Restoring the Americas

Breaking: The Story of Life Released

2010-04-15T11:34:00.000-07:00

Hey Y'all, Some of you might have heard I was working on a book. The Story of Life is a bilingual, evolutionary creation story, written in an oral storytelling style. A fuller introduction is available on the website: http://sunrisebegins.blogspot.com/ The book is currently self published on Lulu (click here to see it) . You can check out a free pdf of the full text or get the paperback

Why haven't we risen up?

2010-03-06T19:31:00.000-08:00

As we kept searching for a signal after the pyramids, I had a really interesting conversation with Ezequiel. It started off innocently enough, when Ezequiel asked me if I had any land in the US. I couldn't help but laugh and say, "No, its not like here... only the rich have land in the US." He gave me a strange little "Hmm" that begged me to explain further. As we walked on, I added "We never

Rio Bec: My first real Mayan Ruins

2010-03-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

All day we've been searching for the signal that will tell us where our Mayan Condor (King Vulture) is, enjoying the breathtaking landscapes, lush vegetation, and the epicness that comes from an ancient civilization hiding beneath the roots. Absolutely nothing, however, could have prepared me for our next stop. I've managed to miss all the touristy ruins from Cancun to here, so I'd never seen an

Searching for a Signal

2010-03-03T14:24:00.000-08:00

Ezequiel's been trying to track the King Vulture while Mauro and I were at Nuevo Becal, but hasn't been able to get a signal for days. Last time Mauro and I saw the bird, we watched it reach back and bite at the backpack-like straps keeping the radio transmitter on. No signal could mean a few things - the bird bit off the strap and dropped the transmitter in the water, the bird chewed on the

House Geckos!

2010-02-26T08:06:00.000-08:00

I'm taking a little break to catch up on writing my journal (I've been a month behind), but its impossible to resist taking videos like this one: I lived in India when I was nine, and one of my favorite things about the country was having house geckos that eat all your bugs, look awesome, and regenerate limbs! --

Camp Condor

2010-02-23T08:44:00.000-08:00

We left Ezequiel to monitor the King Vultures (Mayan Condors) in Veinte de Noviembre and headed out to Nuevo Becal, an Ejido with some of the highest jungle in the area. Mauro says that even though the Calakmul region gets the most rainfall of any other place in the Yucatan Peninsula, it is also the driest because the water just runs downhill and away from the highest part of the state. We picked

Ancient Mayan Secret

2010-02-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

Now that Emil's gone back to the US, I'm the only native English speaker around for Brett to talk to, so all of his stories come through me first. One of these proved particularly helpful today. A few weeks ago, Emil started itching all over from chechen, a local tree with much the same properties as poison oak or ivy. Somewhere, he had heard that chaka, another local tree, had a bark and leaves

Americans

2010-02-18T11:22:00.000-08:00

We've gotten to know the two leopard researchers, Emil and Brett, a little better over the last few days. Emil runs a U.S. based group called the Borderlands Jaguar Detection Project, which I'm guessing is a project to detect jaguars along the U.S.-Mexico border. He brought along Brett, a junior in wildlife management at the University of Arizona, as a volunteer in charge of tracking the recently

The Forests aren't like This

2010-02-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

Mauro and I went tracking again today, and we brought friends! Rafael, on the left, has a lot of experience with radio telemetry from his studies of white lipped pecarie movements in this area. Ezequiel, center, is a guide from Veinte de Noviembre who is begining to specialize in ecotourism, especially with birdwatchers. He's a bit of a birdwatcher himself, and would spot birds and explain them

Tracking the King Vulture

2010-02-16T09:04:00.000-08:00

After a prolonged release, the first radio collared King Vulture in Mexico is on its dandy way. In order to make sure the bird was doing alright and to test out the radio tracking, we followed the metronomic beep, beep, BEEP, beep until the louder beeps led us towards the "Mayan Condor". My little bit of radio tracking experience with horned lizards in Oklahoma served me well, because we are

Breaking: King Vulture Captured

2010-02-15T11:07:00.000-08:00

I'm breaking chronosequence today* to bring you this important report from the jungles of Campeche. I've been working with Mauro Sanvicente, a veterinarian turned burocrat turned wildlife vet, to capture and place a radio transmitter on a King Vulture in the area around the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. Mauro's been at this for three months, but he hasn't captured any of these elusive beasts. In

An Insignificant Ruin

2010-02-11T20:10:00.000-08:00

There are so many ruins in the area that this one has been slash and burnt for agriculture!

Epic Mayan Lanscapes

2010-02-08T19:38:00.000-08:00

Between the Vulture Campsite and the town of Veinte de Noviembre is what Mauro calls a "small" Mayan ruin. I couldn't give up the opportunity to photograph these "insignificant" ruins at sunset today. If a ruin like this one was found in the US, there would be archaeologists, reporters, and tourists before long. Here, its a good place to plant corn and raise cattle. The fact is, there's so many

Howler Monkeys!

