Land of the Scots and the Seals!!

The whole of 2014 I was working towards a graduate certificate in Environmental Education. Earlier in the spring I had taken Diversity of Fishes and Sharks and Rays online through Hamline University (I highly recommend the classes. I quite enjoyed both of them.) I had four more credits to earn in order to get the degree. To do that I hatched this plan to volunteer at an aquarium for a few weeks in the summer. I looked all around but most aquariums are either looking for a long term volunteer (once a week for a year) or charge ridiculous volunteer fees. Finally I found one company that had no volunteer fee and would let me work full days for a few weeks. It just so happened to be in Scotland. (Score!! I looooove Scotland.) So of course I signed up and bought my flight and packed and all that jazz.

My flight out there wasn't too bad. No turbulence except for the turbulence of the teenage lovers sitting in front of me. There was lots of annoying giggling and pretend fight flirting. I was not a fan. I got into the airport and hopped straight onto a bus headed for Oban (a tiny town on the west of Scotland) I took a few hours but I love bus travel in Scotland. So clean, so safe, so convenient. A few hours later I was dropped off in the drizzly town of Oban. (It rained ALL the time there, and we were so high up on the earth that the sun didn't go down until after 11pm. That was trippy!) The hostel I stayed at was pretty cool, there was a large group of people that were volunteering there and they were very insular and not particularly welcoming to insiders (but more about them later).

Typical rainy Oban day out the bus window

The next day I got up and headed over to the Scotish Sea Life Sanctuary in Oban. I took the public bus. It was about a 20 minute ride.

The first day was mostly paperwork and sitting in the moldy office. Boo. But I did get my "official" Sea Life Center t-shirts and sweatshirt. Woo! Before I get into my routine, lets go on a quick photo tour of the sanctuary!

Shoaling fish ring and wolf fish

Shark tank (they just had little dogfish)

Seal enclosure overlooking the bay

Seahorses

Cuttlefish, starfish, some other fish indigenous to Scotland

Where visitors could view the rescued seal pups

Turtle area

Otter enclosure

Flatfish area

After that, my days became pretty routine (other than the amazingness of being able to work in an aquarium, of course!!). I got up around 7, put on my smelly mens work pants, Sea Life Center shirt and sweatshirt and my steel toe wellies and clunked down to eat breakfast and then clunked down the road to the bus stop.

Here's me in all my outfit glory (with Boo the baby seal pup)

 When I got to the aquarium, I would be greeted by the ever present, stupid "mystical ocean" music that played constantly in the inside exhibits. I would then grab this device and set off to record water temperature, salinity, and pH levels for the tanks. Most days it was just a select few that held delicate animals (damn seahorses) but on Tuesdays it was ALL the tanks.

Here's me with the machine in use

 After that, it was on to feed the seals! The big girls got fed first. There are three adult seals at the sanctuary permanently. They get fed herring and mackerel fish chopped in half. All of them have health issues that mean they can't be released into the wild. Two of them receive pills inside their fish everyday for thyroid issues. At the very end of each volunteer's time, you go in to feed the adult seals. But I'll go more into that later.

Anna and the seals

Seals with Farrah

The only seal pup they had when I arrived was a little guy named Boo. He got fed a blended mixture of de-boned fish, electrolytes and water. Below is a vid of me debone-ing some fish for your viewing pleasure!

Originally we had to tube feed him, which isn't really pleasant for the seal. It involves a tube, heavily lubricated, shoved down his throat and then food pushed in with a pump thingy. Usually the seal has to be sat upon with a towel around its head to let this process happen.

Then I usually went to feed the seahorses. They had to be fed tiny organisms called artemia and superba FOUR times a day. High maintenance little buggers. I consider them pretty dumb creatures. They can't eat anything bigger than their tiny mouths, they have no stomach and are essentially a tube and they die at the slightest provocation. Tap on the glass? Death. Camera flash? Death. Temperature one degree too high or two low? Death. Basically you look at them sideways and they die.

Seahorse through the back of the tank

After that, there was a never ending cleaning regime to handle. I de-algea-d tanks with a magnet, took out and scrubbed themeing (the rocks and plants in the tanks), siphoned tanks, swept floors, mopped, scrubbed doors and walls, wiped doorknobs and basically all the other glamorous things.

Siphoning in action!

Siphoning can be less than pleasant in that you have to apply the initial suction to get the water up the tube. Sometimes you can accomplish that by shaking the siphon, other times you have to suck on the end of the tube and watch so that you dont get a mouthful of saltwater...Blech.

More to come about the Sanctuary and Scotland soon!!

Tikal with Ames! (I'm still trying to catch up!)

Soooo right after the Belize trip with the family, I flew back to Guatemala and met up with Amy (my bff from Virginia) The day after she flew in we got up suuuuuper early and were picked up and taken to the little airport where we boarded a tiny plane and flew to Flores on the other side of Guatemala. From the airport there, we hopped in a shuttle bus to our hotel in Tikal!

The hotel (Hotel Tikal Inn) we were in did not impress me much. It only had power some of the time and the food was good, but nothing special. There were also some pretty vicious biting flies who weren't deterred  by jeans (they could bite straight through them!).

The first day we settled in and then went on an afternoon tour of Tikal. Let me just say that Tikal is utterly amazing! The size of the site and the height and intricate-ness of these structures is astounding. We walked all over, looking at the temples, the areas where nobility  lived, we even climbed up some of the structures! It was crazy hot up until it started to downpour. Our tour took refuge under a grass hut protecting a stele. At the end of the tour, they set you free to wander and Amy and I walked a loooong way out to two of the far away temples. While walking we spotted some coati families (so cute!).  

