Off in to the Great Wilds

So, I stopped posting for awhile there. Which is a good thing, because that meant I was busy enjoying San Jose and San Pedro. I'm on spring break now, for a week, and my parents just arrived at the hostel we're at for tonight in San Jose. Tomorrow we head for a couple days on the Osa Peninsula, next to Corcovado National Park, one of the most amazing places to see jungle and wildlife in CR. After that we spend the rest of the week near Volcano Arenal, the most active volcano in Central America (I think?). Chances to see real lava flowing are low, but hope is springing. After that week, we're back with the program, heading directly to the cloud forest of Monteverde for a week, then a week at Cabo Blanco Nature Reserve which is first national park of CR and is extremely untouched and remote. For all of this, I'll have zero internet access, unless there's some near Arenal, or when we stop in San Jose before going to Monteverde, until getting to La Selva Biol. Station on April 20th. Needless to say, I wouldn't waste my precious internet time on this silly old blog, so this will be my last post until then, except for a sentence or two, perhaps.

What have I been doing in San Jose for the past week or so? I rafted the Pacuare again for my second free tour, with Hart since she didn't go the first time due to frisbee-related soreness. Totally worth it, and I fell out of the raft for the first time out of five rafting trips I've taken. I played frisbee twice a week with some really cool people, and now have an awesome Costa Rica ultimate jersey. I went to a great modern art museum, a couple amazing little art galleries, and went to a 17th-cent Spanish play in the National Theater (which is a fabulously fancy old building in downtown). Never made it to the Jazz Cafe, but I did go to some good bars, especially Ciros, the local hangout five minutes from my house. This afternoon, I went to a fantastic Lebanese restaurant and satisfied my falafel cravings, as well as experiencing the tastiest yogurt I have ever had. I also learned quite a bit of Spanish, although maybe not as much as I would have liked.

I proclaim myself ready to head into the wilderness (excepting some brief, less-than-24-hr breaks in San Jose). I am heartily glad to get out of the city, no matter how enjoyable and culture-tastic it was. Just gimme some of that old-time nay-chur, mae.

Rafting and crafting

What an awesome weekend. After I wrote the previous post, I read about the Pacuare River, where we were going to go rafting, and my guidebook said it's one of the best in the world, for the combination of great rapids and gorgeous views of jungle and canyons. And they were absolutely right. The rafting was definitely the wildest I've done, although it's not THAT much crazier than the Deschutes, in Oregon. The canyon was marred by a couple adventure resorts early on, but after that it was beautiful. I also read that Ticos in the area have done a lot of lobbying to keep the river as pristine as possible, fighting off a possible dam (Costa Rica gets the large majority of it's energy from hydroelectric dams), and getting (one of?) the first designations as a protected wild river in Central America. Well, it was worth it, and I may actually return this coming weekend, since Hart didn't get to go. Her arm got crushed in a collision during pickup last Thursday, so she stayed away from paddling-related activities.

Speaking of pickup, I played with those people again last night, and it was equally awesome. There only around twenty players this time, so I got a lot more playing time, and had a lot of fun.

And continuing the story of last weekend, on Sunday I went to a great festival spread out among four parks in downtown San Jose, called Transitarte (like Transit and arte). There were tons of musical performances, from an a cappela group to latin jazz to a fantastic celtic rock group. There were also a lot of street performers, art installations, over a hundred people selling arts and crafts, and other cool stuff. It's one of the city's big festivals of the summer (otherwise known as the dry season), and it's proof to show the people who say that San Jose is a boring city. Unfortunately, I can't figure out where all these really cool performers go after the festival, or where they were before. But they're around?

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to go to the Jazz Cafe, one of the premier live music venues in San Jose, for their live jazz night. Every night of the week is different, although I'm not sure what the other nights are. And there are a bunch of restaurants I want to go to before leaving. I feel like I'm packing in as much culture as possible before we leave city for more biological stations and jungles. So much to do!

