My thoughts so far...by Emma

Trinidad is HOT! Although I think I am finally becoming acclimatised to this amazing weather. On the other hand I don’t think I will ever get used to the mosquitoes – I'm getting eaten alive!!!!

So far I am loving my time out here. We’ve been really busy searching for lots of frogs and tadpoles for everyone’s different projects and have even come across a few snakes and creepy crawlies along the way. I’m really enjoying getting out and about and visiting lots of different places. So far we have been on a visit to Aripo savannas where we surveyed the area for amphibians and reptiles and saw some cool Collared Tree lizards.

The sign for Aripo Savanna.

Collared Tree lizard (Plica plica) on the wall of an abandoned building.

Myself and a few others went to Caroni swamp, with John C. Murphy (author of 'Amphibians and Reptiles of Trinidad and Tobago') to search for aquatic snakes – unfortunately we didn't find what we were looking for but saw some cool camen and a tree boa during the boat trip. However my personal favourite trip so far has got to be our visit to Tamana bat cave where we climbed down into a very creepy cave which was home to millions of bats! This was an amazing experience although I'm not sure I would go back in a hurry since we all ended up covered in bat poo for the car ride home! YUK!

As part of the Glasgow-Trinidad schools link, a few of the team attended a couple of visits to some local Trinidadian primary schools where I took on the role of Trini the frog in our play “The Adventures of Manno the Stream Frog”. Both of the schools we visited were very welcoming and had lots of questions about life and the wildlife back in Scotland. Chloe and I were even invited to join in a game of cricket with the standard 5’s girls’ team! We gave it a good shot although I don’t think we will be offered a permanent place on the team any time soon! Hahahaha...

As you can probably tell we’ve been extremely busy during the short time we have been here and yet we have still managed to squeeze in the odd trip to the beach and a even a pool party! And I have also been keen to sample as much local food as possible and so far my personal favourite has got to be Rotis - A popular ‘sandwich’ made by folding a curry stew inside of a roti (type of bread) skin. Curry stew normally contains potatoes and a meat of sometimes some sort like chicken, goat, beef or shrimp, and other vegetables.

We still have plenty to look forward to in the coming weeks. A few members of the team have already visited a beach in an area called Fishing Pond (N.E. of the island) for a spot of marine turtle monitoring – I hope to get my first glimpse at a turtle when I head out for the first time tonight which I am very excited about! We have also planned a trip to hike up Trinidad’s second highest mountain – El Tucuche – which is 936m high (apparently only around 50m short of the highest mountain in Trinidad!). We plan to do this later in the week so wish us luck! We’ll keep you posted on how we get on!

Love from Emma x