Arrived in Panama to collect populations of a widespread tropical tree known locally as Casique or Berba and scientifically as Brosimum alicastrum. The taxi driver to my hotel was quite old, his eyes well cataraxed and very grumpy. A little surprised but realising that taxi permits are probably applied as loosely as they are with respect to Mini Cabs in London I got in. Polite conversation resulted in me asking him how long he had been a taxi driver, "eighty years" he replied sullenly. "No I meant how long have you been driving a cab? Not how old you are" I replied. "I am 100 years old and have been driving a cab for 80". So there you have it, albeit self certified, I could have ridden with the oldest cab driver in the World!

Onto business today. We had to withdraw our collection permit and apply for an export permit. A bureacratic feast that took all day. It entailed visiting four offices, paying two fees, one at one office and one at an office the other side of town follwoing after an hours queue. Despite the need to fill out many forms and procedures, everybody I met was very polite, friendly and helpful. At the National Authority for the Environment office I was even given a desk and computer to write out some of the forms I had forgotten or didn't realise I needed. I would be very surprised if any Government Office in the UK would do the same for a visiting researcher. So a big thank you to Alexander Montero, Dario Luque and Israel Tejada of the ANAM Office!

As a consequence I made it to the National Herbarium quite late but with enough time to chat with Mireya Correa, legend in her own right with the Panamanian scientific and Neotropical botanical communities. She very kindly invited me to give a talk this Thursday but also mentioned that one of my collections from Panama in 2006 looks like it is a new species of Verbesina (Sun-flower family, Asteraceae). Below is a picture I took of it at the time of collection. I remember it quite well as I was surprised to see this genus including trees (below):

Below, a ship passing through the Panama Canal close to a potential collecting site for our project:

After a year's planning we are finally heading off! I spent saturday and much of sunday tidying up my house and packing my suitcase. Trying to fit my equipment and field clothes within the 23 kg of luggage allowance is not easy. Especially as I have brought my alpine sleeping bag just in case we make it up to the top of the mountain which is at an altitude of 3,400 m. Decided not to pack my wellies as they weigh too much. I may end up regretting this though....

Tomorrow I leave home at about 6.30 in the morning, get the Tube to Heathrow from where we will fly to New York, change planes and arrive in San Jose, Costa Rica at 9.30 in the evening (their time) all in all about 21 hours travelling. And in case you were wondering, yes we travel economy.

Back in December I took part in a radio programme being produced by the BBC World Service series 'One Planet'. Fellow interviewees were polar explorer Paul Rose and marine biologist Katrin Linse. The programme marked 100 years since Amundsen had reached the South Pole and the premise was that this marked the ending of a golden age of exploration and that since then mankind had touched every corner of the planet - leaving nowhere in the world left to explore.

Well given that I spend several weeks a year exploring the Talamanca Mountains on the Costa Rica/Panama border and caves in the south western Chinese province of Guangxi this seemd a bit of a provocation. To Katrin and Paul who continue to visit places never seen by people before (Antarctica is very big!) I think that this also jarred a little. I suppose it's true that there are maybe fewer people heading off into the unknown for years at a time but it depends on what you consider exploration to be - setting foot on never before seen places or documenting the biodiversity, geology, cultures of a place for the first time.

Given that the point of most exploration has been to discover and amass new knowledge with the aim of feeding the scientific process or to make money (think rubber, chocolate, quinine), exploration probably represents never ending cycles of discovery that form a key part of the scientific process and the development of our civilisation. For example, improvements in DNA sequencing technology and the tools to analyse DNA data means that we are now discovering whole rafts of microscopic organisms that we were just not able to discover before (see the article in this link). Well that's my feeling anyway!

The programme was broadcast at 3 am on 30 December, so probably not many people in the UK got to listen. The podcast for this edition is, however, available online until 30 January so if you are interested in hearing how the discussion went then go for it!

On February 6 a team of us, four botanists and a host of the Museum's Nature Live programme are heading off to Costa Rica to explore the flanks a remote area of tropical forest known as 'El Valle de Silencio' (The Valley of Silence). This area forms part of the La Amistad Binational Park that is shared between Costa Rica and Panama and within which the Natural History Museum has been working for almost 10 years! We will be spending about two weeks camping and making collections of flowering plants, ferns, mosses, lichens and algae in an area of unspoilt forest at an altitude of between 1800 and 3400 m. So far we have obtained our collection permit, permission to film in the Park, plane tickets and located a team of porters to help us get our food and equipment into place and we are getting very excited! Below is a picture of the forest taken on a visit last year.