The Extreme Weekend

It occurred to me the other day that I passed the halfway mark from when I arrived in Costa Rica and when I'll be leaving to go back home. It's kind of a strange feeling. As cliché as it is, time really flies when you're having fun. I feel like every time I blinked I ended up somewhere new in the country. Home stay will be over in a few short days, but we still have three more sites to go to, not including our vacations that start this Saturday.  But Costa Rica still has plenty to offer, and this past weekend definitely proved that to me. 

My weekend started off with some rock climbing after school. The guys who work at the gym have started to recognize us and seem to really enjoy having us there, probably because we give them an opportunity to work on their English. Also as our Spanish has gotten better, we're starting to understand what they've been trying to tell us climbing wise. There was definitely a learning curve to translate the climbing lingo in English to climbing lingo in Spanish and vice versa. But we were definitely able to crack a few jokes with them on Thursday, so that's a good sign.

The next day (really freaking early) we all hopped on a bus to Manuel Antonio, which is known for great beaches and its National Park. We didn't really have time or the funds to go to the Park (although I plan to go within my vacation), so we spent most of the time on the beach. I had a great time on the beach, and the views were fantastic.

Yep. Could get really used to this.

The only drawback to the beach was that it was a little touristy (and therefore a little more expensive than elsewhere) and the fact that my gringa skin was not used to tropical sun on beaches. I may or may not have gotten slightly burned despite my constant slathering of sunscreen (SPF 50, so don't even talk to me). Nevertheless, the fact that I was able to actually be at a beach out ruled any negatives I had about Manuel Antonio. My friends can attest, I was not unlike an overexcited dog when we finally got in the water. 

Saturday night I ended up returning to San Jose slightly earlier than my friends. This was so I could catch a bus to Pursical in the morning to take me to the countryside where I was finally able to go horseback riding. For five glorious hours, I went on a trail ride that took us through tiny towns and the normally unseen countryside. The scenery was beautiful, and it also was just great to be back on a horse again. The whole experience was a blast, and I also got some pretty good pizza out of it too. 

One of my favorite views.

The only picture I managed to take because I was terrified of dropping my phone in the dirt.

Needless to say, I'm still trying to recover from this weekend, but overall it was a fantastic experience. My only regret about the whole weekend was the fact that I kind of left a presentation to the wayside that was due on Monday. However, the presentation actually went rather well, so I'm interpreting that as a sign that my Spanish has improved. 

Just a few more days of Spanish class remain and then I'll be free on my vacation! I'm really excited to finally actually have a break and to just enjoy what Costa Rica has to offer. Updates about my break will come soon!

City Zen

After roughing it in Palo Verde, returning to the city has been a welcome breath of fresh air. I have seriously underestimated the value of having a double bed (that's not a top bunk) and a room to myself. It is very safe to say that I am enjoying my home stay thus far. 

Overall, my home stay is amazing. The house itself is gorgeous, in addition to the fact that I have my own room. Honestly, the entire set up of the house is very similar to my life in the United States.  My mama tica (it's what we all call our host moms- Tico/Tica is basically a slang term for someone from Costa Rica), Denia has been great so far. She's very welcoming and treats me like one of her own- especially in terms of her trying to set me up with a Tico while I'm here. She's so candid and hilarious. I'm really happy where I ended up in terms of my home stay. Also I have a puppy tico as well, so that also makes life pretty awesome.

Name: Gatsby, Haircut: Unfortunate

The Spanish classes have also been going fairly well. Originally, I somehow ended up in a level lower than I should have been. But after speaking with my professor and the director of the language academy, I was put in a class that was more suited to my level. So there was an unfortunate amount of stress and boredom associated with those first few days of class. But now I'm in a level more suited for my level of Spanish, I'm enjoying the classes a lot more, and I actually am learning a lot. My spanish has already improved within the span of a week, which has been fantastic. I also catch myself thinking to myself in Spanish as well, which is also a great sign of improvement. 

Additionally, the language academy hosts different cultural activities after classes which are also a lot of fun. So far, I've learned some basic salsa moves (but only from the guy's perspective because there were too many girls to guys that day). But the fact that I actually learned a few dance moves is an obstacle in itself. Tomorrow I'm going to be participating in a cooking class that I'm really excited for. It should be a lot of fun!

