From caves full of bat guano to forests fluttering with Monarchs, a dozen Norfolk Collegiate School students and two alumni saw many exotic places when they traveled down to Mexico to conduct research on forest ecology January 8-16.

Due to recent political unrest, some students were apprehensive about traveling to Mexico. Junior Sam Hitch said that he was “nervous about spending the night” in Mexico City, but when he got there, it was not that bad.

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n order to get to some of the spectacular destinations, the group had to do more than just travel to and from Mexico. One day they had to ride the bus for 14 hours to get from one side of the country to the other. Mrs. Jersild, the trip advisor and the AP Environmental Science teacher, said that while the ride was long, it gave the students a chance to see almost all of the different ecosystems that are in Mexico.

Mrs. Jersild started planning the trip about a year and a half ago when senior Teddy Stokes approached her to see if he could go on a trip conducting field research for his senior project, similar to his brother Sam Stokes’s senior project. She then contacted her friend Dan Bisaccio, a professor at Brown University, to see if he wanted to help with the trip. Mr. Bisaccio is the project director of Habitatnet, a program that acts as a guide to doing field studies for high school students and the same program that the NCS students used for the trip to Mexico.

           
Mrs. Jersild had already planned the trip, booked the hotels, and had almost everything ready when Michoacán, the area where they were supposed to be doing most of their research, was deemed too unsafe for the students due to political unrest. She rewrote the itinerary and moved the activities in Michoacán to Estado de Mexico, a neighboring state.

           
But the change in itinerary ended up being for the better. Because of the change in date, the students were able to see the butterflies during a rare phenomenon called an explosion, when the sixty million butterflies become active due to changes in the environment. Mrs. Jersild said that “the butterflies sounded like a waterfall.”

           
The students also visited a giant cave full of swallows and crept through a narrowing bat cave. Sophomore Kira Jersild said that her favorite activity “canoeing down a river to see a huge waterfall.” Some students enjoyed the quieter parts of the trip. Senior Henry Meredith said that his favorite activity was “hanging out with everybody at the second hotel.” They also went ziplining, dissected bromeliads, and explored the cities.

Students were able to learn about the conservation of Monarch butterflies while still having a little fun. From sitting “stupefied” by millions of butterflies to listening to swallows that sounded “like a thousand jet fighters,” the students left Mexico with memories that will last a lifetime.