Barro Colorado Island & Gatun Locks
The break of the down found us at the man-made Gatun Lake, which once upon a time was a chain of valleys framed with several hills, nowadays these valleys are floated with the waters of the Chagres River and the hills have become islands. The last day of our expedition on board the Sea Voyager, brought us to the world known research island Barro Colorado, administrated by the Smithsonian Institute since 1946. The island better known as the BCI, has become one of the most studied sites in the neotropics, and almost all the most respectable tropical scientists in the world have been here at a particular time of their carriers.
As soon as the guest disembark the Zodiacs to start with the different hikes, a troop of Mantled Howler Monkeys welcomed us with their particular loud barking sounds, as a way to make sure we knew were coming close to their territory. Step by step we were going deeper through the forest, submerging our selves in one of the most entangled net of relations in a giving area, the tropical rain forest.
The tropical regions throughout the world are known to hold the largest and diverse amount of life, it’s been said to come close to an 80% of all living things on Earth. And more specific to our concerns, the Costa Rica- Panama unit inherits around a 5% of this biodiversity. Today at the BCI, we were able to see this diversity of live in action, the humongous trees and the rest of vegetation is not just a boring greenery, each is inhabit by an array of plants, animals, insects, but the greatness is not each individual but the individuals in their constant relations with each other and with its environment, either been positive, negative or neutral.
During our walks we got great examples of each from these interactions. The positive one, in which both species get a benefit, like the birds dispersing the seeds of the plants they feed on. For the negative, we saw howler monkeys been parasitized by botflies. And for the neutral one, there was the army ants hunting though the forest floor for any crawly creature and the ant-birds waiting as sentinels for the insects that though they escape from the ant’s jaws to fall into the bird’s beaks.
For the last day of our voyage, was a nice wrap up of expectations and experiences, we count on our list from monkeys to snakes, from macaws to whales, from dolphins to turtles, but the most important is that we all learned that the rain forest is much more than just a beautiful toucan on a post card, but all the troubles that it goes through to fit perfectly and survive in it.
The break of the down found us at the man-made Gatun Lake, which once upon a time was a chain of valleys framed with several hills, nowadays these valleys are floated with the waters of the Chagres River and the hills have become islands. The last day of our expedition on board the Sea Voyager, brought us to the world known research island Barro Colorado, administrated by the Smithsonian Institute since 1946. The island better known as the BCI, has become one of the most studied sites in the neotropics, and almost all the most respectable tropical scientists in the world have been here at a particular time of their carriers.
As soon as the guest disembark the Zodiacs to start with the different hikes, a troop of Mantled Howler Monkeys welcomed us with their particular loud barking sounds, as a way to make sure we knew were coming close to their territory. Step by step we were going deeper through the forest, submerging our selves in one of the most entangled net of relations in a giving area, the tropical rain forest.
The tropical regions throughout the world are known to hold the largest and diverse amount of life, it’s been said to come close to an 80% of all living things on Earth. And more specific to our concerns, the Costa Rica- Panama unit inherits around a 5% of this biodiversity. Today at the BCI, we were able to see this diversity of live in action, the humongous trees and the rest of vegetation is not just a boring greenery, each is inhabit by an array of plants, animals, insects, but the greatness is not each individual but the individuals in their constant relations with each other and with its environment, either been positive, negative or neutral.
During our walks we got great examples of each from these interactions. The positive one, in which both species get a benefit, like the birds dispersing the seeds of the plants they feed on. For the negative, we saw howler monkeys been parasitized by botflies. And for the neutral one, there was the army ants hunting though the forest floor for any crawly creature and the ant-birds waiting as sentinels for the insects that though they escape from the ant’s jaws to fall into the bird’s beaks.
For the last day of our voyage, was a nice wrap up of expectations and experiences, we count on our list from monkeys to snakes, from macaws to whales, from dolphins to turtles, but the most important is that we all learned that the rain forest is much more than just a beautiful toucan on a post card, but all the troubles that it goes through to fit perfectly and survive in it.
