January 25, 2012 Today we were taken out to a part of the lake where the reserve had a research station. We brought all of our diving gear and had Roberto and Arturo held training in the lake on how to snorkel. It was interesting to see how the people from the reserve reacted to diving in the lake. We quickly realized that some of them could not swim, so they were not going to be doing any snorkeling. In the end we trained a few people that felt comfortable diving and helping with the frog survey. Today we also measured out ropes that we are going to be used in measuring out transects for the survey. We got most the logistics worked out but the water clarity was too muddy because of the heavy rains. We had hoped to conduct our first survey of the lake, but had wait till the water clarity is better.

January 26, 2012 Today was a meeting day. We were pretty busy with meeting with our colleagues and discussing progress on the project. I am feeling very good about all the progress and things that are happening with this project. This has been my twelfth trip down to Peru for this project! There have been good trips and bad trips. There have been times when I thought that this thing was never going to happen. Now, I feel that all our efforts are starting to come together. I am realizing that sometimes you spend a lot of time meeting with people and you get a feeling that all you are doing is talking and no progress is happening. Then before you know it, you start to see a lot of progress happening all at once.