Monday, April 21, 2014

The Two-Week Hiatus Explained

Following Spring Break, we jumped right back into the swing of things for our classes. I was a little sad to see my break go (also that meant that the course is more than half over- eep!), but we went to some amazing places in the past two weeks, where I had the opportunity to have a lot of new experiences. 

First, we headed out of San Jose to Monteverde. Once we got there, we had to hike down to the field station with all of our things for around 45 minutes. I considered it a miracle that I managed not to fall over with my backpack, especially because it was debatable as to whether or not I would be able to get back up again.  The San Gerardo field station was a welcome sight to us sweaty college kids who each carried ~20 lbs of stuff down into the valley where it was located. 

First of all, we were greeted by this view of Arenal Volcano from our rooms, which also was the view that could be seen from the hammocks (even more bonus points):

Yep. Could get used to this.
Second, we found out that the station hosted a ping pong table. So we naturally launched ourselves (including the professors and our TA) into a tournament (I unfortunately only won one round, and then lost in the first round of the tournament, but still had a good time). 

Third, the cook made snacks for us that were to DIE for. I'm talking homemade empanadas, banana bread and donuts kind of good. I'm pretty sure I gained like 6 pounds just at this station, I ate so much food. 

Fourth, the biodiversity in this area is astounding. The cloud forest is a very rare type of ecosystem, so a lot of endemic species call Monteverde home. Managed to get introduced to some bird watching finally, which was pretty successful- saw some pretty cool birds, including the endangered Mottled Bell Bird! We also had the opportunity to go on a lot of night hikes, which also led to some interesting finds:

Glass Frog! 
Snail!
Me getting way too excited about holding a frog. 
Fifth, Monteverde just hosted some pretty cool sights. We ended up taking a trail on our last full day that lasted pretty much the whole day. But in the end, we got to see the river that runs through the park, as well as this pretty sweet waterfall:

Do you feel tranquil yet?
Unfortunately, we didn't quite realize what our professor had meant by a "tough trail". So the way back from this beautiful sight was kind of hellish, because it was uphill essentially the whole way. And by uphill, I mean like you were basically scrambling up cliff faces and then on a 45 degree angle for the rest of the hike. I felt good that we managed to complete the hike anyways, but it made the next day when we had to hike out of San Gerardo (with all our stuff again) even more hellish. But, to be fair, it didn't help that the road was practically 3 inch deep mud the whole way up. 

We eventually did make it back to the bus (after essentially skating up the entire hill), and we spent that night in the more touristy section of Monteverde. It was interesting to contrast our experience of Monteverde with what the tourism industry attempts to sell to foreigners. Essentially, the tourism industry of Monteverde has focused on marketing "EXTREME" tourism, like zip lining, bungee jumping, etc. and it has eventually morphed into the surrounding community becoming extremely dependent on tourism for their economic stability. 

We didn't actually get to go zip lining or anything like that, but we still saw a good portion of how reliant the community is on tourism. In the end, we got to visit a Co-op that had little gifts for sale made by community members, and then got ice cream from the cheese factory that a set of Quakers began when they moved to the area in the 1950s. The ice cream was so worth it after a hard day of walking around practically everywhere. And to top it all off, we visited a shop that set up hummingbird feeders outside. There were at least 50 hummingbirds zipping around in the area, and some of them would actually land on your hand if you stood still next to the feeders. 



Our next adventures took us across borders, where we ended up in Panama. The entire process of getting ourselves to Panama was a lesson in patience and politeness to immigration officials. But the cool part was that I had the opportunity to actually walk across an international border, which I thought was super cool (albeit on a very rickety bridge that possessed gaping holes that I very nearly fell into). 

In the end, everything went fairly smoothly and we ended up in our final destination: Bocas del Toro. Here, we had our marine biology section of the course, and essentially got to snorkel in coral reefs for three days straight. I unfortunately don't have very many photos from Bocas because I don't own an underwater camera, but I seriously did see some really cool stuff that truly allowed my inner nerd to unleash itself in full bloom. Some of the highlights from my snorkeling adventures include: an eel, a puffer fish, a ray, spiny lobsters, jellyfish, too many fish to count (including a baby barracuda, butterflyfish, damselfish, and LOADS more), corals, sponges, shrimp, crabs and so much more. This was easily one of my favorite activities that I've done in the course so far, and I absolutely had a blast.  Not to mention, Bocas was not too bad on the eyes.

Could get used to this. Part II. 
The only part I didn't really enjoy about Bocas was the field station. It was clearly still in the middle of construction, and we were kind of forced to share a bathroom between 11 of us... Not the most ideal situation, but the snorkeling was so awesome it definitely made up for that. I also somehow managed to legitimately fall into the boat from the shoreline. I was standing in ~2ft of water, so I decided to just pull myself up into the boat using the side. I somehow instead managed to fall flat on my face, driving my shoulder into the bottom of the boat.  Thinking back, I still don't really know what went wrong in that situation, but the boat driver tried so hard to stifle laughter when he told me that he had never seen anyone else manage that before. 

But, all in all, I really enjoyed Bocas and the type of research that we did there. My only regret is that I wore my flippers for too long - my apologies to my bruised toes. 

Now we're back at La Selva (after a surprisingly easy border crossing back into Costa Rica), which is our final station. It's kind of weird to be at our last field station, but it seems like we're going to have a great time here. We've already seen loads of animals:

PECCARY PIG PILE. SO CUTE. 
A photo of a porcupine that I unashamedly took through the scope of the guide. 
Leaf tent making bats!
Orb Weaver Spider!

And today we had the opportunity to go up into the canopy towers and take a look around, which was an awesome experience. 

It was actually really great to be back in climbing gear. Hahaha.  
Across the Canopy
Yeah, this was pretty tall. 
So La Selva already proves to be pretty promising! Really excited for the next couple weeks, but not the workload associated with it. Wish me luck!

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