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.