Ants & Horses

Howdy, Sarah and Priya here. Today we had the pleasure of hunting for LEAF CUTTER ANTS. You may have heard about them. In the middle of the summer all of us were decked out in pants and long shirts, sweating it out trying to dig them out of their homes. As pleasant as this already sounds, the fun did not end there! While digging out the fungus, soldier ants would be on the attack and the sensation of pins and needles would be felt. Carefully, or as carefully as kids who are scared of ant bites can be, we excavated the foamy, squishy, fungus gardens and placed them into our containers to bring back to the lab. Some of us even had the good fortune (yay us!) of finding the queen.
For some of us, the highlight of the day even came before noon. We happened to find the biggest beetle (the pictures can prove it) ever, aptly named the Hercules beetle (yeah Los Hercules!). We had a lot of fun touching, holding, and eventually throwing it. We had to stop Anthony from smuggling it in his bag. US Customs doesn't really allow exotic insects.
FOOD. Sorry mom, but your cooking isn't as good as some of the stuff we are having here (my taste buds are havin' a fiesta). You would be so proud mom, I finished all my vegetables AND beans. It's like it's a whole new me.
But after that, we got back to work. As in horseback riding. This may not seem like very hard work, but let me tell ya; ma buns are FEELIN' IT. As are my knees. And hips. Our horses ranged from "killers" to "dainty" to "plain old hungry". Even as an experienced horseback rider, riding up and down slippery mountains could be scary at times... Did I mention my horse had no name but was refered to as "killer" (Sarah)? Yeah...mine was just called "Hambre" (means Hunger in Spanish...he constantly had the munchies) The stress was real and I think both of us are pretty amazed we are alive to tell the tale. Some of us had a hard time not riding our ponies back to the US-- another thing US customs would not allow us to take on an airplane.  It was literally like a slip n' slide.
Of course, the breathtaking views made it all worth it. We got to journey all the way up into the "cloud forest" which is the name for where the clouds touch the volcano (yes, we were riding on top of a volcano) and you can't really see in front of you. And by the end everyone was giggling as our horses trotted away into the sunset (as in back to the horse place because they were so sick of carrying us gringos). It was the roughest, yet greatest time on horseback--and for some of us, our first! (Shoutout to Nick and Austin for surviving as total beginners!)
After we returned from our rugged adventure of being Indiana Jones we came back to review some of our previous data collections. We counted our samples and shared our results, talking about how some of our results matched our hypothesis did, and some did not. After some mathy statistics (it was almost like we were back in school) we went to dinner.
FOOD. Did someone say flan? That'll take your tastebuds on the ride of a lifetime. Muy delicioso!
After dinner we watched some cheesy, but very informative, ant movies. The night ends, right now, with Nick locking himself out of his cabin (it was ALL Jackie's fault, apparently) and someone has a frog in their cabin. Ribbit!
Buenas Noches,
Priya Shetty y Sarah Moen