Back in civilization

An abrupt change, from the hot, windswept marsh and bare forest of Palo Verde to the perfect temperatures and bewildering traffic of San Jose and San Pedro. I've been here for two days, a relatively relaxing time compared to the bustle of the last few days at Palo Verde, rushing to edit my paper for it's final submission. But my head tends to hurt after a few hours of class, struggling to get all my thoughts out in Spanish about education and the family in Costa Rica, compared to what we have in the US. The Costa Rica Language Academy is a pretty great place, so far. It's campus is cool, with a couple open places with grass and some plants, surrounded by hallways leading to all the classrooms. Down the street there's two small turf soccer fields enclosed by nets, which the academy has reserved on Thursday afternoons, so I played yesterday with a whole variety of people, from the Tico teaches to students from Japan, Germany, and England. We have class from 9-12 and 1-3, and my intermediate/advanced course spends mornings mostly on grammar, while the afternoon is just conversations on the culture of Costa Rica and Latin America. It's going to be hard, I think, but that's a good thing. And I could definitely use the grammar review

My host family is, of course, very nice, but maybe not quite what I expected. I haven't been in the house much at all, but so far, the family watches a lot of television. My host mom's daughter and stepson live nearby and are here right now watching television. Luckily, any TV here is pretty interesting, since it's all in Spanish! The family has been hosting students for almost ten years, so they've had hundreds, and it feels more like being in a very inviting boardinghouse than anything. I'm okay with that, though, and I won't actually be here much at all, I don't think. Plus, I have my own room and bathroom, which will be the only time that happens my entire stay here in Costa Rica, so it's some nice time to have to myself.

I've also played some frisbee last night with folks I found online, at a field about 30 minutes from my house after getting picked up by a friendly fellow ultimate player. It was fantastic to play ultimate again, and I left just wanting to play more. My throws weren't quite as terrible as I expected, either. The mix of players was really cool, some expats, but mostly local Ticos, some of whom were actually quite good. They always play on Mondays and Thursdays, and I can't wait for Monday.

Another really cool fact about the CRLA program: we get two free tours to be used on our weekends! We get to pick from around ten options, mostly day-long trips. I'm already signed up to go white-water rafting on Saturday, with a bunch of my friends from my course. Other options: Volcano Arenal and hot springs, Volcano Poas, canopy tours (zipline or tram), Pacific coast whirlwhind trip, walking tour of San Jose (not worth much, though), etc. However, I'm not sure I'll use the second tour, since next weekend it might be more worth my time to organize my own trip with some friends to some place cooler, for the entire weekend. Hostels and buses, hooray! We'll figure that out soon, but I'm thinking maybe somewhere on the Carribbean coast, since we don't go there with the program. The tours also are probably going to be really touristy, and I'm just not a fan of riding around for hours on private buses, for a couple of hours at whatever park or volcano or beach, then to be herded to the souvenir stand, then herded back to the bus. Hopefully, the river we're on actually has class III and IV rapids as advertised, too. Either way, though, the river should be beautiful. And hey, I'm in Costa Rica! Pura vida, mae! (Mae is sorta like "dude")

A Rest and then a Test

Mike, Forest, and I presented our project one morning, then turned our papers in that evening. The presentation went very well, probably the best-rehearsed, -written, and -designed science presentation I've ever done. Luckily, Forest enjoys visual design, and made it all very pretty. With the paper, we'll see how that was when I get it back two days from now.

Everyone was quite exhausted after all the presentations and papers, so I think it was no accident that the next morning we headed off for a one-night excursion to the mangrove forests about two hours south, on the Pacific coast. Mangroves are super-cool, consisting of just a few plant species (all trees) that can tolerate very high salt concentrations, and have cool adaptation to deal with all the salt. Also, one species has prop roots that make an excellent jungle gym. Our trip was very light on the pedagogy, and more heavy on the playing in the prop roots, lounging on a beach near the biology station, and some exploring in the morning. All in all, very relaxing for everyone. Plus, I got my first "legal" beer since turning 21 two weeks before. Good times.

Since being back at Palo Verde, we've been mostly studying for our midterm tomorrow, as well as working on insect IDs, and plant dichotomous keys. I still feel pretty relaxed though, we really have quite a bit of time to work on everything. I'm trying to mix in some enjoying of our last few days here at the national park. Late-night excursions into the wetlands are awesome: stalking little crocodiles and big birds, catching frogs, just feeling the mud envelop your feet. Yeah, good times.

Project days

I guess I haven't updated in awhile, but it feels like a very short time. All of the days between these posts have been spent on our independent project, briefly described previously. Luckily, our (Mike, Forest, and I) project has required much less fieldwork than others, and really much less effort in getting the data. Some of our classmates have been less than appreciative of that fact.

