Santa Rita Ridge

Last weekend, I took a vacation from BCI with some of my friends, and went to visit one of the STRI staff scientists in his weekend home near Colon (on the Caribbean side of Panama).

Dave has a beautiful house on a hilltop in Santa Rita, with a pool and gorgeous views out to the ocean. . .

. . .which is a good thing because we had to brave the Transismica!

The Transismica is the road that runs more or less along the canal from Panama City (on the Pacific side) to Colon (on the Caribbean), and it is in excruciatingly bad shape. Excruciating because more of the road is pot-hole than not, and a 35 minute trip took four hours.

Please note the sign that says "excavacion profunda": what they mean is "we dug a hole that will swallow your car if, for any reason you get to close to the curb.

Dave studies stingless bees, and keeps a lot of colonies at his house in SantaRita.

They live in boxes, like these--and you can lift up the lid and see what they construct. It was very cool!

There were great some moths around the house at night: