Day 4 and Finally We See The Sun!

 Sunshine! We finally woke up to a nice Mexican morning since arriving! I am so happy to have nice weather and no rain. We’ve moved on to hot, humid and super melty-sweaty, but I’m not complaining, I love it (though not everyone is as excited as I am about it haha).

Yesterday we spent the day at Xcaret park (ish-car-et). In the morning we covered all of fish pathology (which ended up being 100% repeat of everything we did at the beginning of the semester in exotics) and then had some lectures about the park, its history, and its divisions. We went through all of the animal husbandry and training. It is such an impressive park. The standards, ethics, and people are phenomenal. The amount of training these animals have received is awe inspiring (makes me feel shameful that I haven’t taught my dog back flips!). They have macaws trained to take neat photos with people, fly around the park on command and return, and participate in their cultural show. They have flamingos that go for a walk every day around the park on the sidewalks following their trainer and a little bell. The flamingos are mixed in with the guests and are unbelievably well behaved. Animals are trained to hold still for medical procedures such as blood draws with little more than a certain hand touch. It is just incredible.

The weather started to clear up enough for us to eat lunch outside and we got our first real glimpse of this beautiful tropical paradise. It opens right to the ocean and the whole park is tanks, rivers, and pools fed by ocean water. There are pools that visitors can swim and snorkel with reef fish in, lagoons loaded with sea turtles, and sea trek/SNUBA experiences for people to experience rays in their environment.

We rounded out the afternoon by touring the aquarium facilities. All of the animals and corals come from the local oceans, and all of the water in the tanks comes straight from the ocean (it’s not pre-mixed, altered or filtered). This is truly amazing. What an awesome way to run an aquarium. They have angels, triggers, jellies, conches, rays, manatees, dolphins, sharks, urchins, and everything in between. It is breath-takingly beautiful. We got to watch the handlers bottle feed their 4 month old manatee (he’s so cute!) and visit all of the sea turtles currently in rehab at Xcaret. Dr. Ana (our fabulous host) is in charge of manatees and sea turtles and let us hold the baby turtles! As soon as she said we could touch them, it was a turtle free-for-all! They had dozens of babies ranging in size from the palm of my hand to a decent sized dinner plate. They also has several large adults that were being treated for various conditions such as ulcerative dermatitis that had been brought in from strandings.

After we got back from the park, we headed to Babe’s Noodles which turned out to be a delicious little place to get Asian noodles. We explored some of the shops on our way home before calling it a night.

Today we were at Xcaret for 12 hours. We arrived with nice weather this morning and started the day out with coffee, cookies, and lectures/videos on some of the rehabilitation work our instructors David and Petra have done. We also saw some video clips about the work Xcaret has done with macaw breeding and release into the wild to repopulate some of the decimated states in Mexico. After that, we toured the macaw facilities. They have well over 100 birds and they are just gorgeous! Most of them are still pretty young but many of them are used to perform a park fly over daily. We got to hold them, take pictures, and then participate in a release. So cool. We also visited the flamingos and watched them on their walk and met a Xolo (chollo) which is a hairless Mexican dog that has historic roots with the Mayan civilizations.

Next up was lunch. We have been eating peanut butter and jelly at Xcaret because of the way the park food is designed (more of a buffet for paying guests). The sandwiches are so yummy! It has been a very long time since I had any type of sandwich with delicious fresh soft bread! We sat in the same location over-looking the ocean with a bunch of iguanas.

This afternoon we had the opportunity to necropsy two sting rays and two sea turtles. Smelly but a very neat experience. We had a great time dissecting them and comparing their anatomy to that of our domestic species. There sure are a lot of differences! The GI tract of a sting ray is so much simpler and shorter. The liver makes red blood cells and is grey in color. Their respiratory system consists of gills and their heart is very different. We came out pretty stinky, but it definitely wasn’t as bad as the pig dissections we did in 2^nd term!

We had the opportunity to stay for the park’s cultural night show tonight. It was a two hour celebration of the native history starting with Mayan civilization all the way through present day dances and music. They performed traditional Mayan ceremonies and replicated their ball games, showed the English conquering the land, and took us through a beautiful tour of the history of music and dance. It was phenomenal. Such a touching and unique look at the county’s history.

I took 500 pictures today alone and I promise to start uploading pictures from the trip soon. Unfortunately, the internet here is less reliable than Grenada, making it difficult to get pictures online. Tomorrow we have a lot of lab stuff planned with sting rays, sharks, and sea turtles – I am very excited!