Basically, our four days of data collection ran like this: Get up at 6am to pack so we can leave directly after eating breakfast at 6:30. Around 7am, we get dropped off at our study site around a mile from HQ. We then search the area to see what buds have bloomed that day on our plant of interest, whose flowers only for one day. We have to find three plants with varying density of flowers around them, that have at least one flower at both a small and a great height (around .75m and 2m). At 7:30 we begin observing pollinators visiting the flowers. Each of us is stationed at a different plant, and we count the number of bee visits, alternating flowers every five minutes. We switch plants every hour, with ten minute breaks in between, until 10:50. Observing requires a combination of focus and relaxation, one so you are accurate, and one so you don't go crazy. Three hours of observation a day is plenty for me. After that, we measure flower heights, flower density, and some other variables, then head back for lunch. Where our project gets easy is that in the afternoon, we really have nothing to do except a little data entry, and the opportunity to get ahead on our paper/presentation.

With this data, what we have tried to investigate is the effect of various spatial factors on which flowers are chosen to entered by the pollinators. After some analysis today, we've found that flower density doesn't influence visitation, but flower height does, and more bees visit high flowers. However, height only as a categorical variable, as in we label each flower "High" or "Low," matters, while height as a continuous variable (all the actual numbers) doesn't matter. We've decided this means that in general, flower height doesn't independently influence bee visitation, but the categories matter because when a bee reaches an individual plant, it tends to pick the "High" flower over the "Low" flower. Does that all make sense? Maybe. Not the most clear explanation, I know. Maybe once I write my paper, I'll post something better and more concise.

Speaking of which, the next eight days is pretty great. As in we have a group presentation to make on our projects, an individual paper to write on the same project, a midterm exam, a plant test (involving creating a dichotomous key for ten species), and then our ten identified insects are due. At the end of all that, I'm highly looking forward to chilling in San Jose, doing intense language study instead of intense science. I'm hoping to find some cool music stuff to do/go to. Also, playing ultimate with some people that I'm in email contact with since January.

However, leaving Palo Verde will be sad anyway. Something about the general aura here is much more welcoming and homey than Las Cruces ever was. Cooler fauna to see here, too. I've walked among crocodiles in the marsh at night. Awesome. And today we saw a jabiru, a very rare stork that is known for being present at Palo Verde, and is totally huge (1.5m height, over 2m wingspan). Monkeys are also constantly fascinating to watch.

Projects galore

I guess I should tell you first about the second faculty led project I participated in, which involved some flashbacks to this past summer with the Echinacea project in Minnesota. Kathleen Kay, a pollination and evolutionary biologist from UC Santa Cruz (who also, crazily enough, has a friend of Hart's and mine from Grinnell working as a lab assistant right now), set up a project for us involving observing the effects of floral display (like petals) and pollinator reward (in this case pollen) on pollinator visitation rates at a flowering vine. The project was actually originally supposed to be studying the effects on pollinators of a florivorous carpenter bee that is supposed to cut windows out of the flowers to get some nectar from the flower, while not even pollinating the flowers. However, in the first day students went out there, nobody was able to see the carpenters florivorifying the vine, so we were forced to change our objectives a bit. So goes science.

A lot of the students really disliked sitting for several hours observing flowers and recording pollinator visits, but I have experience with tolerating the tedium, and actually enjoyed the day. I do like flowers, and the systems involved, in which one organism is utterly reliant upon another for sexual reproduction, which is equivalent to your very existence on an evolutionary timescale, are fascinating.

And now, we're planning out our first independent projects, for which we have been allotted four days of data collection, beginning the day after tomorrow. I began considering a project relating to scorpions, either in their cannibalistic behavior or in the microclimates surrounding their refuges. But that idea sort of faded, and I began working with a couple other guys to develop some ideas. They originally were aiming for a crocodile project, probably involving playing recorded sounds in the marsh and gauging croc reactions. But that wasn't really feasible/interesting, and we hit upon a project with anoles (small lizards) abundant in this area. We wanted to measure the density of anoles in relation to the trails and roads, to examine the edge effects created by such paths. This seemed promising, but we actually switched one more time! I think the anole project would've been difficult to work out anyways, because we had to visually sample the anole density, and somehow eliminate the bias created by increased visibility on a trail or road because of less litter cover and other cover.

Our final idea is actually building upon the pollinator behavior ideas we began with the faculty led project. Now, we're testing the effects of flower height and local flower density on the pollinator visitation rates on the same flowering vine. Should work well. Alright, I need to go work on our presentation of the project idea. See you all later.

a great day

Well, I could explain some of the things I've done in the past days here at Palo Verde, but to hear about that it would really be much better for you to visit Hart's blog, which I will link again. More productively, I'll tell you about my day so far, which has been pretty great.