I have had to get used to city living again though. The first couple days were filled with the stress of understanding the bus system here in Costa Rica. Busses here are run by private companies. So there's really no predicting when the bus will actually arrive or how comfortable it will be. Also shout out to the people who manage to do their make up on the busses in the morning. You are astounding individuals, as I can barely manage to sit in the seat. But at least the bus is super cheap. It works out that at most it will cost around 50 cents for one bus ride to school or back to my neighborhood. 

We've also had a chance to explore parts of the city that we haven't seen before. Of course, we also returned to the climbing gym, and are planning on returning this week. The night life here is also kind of interesting. In most cases, most Ticos go out for one or two drinks and then call it good for the night, which is not necessarily the culture in the United States. Some of the night life is clearly catered to foreigners (such as ourselves), but some of it is clearly more Tico. We've unfortunately seen a lot of the stuff catered to foreigners (but shout out to the Costa Rican Beer Factory, because that was delicious and had great beer), so hopefully we'll see more of the more authentic stuff as our home stay continues. 

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this blog post, but I normally don't carry around my phone or camera for safety purposes. I'll attempt to take some pictures of San Pedro/elsewhere soon. My friends and I are also possibly planning on going to the beach this weekend, which should also be a lot of fun. Essentially, I'm looking at this home stay as a break from school, even though I do have work for my spanish class. Staying in a house to be doted on is definitely what the doctor ordered based on the first part of the semester.

Final Days at Palo Verde

The past couple days have honestly been a blur, mainly spent working on the various assignments that needed to get done during our last days here at Palo Verde.

One assignment was to construct a dichotomous key for some of the common plant species that surround the station. A dichotomous key is a tool that can be used to identify certain species based on traits that they possess. Each species has to follow the other in a sequence and you can't repeat traits. This actually turned out to be a little difficult- it's pretty much like putting a puzzle together and took a lot of thinking about plant traits. However, while we were walking around looking at the traits of each plant, there were a couple of awesome individuals hanging around the area which made walking around in the sun a bit better:

Giant group of Coatis! 

All of the marsh animals!

After that, we had our midterms. They went pretty well, it was just a chore to convince ourselves to study for the two exams that we had. Especially after finishing up IPs, the concept of more work was just not appealing. Then, as an extra bonus, we had to do our rewrites for our IP papers pretty much right after the exams. But finally, all the work is done and now I just get to relax. Which ended up looking like this for the brief period that we had between exams and rewrites:

Shout out to Miki for having the patience to do this to my hair and taking this picture. 

I did also manage to take one last hike in the morning to watch the sunrise from my favorite lookout point here. It turned out to be well worth it to hike up there:

So although the last couple days here at Palo Verde have been a craze of work-induced stress, I've still managed to take some time to soak everything in. I feel like I blinked and the past three weeks went by. I'm a little sad to see Palo Verde go- the habitats and organisms around here are fascinating. But I will admit that I'm getting a little tired of the station itself (there's pretty much nothing to do past the trails that we already did).

We head out tomorrow to the home stay section of the course. There, we'll be learning Spanish at a language academy as well as staying with a family for the next two weeks. I'm really excited to meet my family tomorrow. If home stay is anything like how it was when I visited Nicaragua, I know I'm going to have a great time. Let's just hope that my Spanish comes back quickly.

For now, adios Palo Verde!

Mangroves = Yes, Snakes = No

I'll begin this blog post with a few photos that really should have been in my last blog post. Unfortunately it appeared the day after I posted the last blog post, but whatever.

Yes. That is a boa constrictor.

I happened upon this lovely specimen because I almost sat down right next to its hidey hole. If you know me at all, snakes are not my jam. Maybe I watched one too many nature documentaries where the snake eats some cute fluffy mammal as a child, but whatever. I just find them to be creepy. Later, I found out that my professor went out with one of the workers here at the station and caught it. We had "Show-And-Tell" that night where I spent most of my time on top of a chair.

I did get over my sissiness about snakes for about 2 seconds to pet it. But that was enough adventure for me for the rest of the night. But now every time someone finds a snake, my professor gets really excited and then tries to shove it in my unwilling face. I acknowledge that snakes are cool organisms, but from a healthy distance.

