up

So I haven't blogged at all about this last week because there's not much to say, we've all been working our butts off and stressed out of our minds. This past week we had AJ's IIAT paper (10-20 pages) and presentation (12 minutes), plus our results/discussion for our DRs, plus a report for Eduardo, plus two tests yesterday and one test today. So we didn't really have time to do anything. For this week we have to hand in our final DR paper and do a 10 minute presentation to the center, and a 3 minute presentation in Spanish to the town.

We did go to a kindergarten (literally jardin de ninos) class and try to teach recycling. We thought we were doing ok and then the teacher got up and put us all to shame lol. But I think most of them got it.

We leave in a little over a week and I have mixed feelings. I have a list started of all the things I want to do when I get home, but at the same time I really don't want to leave. I also think I'm going to have major reverse culture shock. I'm expecting to get sick off all the fat and grease in American food and be overwhelmed by all the consumerism, and driving my car. I think I'm also really going to miss all the other students and staff, and chances are I won't see many of the Mexicans ever again. At the same time I can't wait for a long hot shower (you can get like 5 minutes max here) and American tv and being able to go places by myself.

In other news-new photos are up. EarthShip and updated album with camping pictures.

Last day of camp

So the last day we of camping we broke camp and drove to an Earthship, which is just about the coolest thing ever. It's a house that's made with almost all recycled materials and completely off the grid-no power, no water, no energy. The walls are made of tires packed with dirt, stacked, and spaces filled in with cans. It's all then covered with adobe. They have solar panels to collect light, and it's built into a hill to conserve heat. The roof collects rain water, which is then filtered for drinking water. Once you're done with drinking water it goes to showers and toilets, which is then filtered again and filtered by plants before it's released to your yard, at that point cleaner than most water sanitation places can make it. The place we went was still under construction, but it's still very cool and actually pretty too. One of the coolest thing is that they don't have to be millions of dollars-the one we went to is like $150-200k, less than a lot of people's houses.

After the Earthship we drove through La Paz for lunch. Most people went to go find American food, but some of us tagged along with some of the professors to this place that does Mexico City food. It was really good, I had a quesadilla with flor de calabaza (pumpkin flower), and a gordita filled with cheese, both with blue corn tortillas. Most of our professors are from Mexico City (chilangos) and they were really excited to have chilango food for once.

We then drove all the way home to return to massive amounts of work.

Day 5 of Camping

Saturday we broke up camp and then went back to the snorkeling place. We split up into boats and snorkeled in 4 different places. First we went into a massive school of bigeye jacks that also had some triggerfish. And at one point I looked down and 15 ft down from me was a bull shark. AJ was already telling everyone about it by the time I popped my head out of the water, and we had to get back in the boat. Apparently bull and tiger sharks are the most likely to attack people...

Then we went to the second place, over coral. We had to wear lifejackets there so the park officials knew we couldn't dive down to touch anything. But it was really cool, I saw a moray eel, a golden grouper (which is supposed to be really rare), more queen parrotfish, lots of butterfly fish, schools of Chromis, and more.

The third place was a sea lion colony that we swam with. I did get pretty close to one, but these guys weren't as friendly as the ones in Loreto, so we got back in the boats pretty fast.

The last place was another reef-some fish from there: surgeonfish , King Angelfish, Rainbow Wrasse, Cornetfish, and Leopard Grouper.

After we got back from snorkeling we drove through Cabo (where we stopped to get lunch) and went to Todos Santos. We stayed with one of AJ's friends, all of 3 doors down from the awesome surf hotel we stayed at for spring break. She's planning on making it kind of a mini-camp ground and it was completely beautiful. It was also fantastic to stay somewhere with a roof and a kitchen and a shower, even if we slept in tents. It was a nice break.

Day 4 of Camping

Friday we got up ad drove 40-50 minutes to Sierra la Laguna National Park, stopping in this cute little town (Santiago) on the way. Sierra la Laguna is kind of a chain of oases that provide water for a large portion of Baja California Sur. It was originally preserved because it provides all that water and because there are so many endemic species-species that are found only in that place.