We began working on our first faculty-led projects today, the first two of five total that will occur throughout the semester. The two projects at Palo Verde are about the effects of group size on howler monkey behavior, and the pollination biology of a flower and it's interactions with a couple insects. Today I worked with the howler monkeys, which means waking up at 4:45am to get out and find a troop of howlers (by their howls). We did this with some difficulty, but ended up finding them by 6:30. On the way, some of us got to see some owls up close, which was cool.

Then we proceeded to observe their behavior, which consists of observing individual monkeys for fifteen minutes, taking point observations of its activity once a minute, such as traveling, foraging, eating, resting, or being vigilant (watching for predators). This was quite a bit of fun, I thought, despite the crick in my neck and back pain. Here's one of the monkeys I observed.

While we followed the troop of monkeys (until 11), we got some great wildlife viewing in as well. There was an anteater species, which isn't common, and had huge claws. Also, a yellow naped parrot, another uncommon species. We had a good snake encounter, a good sized brown one which I don't know the name for. On top of the owls, a pretty good list.

Then, for lunch there was my first mango of the trip (delicious), and a big pile of beets, accompanied, of course, by my now-customary rice, black beans, and syrup mixture. After lunch: beet-induced naptime, also known as a beet coma.

Two days ago, on our day off, Hart and I hiked around, part of the time with one of our friends from the program. Crown jewel: from a high point we saw a pair of scarlet macaws zoom over the forest. Unmistakable, beautiful, and what I've been told is the only pair of scarlets in this park. Awesome. Here's pictures of our day-to-day schedule, and from the same day off, here's a panorama from a viewpoint (La Roca), and Hart and I from the same viewpoint. My parents will be excited about having another picture of Hart and I. You're welcome!

Too much to explain?

Looking back, I'm not sure I can completely cover everything I should tell you about from the past days. Here's some of what I've got:

Cuerici was a much like a haven, I would say. From the heat, from the internet, from bugs. It's a private reserve that was established by one campesino (Don Carlos) from the area and several (probably wealthy) Ticos from San Jose and other cities. They bought land up in the mountains, combined with the old land of Don Carlos' family. It's now used only for conservation and for education, both of local schoolchildren and college students. Don Carlos also still runs a trout farm there, along with some blackberries, the primary crop of the area. I really liked the montane oak forest around it, and running and hiking the one loop trail. Here's a picture of the sunrise from a spot ten minutes up the road leading to the reserve, looking out towards the Pacific, which is normally visible when not covered in clouds.


I've already seen some great things here at Palo Verde. We've watched howler and white-faced monkeys, huge iguanas, the biggest cockroach I've ever seen, interesting ant acacias, walked out into the wetlands to look at storks and crocodiles, and seen this amazing sunset from a lookout up on a cliff. My pictures were stitched together into this panorama by a program.


For more descriptions and such, check out Hart's blog, who uses better words than I. Tomorrow, we visit sugar cane and rice fields. Also, it is my birthday, the third day in a row that we will have a birthday in the program. Cake every day!

Back from Mtns

So, a long hiatus from internet was very enjoyable, although that's also related to the wonderful place that is Cuerici Biological Reserve. Montane oak forest, overlooking a beautiful valley, viewpoints from which you can see the Osa Peninsula and the Pacific Ocean. Many cool things, I will post pictures when I get the chance, along with some details about what we did.

Now, we're at Palo Verde, both a national park and an OTS station, containing wetlands and very rare tropical dry forest. It's hot and dry, and luckily the wind keeps the bugs away so far. But beautiful as well. We'll be here for three more weeks, and do our first independent projects. Now, I have to do some reading and go to bed. The internet connection is monumentally slow, so I'm going to upload some pictures later when everyone else isn't using it at the same time.

The Last Days

This is our last night at Las Cruces, for tomorrow we head to Cuerici, a remote site in the mountains, for five days. I'll tell you all about that when we get back, because there's no internet, even the phone is only for emergencies. But hey, what did I do the last couple days?

Well, earlier today I had my first test of the semester, a plant ID practical. Just a bunch of plants on tables that we had to identify to family. I did well, but I'm not looking forward to more of the same tests, but with over twice as many families that we have to know by the end (this time it was about 20).

Yesterday was our free day, and Hart and I spent the morning hiking through the forest, all the way into the nearby town, where the shuttle that is set up for us on free days picked us up. It was a great break, and we saw some cool stuff. Also, we stopped and I climbed the strangler fig featured in one of my earlier posts. Here's a view from the top and a view of me:That was great fun.

I spent most of the rest of the free day lounging about, finishing up my stats homework, as well as the identification of my ten required insects. Also: lots of futbol.

Now, I am tired and need to go to sleep. Look here for stories in six days or so. Hasta luego!