2010-02-03T09:05:00.000-08:00

Another day of waiting for a Mayan Condor to smell our bait, but luckily we found some howler monkeys to entertain us while waiting to check the trap. I'm getting quite a bit better at this binocular photography thing, and have figured out how to line up the camera lens with the binoculars without making it obvious in the picture what I'm doing. Some of these monkeys are practically posing

Condor Watch

2010-02-01T08:35:00.000-08:00

Mauro and I headed out to the field today, driving past an epic ridgeline before arriving at out little basecamp. We spent the next 2 hours (or was it three?) tying tons of tiny little nooses to the net that formed the trap. Which was fine at first but got worse and worse as the heat rose. The idea is that the King Vultures will walk around on the net when they go for the bait and get their feet

The Jaguar Man

2010-01-29T10:35:00.000-08:00

The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve was originally set aside as a jaguar reserve. It boasts the largest and healthiest jaguar population north of the Amazon. Which is probably why it was chosen by the Direccion General de Vida Silvestre and SEMARNAT to host a controversial jaguar release project that has already claimed the life of the younger of the two jaguars. The young jaguar had been taken from

Zoh Laguna

2010-01-26T16:51:00.000-08:00

After a couple of more adventures in which Mauro (a) beat a young wasp nest out of his shoe and (b) gave his dog, named Whiskey, some valium for the ride over,* we headed west to Zoh Laguna, Campeche. Whiskey was quite calm and happy for the ride, as would be anyone who had just had valium injected into his thigh. We crossed a couple of military checkpoints on the lookout for drugs

Mauro's House

2010-01-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

We stayed at Mauro's house just north of Chetumal for the night and though that would't ordinarily merit a blog post, the place is so interesting that it does. To start with, all of the trees in Mauro's yard were topped by the strongest portion of Hurricane Dean, a fact you wouldn't guess from just looking at his forest-like yard. Pointing at one of his trees, he showed me how all of the new,

Chetumal

2010-01-12T14:17:00.000-08:00

After arriving in Chetumal for my next mission I wandered around for a bit looking for an internet cafe. Along the way, I noticed that Adolf Hitelr, before shooting himself in a bunker, apparently started his own brand of jeans. After quite a bit of walking with a heavy pack, I finally found the internet cafe and the email that my contact, Mauro, had sent that included his phone number. I

Last Night in Carrillo

2009-12-17T19:54:00.000-08:00

On my last night here in Felipe Carrillo Puerto, I had dinner and drinks with Alfredo and Monica. Monica is actually the one who, almost completely on her own, set up my next stop for me. Her friend Mauro is a wildlife vet studying vultures around the Calakmul reserve in the neighboring state of Campeche, and he always needs volunteers in his field studies. Last week, Monica very casually

Wood Production in a Mayan Village: Research Results

2009-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

Before you let the boring title scare you, I'll have you know that these results are actually quite interesting. For the first stage of field work, where I measured board production with Santa Maria Poniente's new microsawmills, I calculated how much work it took to slice up a log, as well as how much of the log was wasted. On average, it took about four man hours (hours x # of people on each

Handmade Chicle

2009-12-08T12:20:00.000-08:00

After a long conversation with John Curtis, I headed over through the dark city streets to Alfredo and his girlfriend Monica's house. I had a lump of raw chicle (chewing gum) in my backpack, and on the way there I picked up some "Dulce de Miel" (honey caramels). The plan was to cook up a batch of chicle and try to make a prototype of a natural, handcrafted chewing gum with a honey caramel as the

More Mayan Crafts!

2009-12-04T21:05:00.000-08:00

On the way out from dinner, John and I checked out his friend Caesar's wood craft store. A sampling of the works: A traditional Mayan instrument with some Tepezquintles carved into the part you hit. The piece was carved out what looks suspiciously like bamboo... is there a native bamboo in the Americas? Or is it just all alien invasives from Asia? I've been pondering this for 5 years, I should

Third Culture Kids

2009-12-03T17:26:00.000-08:00

John Curtis is one of those people who can talk your head off, because much of what he says is so interesting that you simply can't stop listening. Tonight at dinner, we talked about a concept that I had understood my whole life but never had a word for: Third Culture Kids. This will sound extremely familiar to some of you, while others won't know what the heck I am talking about. When a child

World Environment Day

2009-12-02T20:34:00.000-08:00

Apparently today is the Dia Mundial del Medio Ambiente,* as decreed by the United Nations, which people actually listen to outside of the US. I learned this while walking through the plaza in the center of Felipe Carrillo Puerto on my way to breakfast. Seeing a group of schoolchildren dressed as trees, and surrounded by what must have been all the kids from all the schools that day, I decided it