There weren't too many other surprises in the field, so my independent research project went fairly smoothly. The independent project proved to be a pretty fun experience (until the presentation and the paper for it were due on the same day). In the end, we discovered that the presence of a predator had no effect on the visitation of the pollinators or insects, but we did find that the spiders were taking as many bee species as we saw visiting. So, our data suggest that a predator avoidance strategy for insects isn't present in this system concerning Peucetia viridans and Ruellia inundata, but that the presence of P. viridans may be affecting pollinator populations. Nerdiness aside, I did actually have a lot of fun working on this project and it definitely gave me some new ideas for my own research back home.

Today was our first day in a week in which we haven't been working on our independent projects. It actually was a blast. We hopped on a river boat and were taken on a tour of the Tempisque River, which feeds a large portion of the marshland here. The sights from the river boat were beautiful, and it was nice to simply spend some time relaxing on the river.

View from the river.

Look how safe I was on the boat, ma!

The boat eventually took us to a mangrove forest which was also a super cool experience (albeit super muddy). Costa Rica only has six species of mangroves, and we saw four today. Mangroves are also just really interesting plants in general considering their adaptations for salt water. One of the really cool things that we found out today is that mangroves actually secrete salt from their leaves where it later crystalizes (so if you lick the leaves, you can taste the salt on them). And they also have a wide array of root adaptations, as evidenced in the picture below:

In addition, mangroves host a lot of diverse species from fish to mammals. One of my favorite sights today was the wide range of crabs that I was able to see. They were all pretty cute.

Aren't you just an adorable little detritivore?

The other almost success of the day was that I was able to tromp around in deep mud all day and managed not to fall on my face. Key word is almost. Instead, I fell on my butt when I was attempting to trudge down a very slick slope of mud to go back to the boat. It was labeled as one of my more graceful falls by the group, but my friend put it best: "You were doing so well today. And then that happened." I may have been covered in mud, but I still had a lot of fun today and learned a lot. And, on the way back to Palo Verde we managed to see at least five crocodiles which was awesome.

Crikey!

The next few days will host a few free days as well as a midterm. I'm sure another snake will pop out at me somewhere, so I'll update about that terror sometime soon.

Let's Put All the Scary Things in One Blog Post

The past few days have been a whirlwind- everything has been so busy!

Following the completion of our faculty-led project, we immediately jumped into working on our independent projects. For my research project, I decided to stick to what I have the most experience in: pollination. After I suggested my idea to my professor, he suggested that I take a look at predator-pollinator interactions. There's a very common species of spider here known as the Green Lynx Spider (Peucentia viridans) that has an ambush strategy for hunting. Essentially, the spider hides out among the flowers (in this case, Ruellia inundata- a herb that is common in disturbed areas) and waits for the pollinator to come. Once the pollinator is feeding, the spider will spring onto its prey and immediately puncture a hole in the eye and suck out the juices.

Look at how adorably vicious it was to this honeybee!

Overall, the presence of a predator can affect how a plant reproduces- if the plant can't pollinate, then its genes won't be passed on to the next generation, thus lowering its fitness. It's actually a really cool example of some top-down effects on trophic levels of ecosystems. I'm hoping that we'll see something interesting out of this experiment, especially since I think the topic and the theory behind it is super cool. Apparently too cool, since my professor pulled me over after my proposal presentation to tell me that I was too excited and spoke too fast during my part of the presentation. Whoops.

Despite being sucked into the never-ending vortex that is our Independent Project, I've still had a little time to enjoy Palo Verde. One of my favorite activities at the end of the day is to go out on the boardwalk to watch the flocks of birds. There are some beautiful ones- including spoonbills! Also watching the sun set over the marsh is just a gorgeous sight in general. My friends and I often return to the boardwalk at night to do a bit more stargazing. I definitely can recognize more constellations down now as a result, so at least I'm learning something while I'm down here.

We also just tend to run into interesting animals every day anyways, which freshens things up a bit . A fun game that I play with myself is the "What Animal am I Going to Find in the Bathroom Today" game. So far, we are currently up to one bat, five frogs (staring at me while I was showering- a bit disconcerting), an assortment of beetles, a katydid, ants, and a few other unidentifiables.