La Finca

Yesterday, we visited a farm (una finca) about twenty minutes from Las Cruces. I think this is my favorite activity we've done so far. The night before, we watched a video about coffee production, which focused on a coffee grower's cooperative in Agua Buena, the town near here, and their relationship formed with the Community Agroecology Network, from Santa Cruz, CA. So, then we got to visit the farm of one of the coffee producer's from that video, who also grows a variety of vegetables and other crops, but only for local production.

His name is Roberto Jimenez, and his farm is everything that can be good about agriculture. His coffee is shaded, providing crucial habitat for birds and other organisms. He grows organically, with a diversity of crops, and is very concerned with conserving the soil and water in the area. Don Roberto only has around a fifth grade education, but he speaks passionately and convincingly for sustainable practices, even in his low-pitched, calm and measured Spanish.

The growers in Agua Buena have worked with groups in the United States to now offer their coffee for direct sale to US consumers over the internet, which is a great boon to all the growers and their families. The website has good information on it, there's a picture of Don Roberto at the bottom. If you like good coffee and fair prices, you should order some directly from Don Roberto and his neighbors (Tip: if you download the order form and do it by mail, I think it's cheaper).

In Las Cruces news, I've been playing soccer pretty much every day, and getting to know all of my classmates and professors much better. We're only here until Wednesday morning, when we move to Cuerici, a mountain site with no internet access. I'll be sad to move on, it's pretty cushy and living in the middle of a world-class botanical garden is hard to beat.

Strangling figs

You may have noticed that I forgot to upload the pictures I mentioned in my last post. Well, now they're there. And if you didn't notice, just pretend those last two sentences never happened.

Hart got here without a hitch, and it's been great introducing her to everyone here, and showing her around the garden and everything. If you want, she's also blogging her experiences, which you can read here.

Class time has reduced a bit, but we have plenty to do between readings, insect collecting/identifying, practicing plant taxonomy, statistics homework, and (claro) playing futbol.

This morning we went on a hike through some pastures, looking at the small forest fragments within the farmland. Yesterday morning we also hiked, this time to a stretch of trail in the jungle where we all sat down in isolated spots and did our mandatory 30 min. of field journal time. We'll be doing this at every site we visit, but we'll do it on our own for the remainder of the semester. It's nice to just let the thoughts and ideas pour out, without specific form or guidance to constrain you. Hopefully, I'll get some good ideas for independent projects during my observations. And, on the way back from the field observation, Mike stopped to climb the enormous strangler fig next to the trail. After I had gone on, apparently two more people climbed it, one of them being our oldest and most experience professor, Mauricio. The last time he climbed the tree was in 1989. I wish I had a picture of that, but here's what I do have.

Uf. It's been several days since my last post, and now I'm lost as to what to cover. Maybe this will help:

I took this so I wouldn't have to get up from my computer every time I wanted to look at our schedule. They didn't give us all hardcopies, because they avoid doing that as much as possible, to reduce paper consumption. I don't mind so much with the schedule, but doing almost all of our reading on computers can be annoying.

We spent a large part of Tuesday talking about tropical restoration efforts, with a lecture from Zak (director here at Las Cruces), and a hike out to the restoration project, called Melissa's. Here's a (not very good) picture from the hike, with Zak pointing at something.


The forest in the background is secondary forest that used to be pasture.

In our lecture on the geologic history of Costa Rica, it seemed to me that the formation of a land bridge between the Americas was a monumental serendipitous placement of the Galapagos hotspot. Seriously, it's pretty ridiculous for this spindly little thread of former islands to drift in and connect two huge continents. And it changed everything, in small and large ways, directly and indirectly, for human and natural history.

And hey, exciting news! Hart is currently en route to Las Cruces, after getting into San Jose last night. And then we have one more week here. I wish we could stay longer.

Natural history all day long

We've spent the majority of our time the last few days studying natural history and taxonomy, of insects (plus more on Lepidoptera) and plants (vegetative, floral, and fruit). My brain is going to implode from the weight of all the new terms and concepts, but I've really enjoyed the head-first dive into both formal and applied (read: useful) taxonomy. Some terms I've heard before, but the majority I haven't. One of my favorites: arcuately subparallel (a type of leaf venation). We've dissected flowers, and examined floral parts and insects under scopes, which has been cool. One of my strongest impressions is that plants in general are amazing for the extreme variety that exists in shapes, colors, functions, structures of all the exact same basic parts and organs, especially in flowers. When I think about it, the extremity of it all is hilarious and fascinating at the same time. From the delicate, ornate orchid flowers to the enormous bulbous inflorescences to the basic daisy. And fruits can get even more bizarre.

