Today we started off eating breakfast. At breakfast, one of the people on this trip got sick and needed to get taken to the hospital. The other students got to choose whether they wanted to hike to see waterfalls or go into town. I chose to go into town with three other people and out TA. After she was done, the bus picked us all up from town and we met at the hotel. After lunch, we went on a hike where we were staying. On the hike, we were able to see a waterfall that supplied our bungalows with water as well as learn about the different vegetation that we saw on the trails. After we had lunch, we had a presentation from John and Moira about life at high elevations. I thought that it was really interesting that people heal slower at higher altitudes. They also discussed volcanism and the fact that there cannot be concrete predictions on when a volcano is going to erupt. This was especially interesting because it was brought up when we went to Sierra Negra by Tait, so we were in an area of volcanic activity.
Expansion of knowledge
Life at high altitude
Since a main topic tonight was life at high altitude, I decided to research into the different benefits and detriments of living at a higher altitude. The article, "Living at Altitude: The pros and cons of a high-altitude lifestyle," by Laura Anderson discusses the different elements that go into living at a raised elevation. One major concern mentioned is the air at this elevation. The air is thinner which means that there is less oxygen available. This and the decreased atmospheric pressure can be difficult for some people to deal with, as was seen in our trip with multiple people getting altitude sickness. I thought that it was particularly interesting that the author explained that it would take approximately two years in order to get fully used to living at a high elevation when moving from sea level, and that it would take about three months for an individual to begin to feel comfortable doing high intensity physical activity. Since a lot of athletes train at higher elevations in order to prepare their bodies for competition, multiple studies have been done on this group of people to see if this training technique does impact timed races and other physical competitions. The results was that, if done properly, training at high altitude would be more beneficial for the reduction of competition times.
Works Cited
Living at Altitude: The pros and cons of a high-altitude lifestyle - Acli-Mate® Mountain and Altitude Adjustment Aid. (2013, January 24). Retrieved from https://acli-mate.com/living-at-altitude-the-pros-and-cons-of-a-high-altitude-lifestyle/