Pelicans and Leaving Coiba

On the way back from the Coiba prison our boat driver was nice enough to slow down and let us take pictures. In particular, there was a tree of nesting brown pelicans (Pelecanus occidentalis) that we passed on many days on the way to fieldwork.

How many pelicans can you spot?*

The adults are brown while the juveniles are white.

We were close enough to see the throats flapping, something they apparently do to cool down.

There were also some herons in the area.

Coiba National Park has lots of tiny islands, barely large enough to support vegetation. The Pacific has a huge tidal range, sometimes as much as 10 meters, though in our area I estimated it to be closer to 6 meters at full moon. The tidal range meant that the landscape above and below water was always changing and sometimes complicated fieldwork.

This is the beach on Rancheria, the island we stayed on. Apparently so many tropical islands have palm trees on the beach because planting palm trees was a way of staking one's claim to an island and indicating that it was owned.

There were some very pretty and very small orchids on some of the palm trees.

There were lots of gorgeous shells, but since we were in a national park, we couldn't collect any. (This required some serious self-control, as anyone who has ever been to the beach with me can probably imagine!)

Here's one of the three boats that would bring us to and from our fieldwork sites.

And then, of course, the 120 steps up to the top of the hill and our lodgings...

The next day we packed up and left for the mainland. The boat ride was three and a half hours long, and while I dozed for some of it, there were some very exciting moments including two pods of dolphins, some of them swimming close enough that I could see the speckling on their bodies. Our driver also thought he saw a whale shark, but by the time he turned the boat around, it was gone.

By the end of our time in Coiba, we had spent enough time on the water--either snorkeling or in the boats--that many of us found that back on solid land we still felt everything swaying. As we stood around on the dock on the mainland, waiting to sort out all the luggage, I found myself swaying back and forth slightly to compensate. Of course we readjusted to land again just in time to go back into the boats and water in Bocas...

* I think there are 15 in the picture.There were another 5 or so in the tree or flying about.