Barro Colorado Island

Barro Colorado Island (BCI) was our destination on our last day in Panama.  BCI is located in man-made Gatún Lake in the middle of the Panama Canal. The island was formed when the waters of the Chagres River were dammed to form the lake in 1913. When the waters rose, they covered a large part of the existing tropical forest, and the hilltops remained as islands in the middle of the lake. BCI was set aside as a nature reserve in 1923 by the US government.  Since 1946 it has been administered by the Smithsonian Institute.
The Smithsonian has maintained the island with as a scientific research facility since that time, and the flora and fauna there are among the most studied anywhere in the world.  Hundreds of scientists conduct research projects on Barro Colorado Island every year.

The biodiversity of the island is incredible.  They marked off a square mile at the top of the island and catalogued every tree over an inch in diameter.  They remeasure every tree at five year intervals.  It turns out that there are more species of trees in that square mile than in all of North America!

We made our way to the Gamboa dock for a 7 am departure.  The boat ride lasted an hour and passed through the canal on its way to BCI.

Sunrise over the Panama Canal

Approaching the Smithsonian research facility

Visits by tourists are limited to one group of ten per day, five days a week.  Rules are very strict on the island.  Visitors are not allowed to alter anything as they pass through the trails of the jungle.  They even put cement blocks on the major trails so that visitors will not compact the soil or cause erosion.

Our guide Irisol spoke good English and explained the sights along the trail.

Irisol pointed this flower out to us and told us it was called "Clitoria"

She even pulled out her guidebook to prove she wasn't making it up!

This little lizard was getting some sun

No, this is not a green snake!  It's a vine wrapped around the tree.

A Jungle Almond tree

We came upon a group of howler monkeys, the same kind that we used to hear in Chepo.  When they first heard us, they howled very loudly, and even tossed a few nuts in our general direction.  After a few minutes, though, they calmed down and went back to eating leaves and playing in the trees.  This was the best look we had gotten at howler monkeys in all of our time in Panama.
Click here to hear their howling.

This is called a "Monkey Condom", though we suspect it has other uses.  Of course we had to return it to the exact spot where we had found it.

After lunch, we stopped by the BCI museum.  These croc heads caught our eye.  Up until the end of 1999, the US controlled the Canal Zone, and they allowed crocodile hunting.  Since then, however, hunting is prohibited, which means there are a lot more crocs than there used to be.  There have been cases of people fishing from the banks of the canal being attacked by crocodiles.  Evidently they are really good at sneaking up on their prey, human or otherwise!

During our first few months in Panama we were in our training community not far from Lake Gatún.  We did go swimming in the lake a couple of times but didn't see any crocs!

We met a couple of scientists from Dartmouth who were studying katydids, which look like small grasshoppers.  There are 145 species of katydids on the island!  Katydids communicate using ultrasound, as do bats (only 74 species of bats on the island), and these scientists were testing to see if bats would hear the katydids and come to eat them, and also to see if the katydids could hear the bats and take cover to protect themselves.  In any case they said they were going to protect the katydids with netting so they wouldn't get eaten.  So thoughtful of them!

With that, we returned to the boat, leaving BCI behind.  The next day we would fly home to the US.  We had such a great time in Panama that we are already thinking about when our next visit should be!

We'll keep you posted here!

Steve and Heather