Andy Snider, Fresno Chaffee Zoo's director of animal care and conservation, is in Armenia to tag and track Armenian vipers. Snider is a nationally known expert on reptiles and amphibians. Snider is in Armenia until Sept. 10 and is sharing his experiences with readers of The Bee.

Part 5, 31 August 2008

I found out last night that I had lied on yesterday's entry concerning the temperatures here. Since CNN doesn't broadcast the temps here, I was strictly going on "feel," so I decided to check the temperature last night on one of our thermometers as we were headed to bed around midnight.

It was 86 degrees at that time, and when I woke up this morning, it had dropped all of one degree overnight. So it looks like it's in the low-to-mid 90s here during the day and mid-80s at night. The humidity is hovering right around 30-35%. Makes for really warm and sticky sleeping at night, that's for sure.

We walked to an Armenian pizza restaurant last night after the internet cafe stop. Interesting place, good food, and quite expensive for that type of food. But well worth it, at least once during the trip. Got us away from cucumbers and tomatoes for one meal anyway. Don't get me wrong -- I love cucumbers and tomatoes, and typically eat quite a few of them at home too. But sometimes it's nice to have even a little change...

Today we're just preparing for our trip to the Meghri region, at the extreme southern part of the country, right on the border with Iran. It's a beautiful area, and we typically visit this region every year during our trip. We're leaving for Meghri tomorrow, and won't be returning to Yerevan until Wednesday night, so there will be a small hiatus of this blog for the next several days.

While all of Armenia is fairly high-elevation (it's in the Caucasus Mountains, after all), the mountains in Meghri are extremely high. To give you an idea, Yerevan sits at around 5,000 feet; where we camp in Meghri is around 7,200 feet. Hiking at this altitude is rigorous, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll obviously tell you more about the trip after our return. Matt has never been camping before, so he's really psyched about the new adventure. We'll see how he feels afterward. :-)