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.