That afternoon we wandered around the hotel area some, spotted more coatis and walked out to a crocodile pond (though we didn't see any crocodiles).

We went to sleep early that night because we were waking up at some ridiculous hour (3am, i think) in order to watch the sun rise over the tallest temple in Tikal, Temple IV. To do this we had to hike through the jungle in the pitch dark. At one point we were trekking through the underbrush, led by the guide of course, when the guy in front of me stops and goes, "Is that a snake?!" Turns out, directly by the side of the trail we were on was this tiny, baby fer-de-lance (think ultra-venomous and painful, kills quickly). He was curled up into a tiny ball with his head up and looking directly at our ankles. (Fer-de-lance babies are the most dangerous because when they bite, they empty all their venom into the victim, once the snake get older it learns to control the venom and keep some in case it runs into more trouble later.) He scared the shit out of me. After that heartattack, we didn't run into more trouble. We climbed Temple IV and tried to watch the sun come up; a difficult thing to do when it's as cloudy as t was that morning. We really just watched the clouds get lighter.

After that, we headed back to the hotel and hung around until our flight that afternoon. The flight back to Guatemala City was one of the worst flights I have ever been on. The pilot was either battling hurricane winds, drunk or incompetent. At one point the plane was bouncing up and down while simultaneously swinging from side to side. I was never so happy to be in a plane on the ground after the pilot finally thumped us on the runway.

We spent two nights in Antigua after that. I love Antigua! All we did was walk around, shop, and eat. We took some beautiful pics and it felt good to be clean, cool and well rested after the hot, dirty trekking about in Tikal. The hotel we stayed in, is one of my favorites, Las Camelias. After our time in Antigua, we shuttled back to Guatemala City before catching the same flight into Richmond. Mom picked us up at the airport.

Family Trip to Belize Continued

One day Chris and I spent all day out on a SCUBA trip with Hopkins Underwater Adventures. We went out to Turneffe's Atoll on the SCUBA boat, which took about 2 hours. All along the sides of the boat flying fish would burst out of the water in packs and glide above the surface. I had never seen so many of them before.

We went on 3 different dives. The last on was the best because a 5 foot long nurse shark that went gliding beneath us for about 10 minutes. We also saw lots of coral, bright colored fish, shrimps, triggerfish, sea turtles and (of course) the nurse shark.

I didn't get any pictures because my underwater camera can't go underwater as deep as I can dive. We came back and were utterly exhausted.

 The next day everybody went on the cave tubing excursion. We hopped on a shuttle for a few hours and then boarded some old painted school busses jam packed full of rubber innner tubes in the back. We parked in the middle of a field and then walked, with our inner tubes, down into a stream. We then had to paddle ourselves upstream into the cave entrance. From there we turned on out head lamps and paddled deeper in the pitch black cave. The tour guide helped us spot bunches of bats on the ceiling. and eel and little fishes in the water and a horrifyingly terrifying cave spider creature that he actually held in his hands.

Our guide also took us climbing up some rocks in the cave to where they had found ancient Mayan pottery. Mayan shamans used to come into the cave to perform blood sacrifices by cutting parts of the body (genatalia or tongue, etc) and dripping the blood into bowls for ceremonies. They considered caves entrances to the underworld.

 When we climbed up there were a few cliffs and Mom was terrified. He she is peeking over the edge while clinging to our guide.

 Heres our creepy group photo. Taken with our head lamps on.








We went further into the cave and hopped off our inner tubes to walk over to a face carved in the wall. It is believed that this cave was the site for fertility ceremonies. According to our guide, couple who wanted children but couldn't concieve would come into the cave and pray to the gods and then have sex under the carved face in the wall. After doing this the gods would casue the woman to become pregnant. After having the baby the couple would have to come back and abandon the baby in a cave above as a sacrifice and payment for giving the woman a baby. All children after the first, the couple could keep.

 There is also a stalagmite formation that stuck up from the floor and when you put a light behind it, it makes a dirty shadow of a couple engaged in some fertility ceremony.

We sat down for a photo op and got our butts all dirty.

The guide had brought us all lunch into the cave and laed it out as we wandered around. It was giant tortillas with some kind of sliced meat and piles of veggies. Super delicious. We ate by the light of our headlamps.

On our way out of the cave, we were asked to make an inner tube chain and turn off our headlamps to ride the river back out of the cave. Mom managed to smack into a rock and pop her inner tube which popped pretty spectacularly. The guide laughed and said that had never happened before.

We then did some jumping off of the riverbed into the river and Courtney scrambled up a tree trunk to jump into the river.

The next day we went on a morning horseback trail ride. We went all through some orchards and a forest and down to a river. We actually saw some jaguar footprints! Down at the river we skipped some stones while the horses rested. Later, after heading back to the lodge, we went back to relaxing and drinking and eating delicious food. At one of these dinners a tribal drumming group was invited to perform. It reminded me sooo much of Tanzania. Brenna even got up and danced with them for a bit.

The next day we putzed around before hopping into the shuttle and heading back to the airport. We got on the little plane which flew us to Belize City airport. I hugged everyone goodbye and we went our separate ways. My family back to the US and me to catch my (very bumpy) flight back to Guatemala via San Salvador.