Also: cool Lepidoptera (moth and butterfly) facts! Butterflies actually have the best eyesight of any organism, with four (or even five) cones where we have three, and the capability to view light from infrared to ultraviolet.

We got our first real homework assignment yesterday, which is to catch and identify down to family 10 different insects at each of the three major OTS stations (here at Las Cruces, Palo Verde, and La Selva). I can't decide if this is going to be fun or frustrating. Some of both, probably. Funstrating?

We played soccer for the second time today, got in around an hour and a half. I always feel a lot more energetic after playing sports, or at least doing something really strenuous. My left foot was hot today, I scored all my goals with it.

I've been spending a fair amount of time with David, one of the Tico students, and I'm beginning to feel more comfortable with understanding the Ticos, and with speaking in Spanish. Which feels good. And, oh yeah! the language academy told me who my host family will be:

"Ana Isabel, your Costa Rican hostess, is a homemaker. Her husband, Esteban (born:1960), is a taxi driver. They live with their daughter Rebeca (born:1985) and their grandchildren visit often and sometimes stay overnight."

Sounds good to me.

Busy like africanized honeybees

Today has definitely been the busiest day so far. I think I'm going to do this schedule-style, accompanied with comments. Otherwise I'll forget things.

6:30 - Another delicious breakfast. Gallo pinto (rice and beans). Fruit. Simple and good.
8:00 - Our first real activity related to biology, a hike into the forest adjacent to the garden. We get into the primary forest, then spend twenty minutes doing solo observations of the forest structure in our notebooks.
10:00 - Small group discussions about what we observed, and providing a brief definition of rainforest structure. Did you know there are plants that start life rooted in the ground, climb up treetrunks, slough off their original connections to the ground, and at some point drop new roots from the trunk down to the ground? This is cool.
11:00 - Look around for a soccerball to play with on the small field in a corner of the garden. No success.
12:00 - Hungry. Lunch. Yum. (more fruit)
12:55 - Go for my first run here with another student, Mike. We trail run through the jungle bit, then crisscross the garden trails. Sprints, core workout. Wash all the sweat off and get to class just in time...
14:00 - Plant taxonomy lecture, then workshop. We basically go over all the ways to describe vegetative structures. We're going to learn how to identify most plant families that live here. You generally don't do genus or species because it's really difficult, and there are just too many of them.
17:00 - Soccer ball appears from somewhere. Twelve or so of us head off to play soccer. Score a couple goals, play until dusk and dinner and get really sweaty again.
18:00 - Dinner, then shower.
19:00 - Lecture on modern Costa Rican history. We talk about CAFTA for about half of it. Costa Rica actually just put CAFTA into effect the first of this month, after a national referendum last October, which was the first referendum held since before WWII. It passed by a very slim margin.
21:00 - Read Plans and write this, surrounded by twelve other students hooked up to their laptops.

The soccer was great. So was the hike. We get a day off on Monday. What should I do?

Las Cruces

I've been at Las Cruces for a little over 24 hours now, and I think I already feel right at home. The botanical garden here surrounds the buildings, and just walking around on the paths is great. I'm looking forward to going on runs, and getting to know my way around them better. I went on a night hike last night with some of the other students, and saw several frogs, tons of spiders, and a cool phosphorescent insect. Other than that, I don't feel like I have all that many stories to report. I guess I haven't been here long enough. I can report, though, that the food is excellent.

Orientation

This will have to be quick, since we're leaving for dinner soon. But, hey! Orientation!

Most of the group met last night at this semi-swanky hotel in an outlying district of San Jose. We went to OTS headquarters today, met all the professors, got some syllabi, did some paperwork, got a few fear-inducing lectures on safety (in the field and in the city).

None of the South Africans (there are two) are here yet, due to plane difficuties. But, from what I can tell, we have a lot of great diversity in the group. Well, I guess we are mostly white kids, and about half from liberal arts schools. But what I mean is that the Americans are from all over the United States, and our academic backgrounds and general experience and interests are quite diverse. We have a natural history buff, a geology major, a pre-dental from Penn, people interested in environmental science and policy, people (like me) more on the ecology side, those who like to try new foods, and those who are more comfortable with hamburgers and fries. I think I can see some purposeful effort put into selecting an interesting mix of students. Which I think will be both challenging and rewarding. Not to sound too much like a brochure or anything.