Once we got to the parking area we had a rocky downsloping hike for 10-15 minutes to this awesome oasis with a waterfall. We had a distracted lecture with Vero for 10 minutes, then got to swim for awhile. It's soo nice to swim in freshwater when you're used to going to the sea. It's like taking an hour long bath when all you've had is like sponge baths. It was cool too, there were a lot of species that I'm used to seeing in PA ponds, like the dragonfly larvae my lab works with, and the snails that my friend Emily works with, as well as some diving beetles and we even found a tadpole in a stream! I didn't expect to see any tadpoles when it's surrounded by desert! I managed to jump off this high rock, but I needed some major help from Poncho & Chilaco, the pangueros. Chilaco eventually jumped with me. After we ate lunch we walked for another 10-15 minutes (another semi-mountainous hike) to a small lagoon. It was funny, I was thinking "it smells so good here, what is that? It reminds me of home" and eventually realized it was leaf litter on the ground, since we were in forest.

I got a little burned because you aren't allowed to wear sunscreen if you swim in the lagoons, since it's someone's drinking water and they can't exactly filter out chemicals. A couple of us also got a little dehydrated and felt pretty shitty until we stopped in Santiago and loaded up on Gatorade.

In other news, I started the book Lolita and so far I love it, even if it is kind of weird. Once we got back I just layed around in the shade and listened to music and watched people play volleyball. It was nice, I didn't have to walk far away to feel by myself.

Day 3 of Camping

So Thursday was our first full day at Cabo Pulmo, which is Mexico's only Marine Park (as in reserve). We were supposed to go out snorkeling within the reserve, but once we drove up to the tour station we found out they had us booked for the wrong day. So we snorkeled just off our campsite instead. It was a rock reef with tons of fish-goatfish, queen parrotfish, a trumpetfish, trunkfish among the coolest fish.

We also had women come from CONANP, Mexico's park service, and the President of Amigos Para Cabo Pulmo, all to talk about the park. Cabo Pulmo was a really interesting park because it was basically started by one extended fishing family, the Cortez's, who realized what the reef held and decided that it needed protection. They started by restricting their own actions in the area and then enlisted the help of Mexico's national parks service to create it. It's now in danger because there's a large development group planning a massive resort just 2 km north of the reserve. It'll have over 2,000 houses just for the workers. They are creating a 400 boat marina (which they're carving out of the coastline!), and a golf course with grass watered from the wells...in a desert! Judi, the president of Amigos para Cabo Pulmo was telling us how people keep saying how this resort will bring good things like electricity and paved roads, and how people living in Cabo Pulmo don't want that, not at that cost. They'd much rather keep living the way they're living.

Day 2 of Camping

So Day 2 we drove from La Paz to Cabo Pulmo, but had a few stops along the way.

First we drove into La Paz. The original plan had been to look for whale sharks, but the day before we were told that the weather was going to be too bad, so we were going to a reptile house instead. But come Wednesday morning, the weather was beautiful, so we got on some glass-bottomed boats (not as cool as I expected) and drove out to the bay at La Paz. And we found one! It was huge, and swimming fairly slowly. We had to limit how many people were in the water at one time so we didn't stress it out and cause it to dive deep, so only five people went in at once. But we got to swim with it a couple of times each. It was a little scary, even though they only eat krill (tiny shrimp-like crustaceans), just because it was soo big. But it was awesome, just watching it swim. I stayed near its head the whole time and just watched it.

After that we had lunch in La Paz. My group found a restaurant with some really good tacos (which are basically the Mexican version of sandwiches-everyone eats them for lunch) and a trampoline! Expect trampoline pictures eventually.

Then we drove to UABCS (Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Sur) to have a lecture with someone from a Cabo Pulmo NGO. It was weird being on a college campus with kids our age, most of the people in San Carlos are either high schoolers or 30yr olds, or kinda sketchy. But it was funny, the classroom looked like it was straight out of Pitt's Cathedral of Learning (no, not the Nationality Rooms). Found out an interesting fact from Vero-La Paz is the highest educated city in all of Mexico, meaning it has the most PhDs per capita in the entire country, higher than Mexico City. It's a relatively small city and there's a ton of research centers that take advantage of some really cool ecological features of the area, like the bay, the Gulf of CA, and the deserts.

We then drove another two hours to Cabo Pulmo Marine Park and set up camp on this deserted beach. The road to Cabo Pulmo is a fairly long bumpy dirt road, so we were happy to get there.