April 05, 2006

Week 2: What should we study first?

Plants, Animals, or People: What should we study first?

Next week we will be entering the rainforest. Our focus for this trip is to study how plants, animals, and people survive in the flooded florest.

What should we study first? After we ride the riverboat from Iquitos, we have the option to immediately enter the forest to begin studying the plants and animals, or to visit with one of the local villages where we begin our trip. Should we focus the beginning of our trip on the people, plants, or aniamls of the flooded forest? We could focus on people by spending extra time in a community on the edge of Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. We could also focus on the plants by learning about plants in the rainforest that can be used as medicine. Finally, we could spend our first week in the flooded forest focusing on the animals, by traveling deep into the forest as we try to see as many animals as we can.