Mud and Humidity

Well folks, the images that get posted here going to be a little different from now on. We were climbing across a mangrove swamp using the aerial roots as a walkway and I and my camera went in face first. I'll try to get photos from other people.
We're in the tropical dry forest of Palo Verde now. We went for a tour of the hills and through the marsh yesterday (not along the marsh, through it, up to our waists). Tomorrow we will get to start our field projects. The course is taking a conservation bent at this station, as it's a major focus of several of our resource people. It's strange to me to find myself wishing we could stop shooting the poop about conservation and get back to the field work. We met today with a guy who has been doing research and conservation work in Costa Rica since the early 60's, he had a pretty cynical view of things, as one would expect of someone who has seen the forests here shrink 90% in the last 30 years.
The mosquitos here are pretty amazing. They were horrendous the first day we got here, but yesterday the dragonflies showed up and have been taking good care of us. I always get a bunch of them to come with me on my runs in the morning. It's not exactly like running with Indie, they rarely pull on their leashes.