Tomorrow morning we take the long bus ride to the very southern edge of Costa Rica to our first field station, Las Cruces, in the pre-montane forest. It'll be nice to get out of the city.

Also, I forgot to clarify at the beginning that this is called a "flog" because it's a "field log," a term stolen from the blog for the Echinacea Project, a research project I worked on this past summer. So that's that.

Wet volcano adventures

I woke up at 5am to catch the bus from San Jose to Heredia, where I would proceed to be confused, and miss the bus from Heredia to Sacramento, which is a few kilometers from the entrance to the park. So, not to be defeated, I got a taxi instead, which got me a little closer than the bus would have. I got to see some first-class crazy Tico driving on the way through Sacramento, which is a town simply strung along this single, steep, winding road that just barely contains two car widths. I was surprised that as we got higher, the houses actually got nicer, and a large number of the driveways were gated, and you could often see well-kept gardens inside. As we scaled the mountain, I was also surprised that what began as a mist increased with elevation until it was a full-blown drizzle where I got out of the taxi, the end of the paved road.

I took off up the road at a good clip, eager to get into the park and on to some real trails. There would have been some great views froms the road, I'm sure, if the clouds hadn't been there. A turquoise Geo Metro passed me on the road, one of the few cars, and it was parked at the entrance when I got there. Turns out that I had arrived just after the Geo, because my pace equals that of a car on a dirt road with that many holes in it. So I came to fall in with my three hiking buddies for the morning, the contents of the Geo being John, Adolfo, and Sandra, an eclectic bunch of folks. John is a tough old guy from some town in Southern CA, and he's in his third week of Spanish classes in a San Jose suburb. His host family is a young couple, the Tico Adolfo, always cracking deadpan jokes, and Sandra, a Swiss transplant to Costa Rica, who spoke a little English and fluent Spanish. I enjoyed walking with John, who hadn't known any Spanish before coming here, so we trade small sentences in Spanish. It turns out he does quite a bit of backpacking in the Sierra Nevadas, and has even hiked the entire southern half of California on the Pacific Crest Trail! (Dark picture. oops.)


There are just a few trails in this section of the park, and the main one leads to Lago Barva, in the crater of the volcano. Everything is just thick, green rainforest, and by this time it's raining pretty good, and the trail is muddy and dotted with puddles and mud patches. The lake is in a bit of a depression, and is completely ringed with vegetation. Yup, pretty gray.

We explored one other trail, and it was great to just be in this very rainy forest, instead of a drizzly, dirty city. The only animals we saw were a couple small birds in the bushes from a viewpoint along the trail. When we got back to the entrance, I was unhappily surprised by wet backpack contents. In the last half-hour or so, my backpack had finally given up, and let the water seep through to the main pocket. My guidebook got it right in the chest, and the bus schedule was done for. Of course, bodily I was soaked, although my feet had been bone-dry in my goretex hikers until (I think) the water leached from my pants to my socks. Happily, John had convinced Adolfo to give me a ride to the closest large town, Barva, where I could catch the bus back to San Jose. I was surprised that Adolfo was so reluctant, because up until then he had been incredibly friendly and welcoming. He said something about me being so wet, and that I would need to give them some money. So we went down the mountain, and in Barva, Adolfo asked for 5,000 colones (about 10 dollars), which I gave him, because I didn't feel like bargaining with someone I came to regard as a friend. But really, that's about as much as a taxi would have been, although I suppose a taxi couldn't actually get up that dirt road. I'm just a little disappointed, because it seemed like he didn't trust me.

All in all, though, it was a great trip, and I was glad to meet some people to hike with. I'm just chilling in Casa Ridgway for the rest of the day, and trying to dry out my books with some intense stares. Oh, and naps. Naps are important. Tomorrow I meet everyone in my program! Nervous?

True Fact: Longest Post Ever

Buenas! That's the standard greeting in Costa Rica, short for "buenas noches," but you can use "adios" as a greeting, too. I have explored downtown San Jose and the immediate surroundings pretty thoroughly now, and I'm getting ready to move on. I spent Friday looking for cool museums and galleries, and was moderately successful. The Jade Museum was an impressive collection of jade artifacts as well as many other pre-Columbian pieces. I found a couple cool little art galleries recommended by the Lonely Planet guide, and had a nice look around. Disappointingly, their modern art museum is closed for renovation until the middle of February.

