First impressions

It's hard to believe that I've been here for 6 days already!  The jet lag finally seems to have subsided and I am starting to acclimatize to the heat.  Much less of a zombie now, thank god. There is so much I want to talk about, but thought I should set the stage a bit with some first impressions.

So where am I?  Well, I am in Jagna, Bohol.  To be more precise I am in Pangdan, Jagna, Bohol.  Towns are all split up into 'barangay', essentially neighborhoods, which each have their own name and 'captain'.  Towns then have a mayor and council as you'd expect in North America.  Jagna is located on the south coast of the island province of Bohol.

Bohol is 15 hours ahead of Vancouver (with the recent daylight savings in BC). The province of Bohol sits right around 10° N. There is a ton of history here that I will fill you in on soon.  

Here are a few pics as an introduction to where I will be working and staying while here in Bohol:

My first view of Bohol, flying in last week. Stunning water.  Can't wait to do some diving!

This is the lovely gazebo outside of our office.  Right beyond it there is a spectacular reef filled with great coral, clownfish, nudibranchs, anemones etc. I can snorkel during a coffee break!  I will try to borrow one of my colleagues' underwater cameras to snap some pics of it for a later post. The tide is quite low in this photo, often the boardwalk has water underneath its entirety.

This is our office.  Ale and Josh both live here, and our communal kitchen is here as well.  Dominic, Valeria and I live in a separate house not far away.  We've been working our butts off trying to get the office up and organized, but there is a still a bit of work to be done.  The little gazebo in front has two hammocks in it.  Love.  I spent an hour in one reading papers on distance sampling the other day.  Let me tell you, if you are going to read papers on distance sampling, a hammock makes things oh so much nicer.

              

There are palms of all sorts everywhere.  The whole island is incredibly green and lush. Stunning.  As you would imagine, it's very hot and humid here.  Well over 30°C on most days.  Perfect for palms, maybe not so much for sweaty Canadians.  

This is our sweet ride.  It reminds me of a micro-machine toy car from the 80s.  Two people can sit in the front, and then rest of us pile onto benches in the back. I'll do a whole post on traffic and driving soon.  It's a bit wild.

Rice fields are everywhere.  This is the one behind our house.  In them you will often find carabao, which is a water buffalo, wallowing in the muck.  I will try to take a picture of one soon!  There are millions of varieties of rice available in the market!  

Bangkas (the boats) in Boracay, a nearby town.   We are still awaiting our new boat to start field work.  In the mean time, we may possibly do some work on some of the bangkas this week.  This picture was taken the day we were supposed to head out to find whale sharks during the full moon.  Poor weather caused us to cancel the survey, unfortunately, so the whale sharks elude me still!  <shaking my fist at the whale sharks!>

So much more to post, but will leave it there for now.

XO Cait