We finally made it to our destination, the town of Gualaco in the department of Olancho, after three long days of travel (including an unexpected detour through San Pedro Sula due to poor weather preventing our plane from landing in Tegucigalpa). After spending two nights in a local hotel, we’re now installed in an affordable apartment (the rent is about a tenth of the cost of similar accomodation back home in Vancouver) that will serve as our home base for the coming months.

Things are definitely different here – for one thing, there is no hot running water in Gualaco.  This is the slightly scary, and mostly ineffective, electric showerhead that was in our hotel room. We are not sure yet whether we’ll invest in one for our new home.

Yesterday, we took a trip up some very interesting roads to the pine forest where we’ll start our caracara work. We visited the site where a local named Isidro (who will be our guide for the next month) monitored a red-throated caracara nest last year.

We had a very long and interesting ride, with eight people in one 4-wheel drive pickup, along some extremely bumpy and muddy roads. We passed this unfortunate boa constrictor, which evidently chose the wrong time to cross the road.

Although we didn’t have much time to stop and investigate or photograph cool animals as we hiked in and out from the nest site, Sean did manage to snap a couple of shots of spiders that we passed by.

A wolf spider (family Lycosidae) with her silk-wrapped egg sac attached to her spinnerets.

An Argiope (Araneidae) with a beautiful star-shaped stabilimentum.

We also have plenty of familiar spider friends in our apartment, that appear to be helping with the moth infestation.

Lucky for us, our apartment contains an abundance of cellar spiders (Pholcidae)! Here’s a female with her egg sac clasped in her chelicerae, and an attending male.

Once we’ve had more time to explore local habitats, I am sure I will be able to post lots more about the spiders of Honduras! Hasta luego!

Thanks to Sean for all the photos.