In which Gita was (not quite) surrounded by reptiles.

Today's excitement was mostly of a reptilian nature. First was a ground lizard. There is a tree nursery next to one of the trails that had rows of trees in pots and the lizard was poking about around them. I found it surprisingly cute, particularly something about the face.

Ground lizard.

Along one of the trails is a small pond. Here there are turtles...I started counting, reached about 20 visible in less than half of the pond, and stopped. One of the park guards said that at times the pond has had 300 turtles, but the pond floods and drains into the canal. The ones remaining still seemed to fill the pond pretty well and ranged from saucer to large dinner plate sized.

Turtle! They always look to me as if they were flying.

I didn't see the caiman until Chhaya pointed it out to me. It just looked like a mostly submerged log. If you watched carefully, however, it's eyes would close a bit. And occasionally it would move a little. Apparently in groups they can be rather aggressive, but this was just a single one which the guard said is fed scraps by a local restaurant owner.

The lone caiman.

Other interesting things of the day included a great view of the city from the lookout at the top of the hill and some pretty flowers.

View of part of Panama City and the canal from the
top of the hill inside Parque Natural Metropolitano.

Interesting flowers next to the pond. The long chain
reminded me of Indian flower garlands.

Other than that it was a pretty typical, and long, day of fieldwork in the dry forest, leaving me happy but exhausted.