Monday, June 11, 2012

A Day of Giving Back


Authors: Karleigh and Kris
Working on sifting sand

Word of the Day: Caridad, the Spanish word for charity. Today the entire group had the pleasure to work with Habitat for Humanity Panama and help build a house for a local family in need. The family was picked by the community to receive this generous donation. The group worked on mixing cement and reinforcing walls or sifting sand to be made into concrete. Despite the heat, we all enjoyed the opportunity to give back. This trip has given all of us so much, the least we could do was aid the community in return.
Before

After
Just a small recap of things we have done in the last couple of days...
El Palmar

Yesterday was a great cultural day for the group. We traveled to the Pacific Coast of Panama. Along the way we stopped at Queso Chela, a local hot spot for delicious baked goods and chicheme. Chicheme is almost exclusively Panamanian, and is made with milk, sweet corn, cinnamon and vanilla. Later we went to Lovers Falls, a beautiful waterfall and then to El Palmar (The Place of a lot of Palms), a local beach. The Pacific Ocean looks a lot different from what we are used to in St. Petersburg, FL. Instead of being completely white and made of calcium carbonate and silica, the sand here is mixed with black and gray shiny particles. These are mostly fine grains of basalt and magnetite minerals that have been weathered and eroded from surrounding volcanoes, which helped to form the Panama land mass.


Mother leatherback turtle laying eggs

On Thursday evening the group went on a night excursion to the beach in hopes to see a turtle laying her nest. We were lucky enough to see a mother leatherback turtle complete her nesting! We had to use the red lights on our headlamps because the turtle's eyes could not detect it. The turtle's age was estimated to be around 40, since it takes roughly 25 years to reach sexual maturity.

Question of the Day: After all you've read about this trip, would you like to visit Panama and Costa Rica? Why or why not?

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