nature walk

Today we spent the morning and afternoon exploring the ecological reserve in Punta Cana. I must that this is one of the best courses I have ever taken at TC; it is not because I am on a beautiful island beach. I have learned more in these few days than I have in some of my other classes over an entire semester. Too many times classes are just open discussions with very litlle content being presented.

During the morning we saw some of the plants that are endemic to Dominican Republic. We also saw the organic garden. The garden is used to grow vegetables for the Punta Cana hotel and some of the hotels in Bavaro. Some of the crops have a difficult time growing because of the heat.

In the evening we walked through the forest of the reserve. There are about 7 lagoons in the reserve and we saw many spiders especially the weaver spider. On our journey we reached an area that had many burrows. The burrows were about 8-10 inches in diameter. They appeared to be made by some large snake or a small mammal such as a ferret. It wasn't unitl later that someone spotted the legs of an immense crab. The 4 visible legs were about a 1/2 inch in diameter and about 6 inches long. later we were told that those crabs have a body length of about a foot. Those crabs come out at night; so we will have to wait for a night excurison through the forest to see one upclose.