This is one of the tarantulas that lives OUTSIDE of the bathroom, so it doesn't count for the game. 

Additionally, sometimes the organisms just wander into our midst when we're least expecting it. Last night, my friend suddenly burst into the classroom with this frightened look on his face and immediately said "There's a giant wasp out here, and I can't catch it and I'm scared". At first we all thought he was just being a sissy, but no. This wasp was giant, and terrifying. Eventually, another girl and I managed to snag the (very angry) wasp in a net and into a (double) plastic bag. We were later told that if we had been stung we probably would have been hospitalized. Also whoops. 

I was not kidding about this wasp.

I additionally just saw peccaries for the first time just outside of our classroom/bedrooms. I'm not kidding when I say that organisms just pop up very unexpectedly.

We also often have encounters with animals based on the staff that work at the station. Sergio works in reception, and is working with bats for his university studies. So he brought a few to show us:

He's got a great smile, don't you think?

We also encountered a sea snake because the station director, Mahmood, studies snakes and just happened to receive a specimen that day. This snake I could tolerate a bit more. Possibly because it was in the plastic case and not actually out and about. But tolerate is the key word in that sentence.

So despite the Independent Project filling my brain constantly (I seriously see green spiders when I close my eyes), I'm still managing to have a great time here. Wish me luck on the experiments!

Palo Verde 101

As I sit here writing this, I am currently sipping on some peach iced tea on the porch in front of my room with the balmy temperature of 97 degrees. So needless to say, life is pretty good here at Palo Verde National Park. Palo Verde is located at the northwestern part of the country, which is about four hours from San Jose. The habitat here is dry forest with a huge wetland attached to it, so there are plenty of interesting animals abound.

Coatis!

Iguanas on the roof!

And Capuchins, oh my!

The past couple days have been really packed though- we've been in class a lot. This is so we can have full days in which we can work on our independent projects that are coming up in the not too distant future (if anyone has a good idea for one, hit me up). Additionally, we've also been doing work on our first faculty-led project, which is being led by Chris Mowry from Berry College. Chris has worked with coyotes and primates in the past, but we unfortunately didn't have great sample sizes for either of these organisms here (although we did see Howler monkeys yesterday!). So we've been working on conspecific defense cues in mosquito fish. Basically, when the fish senses a predator, they release a chemical to alert the members of the same species. So we've been doing some behavioral tests to determine reaction times as well as the number of attempts that they make to get to shelter. As of writing this, they're still crunching the numbers, so I can't tell you what the answer actually is. But long story short, we got to play with fish, and got to finger paint:

So fierce.

We also had the opportunity to visit some rice and sugar cane fields, which was also really interesting. There is a lot of agriculture surrounding the park, so it's always a delicate balance between public relations. Actually, some of the farmers are permitted keep their livestock IN the park as an attempt to keep down some of the invasive species of grasses. All in all, it was an interesting morning. Not to mention, we got some free samples of freshly harvested sugar cane, which was delicious.

Our guide, Don Miguel, slicing up some sugar cane for us. 

Other than class and working on our projects, we've mainly devoted our free time to exploring the park. Palo Verde is around 71.04 square miles, so there's plenty to see. One of my favorite trails so far was a lookout point that led us up through the dry forest and then up to a rock scramble. Once past the rock scramble, the trail led to an amazing view of the marsh, which extends for miles around:

Last night, our exploring took us to the boardwalk that extends over the marsh. From there, we were able to shine our lights out over the marsh and spot some of the glinting eyes of the caimans. We finished off the night by laying down on the deck and doing some stargazing, which was incredible. There's very little light pollution here, so the amount of stars that we could view was amazing. I think we're going to do it again tonight, which I'm really excited about.

I will provide more updates as they come!

In the Páramo...

The past few days have been so awesome, I don't even really know where to begin!

The last couple days were great at Las Cruces. Once we had finished our work (and a plant tax exam- blech) the professors pretty much let us have run of the place.  A couple friends and I hiked out on one of the trails as a last hurrah, and we actually ended up at a really cool waterfall. It wasn't a super impressive height, but we still all got in and played around in the water a bit before we decided that it was too cold.

