Day 9 – Friday, May 4

Today was one if the hottest and muggiest days we’ve spent here. Perhaps because the sun was out almost all day.

Silas and I stayed in the camp and worked, while Art went out with the nest check crew on a half-day mission. He needed to get more footage of Santiago, the village leader who organizes the patrols.

At camp, we filmed an interview with Juan Carlos Flores, an officer with ICF, the Honduran Forestry Service. We talked about how the Forestry Service helps by taking confiscated birds back to Mabita to the rescue center. There they are treated, and raised until they can be released. 

Juan Carlos said they do the best they can, with the resources they have, but that more help is needed in the way of cages, medical supplies, etc. so they can respond quickly to confiscate the birds. He also said confiscating birds is challenging because they need to get a court order to enter the poachers houses, and when they are out in the field, with no way to communicate (there’s no cell phone service) it’s nearly impossible to get a court order quickly. 

We also had Tomas show us the places where he was shot by poachers and traffickers several years ago. One bullet missed his heart by a centimeter!

We also stopped by the school house to get a little video of the children learning. The school here is very small, with a mixed class of kids ages 1st to 6th grade. Children who want to continue with their education must move to Puerto Lempira to go to high school. Many families cannot handle that hardship, and so they stop at 6th grade. 

For lunch we had…. beans and rice, plantains and tortillas. Yummy! I will say, the homemade tortillas are some of the best I’ve had, especially when served warm.

After lunch we interviewed Dr. LoraKim Joyner again, to finish up some unanswered questions as make sure we had covered all of our bases. 

Art also set up a time-lapse camera to get some footage of the starry sky. Hopefully it will turn out because we’ve had such cloudy days lately.

Now, we are plotting out our plans for tomorrow and waiting for dinner to be served.

I’m sure it will involve something with rice avd beans. And I am looking forward to it.

One last update for the night, I went to “the stump“, to try and get a cell signal. As usual, there was a crowd of people gathered there checking their messages. But I, was a miserable failure. “The stump” is a cut off tree stump in the middle of town. It’s the one spot where you usually can get a couple of bars, but tonight it did not work for me. Sadness.

However, on the way to “the stump” we saw a huge bull frog, and on the way back, we saw a little snake, that Hector says is not poisonous.