Post-Panama 2008

Despite having arrived home from my first trip to Panama at 1:30 in the morning, I was giddy with excitement over the adventure I had just had. And for days afterward (some would argue months) I spoke of the trip to friends and family, commenting on how fantastic the birding was and how badly I wanted to return. The urge to re-visit, without commitments to anything other than birding, was burning, and if truth be told I had already decided to return the following year, with Joanna, before getting home.

The next trip was going to be intense, and both Joanna and I wanted to maximize our birding experience in Panama in 2009. This meant that planning had to go beyond visiting Metropolitan Park five times, and that we had to be creative in our choice of destinations in order to see the greatest variety of species while staying within our budget and timeline. In the next three postings I'll describe some of the pre-trip planning for our 2009 excursion, and reveal some of the challenges that we had to overcome. I should note here that planning is a bit of a personal obsession, and while Joanna was generally interested in the trip, I'm certain that the detailed planning bored her to death (nearly).

So until the next posting, happy birding, wherever you may be.