The next day, we headed out to Cuerici Biological Station. Cuerici is located in the Cartago Province in Costa Rica, which is slightly in between the Panama border and the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose. The station was pretty remote. It's located in the upper elevations of Costa Rica (~2700m), and down a very bumpy, twisty, and dirt road. The worst part about the altitude though was trying to make it up hills and being out of breath by halfway up.

The station itself was pretty much just a log cabin in the middle of the forest with a classroom attached. There was no central heat, so most of our almost freezing nights were spent huddled under at least four pairs of blankets or around the wood stove/fireplace. It actually became an art to throw on as many clothes as possible and as many blankets as possible before going to bed.

Cuerici is also a farm run by Don Carlos and his family. Primarily, he grows blackberries and additionally runs a trout farm. We actually got to sample both (after picking and fishing), and both were delicious.

Attempting to catch trout with nets. Marginal success.

I did actually catch a fish, but we had to throw it back because Don Carlos said it was too small. I also was offered the opportunity to kill a fish with my hands, but I gave a hard pass on that one. Additionally, I almost gutted a fish, but I got distracted by the appearance of Neblina, the pack pony. By the time I had returned from pony snuggling, Don Carlos had gutted three fish in less than five  minutes, while it took four of us to gut three in fifteen. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

I think this was a great reason to miss out on gutting a trout.

The main part of Cuerici is the portion of the land devoted to the preservation of the montane oak forests. The property is actually some 500 acres of cattle pasture land that Don Carlos inherited. Most of the land he has allowed for the oak forest to return. However, there is a noticeable difference between the untouched primary forest and the secondary forest that used to be pasture land. Nevertheless, the forest was still gorgeous. I also just really enjoyed being around oak trees again. Not quite the same as back home, but it still felt a little more like home than the other places that I've been so far.

Additionally, the view from the top of this trail was absolutely amazing. I kind of had the same feeling that I did when I was at the Grand Canyon. I wanted to take all of the pictures to try and remember it, but I knew that it wouldn't be the same as the real thing.

The next day, we had a hike up in El Cerro de la Muerte, which is a rather infamous part of Costa Rica. Here, you will find a type of habitat known as the páramo, which is basically a tundra located in Costa Rica. The páramo is host to all sorts of endemic species, and is known for being one of the harshest conditions in the world (tropical sun + tundra conditions = ouch). This place was super cool, and we ended up hiking up to ~3300m. It also ended up being a perfect day for hiking as well, since the mist didn't really roll in until we started to descend.

The páramo has definitely been one of the coolest places that we've seen so far. We also had our first midterm in Cuerici too, which was a bit of a struggle. There was little to do on the farm, so one was rather forced to study in order to avoid being bored. But I think the exam went well, and it helped to have our study buddy:

On our last evening in Cuerici, we decided to go on a hike to try and find a spot where we could take pictures of the sunset. After talking with Don Carlos, he suggested that we go to one of his blackberry fields. It actually ended up being really amazing (although cold), and it was a great way for us to end our time in Cuerici. 

So now we are currently back in San Jose after a trip to San Pedro this morning. In particular, we went to the language academy at which we'll be studying at in the next couple of weeks. There, we all took an oral exam to determine our level of proficiency for Spanish. I think it went okay, but my Spanish is definitely rusty. Whoops. Still don't know what level I'll be in, but from what it sounds like, I made it a similar length through the interviews as other people. So hopefully I'll have friends in my class.

But on a side note, I actually managed to go rock climbing with a couple of guys from my program! I actually had a great time, and it was SUPER cheap ($6 for a day pass, including rental shoes and chalk- pretty much unheard of in the States). The problems weren't actually that hard, but it was still pretty cool to do something across cultures like climbing. I hope to go back during my home stay to climb a bit more - or maybe even an outdoor trip if I'm feeling adventurous.

Jake, Evan and I at Mundo Aventura.

And that's the update! Headed out to Palo Verde in the morning- so pretty much moving from the coldest place that we stay at to perhaps the hottest one that we stay at. Should be fun though- looking forward to tromping around some wetlands and dry forests!