Day 16 - Departure
And so our Neotropic adventure comes to the end.
Our flight was booked for just before noon, so modern airport best practice would suggest we should be there by 9am. We were a therefore a little surprised our transfer was timed to leave at 4.30am for a trip Google maps said should be about 2.5 hours.
The first part of the trip went smoothly but as we approached Panama City traffic got heavier. We were still making good time though when traffic ground to a halt on the ring road on the northern edge of the city. All we could see was traffic stopped as far as the eye could see.
Our driver soon found out the cause - some workers who had not been paid for three months were staging a protest by blocking the road. I could see their point but I had a plane to catch...
Just as I was starting to get really worried the traffic started to move, the police had moved the protesters off the road. There was a tyre burning in the centre of the road which we had to drive around, but there was no further disruption and we arrived at the terminal at five minutes to nine.
Everything went like clockwork from then, we even left LA a few minutes early. I arrived home 37 hours after leaving the lodge.
Last bird seen in Panama was the same as the first, a great-tailed grackle.
It was a wonderful trip, and a great introduction to this megadiverse region of the world. I still have to verify the lists, but at the moment I saw 30 mammal species and 327 bird species. Almost all were new, only a handful had been seen previously in North America. Two species that were not mentioned were the house sparrow and the European starling, as I had seen them both at home earlier in the year. We saw both these species only once, and fortunately these introduced birds don't seem to have made much of an inroad.
The most dramatic growth in number of species for a Family was the Tanagers, which jumped from zero to 30 species.
In time i will be publishing a full list here, as well as any amendments and an invertebrates list. I will also be putting up a few photos when I get to them.
And so our Neotropic adventure comes to the end.
Our flight was booked for just before noon, so modern airport best practice would suggest we should be there by 9am. We were a therefore a little surprised our transfer was timed to leave at 4.30am for a trip Google maps said should be about 2.5 hours.
The first part of the trip went smoothly but as we approached Panama City traffic got heavier. We were still making good time though when traffic ground to a halt on the ring road on the northern edge of the city. All we could see was traffic stopped as far as the eye could see.
Our driver soon found out the cause - some workers who had not been paid for three months were staging a protest by blocking the road. I could see their point but I had a plane to catch...
Just as I was starting to get really worried the traffic started to move, the police had moved the protesters off the road. There was a tyre burning in the centre of the road which we had to drive around, but there was no further disruption and we arrived at the terminal at five minutes to nine.
Everything went like clockwork from then, we even left LA a few minutes early. I arrived home 37 hours after leaving the lodge.
Last bird seen in Panama was the same as the first, a great-tailed grackle.
It was a wonderful trip, and a great introduction to this megadiverse region of the world. I still have to verify the lists, but at the moment I saw 30 mammal species and 327 bird species. Almost all were new, only a handful had been seen previously in North America. Two species that were not mentioned were the house sparrow and the European starling, as I had seen them both at home earlier in the year. We saw both these species only once, and fortunately these introduced birds don't seem to have made much of an inroad.
The most dramatic growth in number of species for a Family was the Tanagers, which jumped from zero to 30 species.
In time i will be publishing a full list here, as well as any amendments and an invertebrates list. I will also be putting up a few photos when I get to them.