Later that evening, I found my bunk room at Casa Ridgway had gained a person, Greg, who I've spent a fair amount of time with by now. Greg graduated from Oregon State a few years ago, and works there now, monitoring sustainability for their facilities. He was waiting for a friend to arrive before vacationing for a couple weeks, and we bonded immediately, being the only under-50 guests at la casa. We had dinner at a nearby traditional Costa Rican place with onions hanging in the windows, which is the site of this really sketchy story:

Greg and I were discussing options for him and his friend, and I began to tell him about what I read in Lonely Planet about the sex trade in Costa Rica. I don't know if this is pretty widely known, but large numbers of married (or single) American men show up here as "anglers." I'm sure they fish, but they also hire many lady friends, who are very easy to find in certain parts of downtown San Jose, and in certain tourist communities along the Pacific coast (Jaco is the most notorious). Prostitution is legal in Costa Rica, as long as everyone is over 18, but how often do you think the customers ask for ID? There are some ad campaigns against child prostitution, but it's apparently not incredibly successful. So anyway, just as I start explaining the "anglers" to Greg, the portly gringo at the table next to us leans over and asks for some advice on ordering. There are English explanations of all the dishes, but he wants to know what we have, and what we recommend. He obviously doesn't speak any Spanish, and has never heard of plantains. Now, none of this is necessarily bad, but he's pretty obnoxious in general. Introductions go around (I've forgotten his name), he's from Boston (where it's very cold), and Greg asks if he has any suggestions on where he should go with his friend. Here's where it gets interesting. Portly gringo leans in close, and begins to tell us that we should really check out this place called "Del Rey." Apparently, he says there are a lot of "beautiful girls," and a lot of hotel rooms available. But, he warns that when you go, you have to make sure to lock the minibar in the room, and not leave any money lying around. Greg and I just kind of let him go on, sort of fascinated by his complete disregard for courteous conversation. Portly gringo and his friend are, in fact, heading down to the infamous Jaco later this week. I'm a bit disappointed that Greg and I apparently look like dudes interested in Del Rey, and Jaco. But then again, portly gringo was remarkably oblivious to most things, it seems. He asked the waitress for ketchup for his sea bass. Sigh.

So, that's enough of that sort of thing. Music time! I've managed to find two great free performances so far, one later that night in a bar north of downtown. The guide mentioned several places with live folk music in the district, and Greg and I found one. It was pretty great, two old Ticos in a tiny bar, one with a guitar and mic, the other with bongos. I had really never heard anything like this music before. On the surface it was acoustic Latin folk, but you could definitely tell that whoever wrote these songs had listened to a lot of American singer-songwriters, from the melodic style to some of the guitar playing. Unfortunately, I could only catch the occasional word. Also: best bongo solo I've ever heard, from the very old white-haired Tico. The second concert was in one of the famous plazas, and was a fantastic groove session. It was a pretty hip world fusion group, a collection of percussionists with two guitarists, bass player, and singer. They started out playing in a more cubano or argentino style, but as the two hour show progressed and people gathered, they started rocking out more and more. By the end, there was a small mosh pit in front, which was entirely appropriate, even though the music still held on to its latin groove feel. More great solos, from guitar and flute. Also, it's comforting to know that wherever you go in the world, PA systems will still turn off at random points in a show.

For tomorrow, I have actually managed to plan out how to climb Volcan Barva. Two bus rides, starting at 5am, and hopefully it won't be too hot, and I'll get back before it's dark. I bought lunch at the market, and I'm pretty excited.

Hooray for having followers! I'm going to assume that Jabreal is a stalker, and I should avoid him at all costs. In conclusion, I owe Stephan a prize for being my first follower. Here it is:

en la casa de la paz

My parents will be very relieved to hear that I made it to Casa Ridgway (Quaker-run hostel) last night without a hitch. I talked to the taxi driver some on the way, but felt far too tired too understand more than the occasional word. The hostel is pretty great, and I look forward to not missing breakfast (7:30-8:30) tomorrow morning, so I can meet everyone else who is staying here. Today will consist of me wandering around the city, going to museums, and hopefully making plans to climb Volcan Barza. But I suspect there's no way to get close enough by bus. We'll see.

Beginnings with rocks in them

So, the original plan was for Hart and I to spend three days in the capital San Jose before our program starts on Monday, but those got rather interrupted by Hart's appendix. She had to have an emergency removal on Wednesday, so that means she can't come to Costa Rica for two weeks, due to a lack of stomach muscles. This leaves me with three days to spend in the capital on my own, where I'll arrive in less than 24 hours!

Excitement (and a little panic) sets in. Next post will be from Costa Rica.

Premonitions

This is where I will post about my semester abroad in Costa Rica, studying tropical biology in all sorts of different habitats. Two days! Oh my. I have to go pack now.