Last Day in Monteverde

I suppose some of you may be wondering how my November has been. The best answer is that it absolutely flew by and I can’t believe that in one hour I leave Monteverde and that in two days I will be in the frigid cold of Minnesota with my family again for the first time since August 21! Okay, this post will not be thourough, but I will throw out a few thoughts.

Coming here the part I was most nervous about was living with my host family,  but ofcourse, it turned out to be a wonderful experiment. I lived the farthest from town out of anyone in our class, on a farm with 2 retired school teachers who know just tend the land for food. They have 6 children, but two remained while I lived there, 25 and 27 years old. I understood half of what they said, but for the most part we were able to communicate. I really connected with my host father and the older brother Orlando. My father, Alexis, helped show me where to find tarantulas for my study and had me help pick fruits from the trees. They had endless trees with lemons, oranges and more. I had beans and rice three times a day, but it was really good! Plus fresh platanos fried in the mourning, fresh goat cheese they make with rolls out of the oven and fresh coffee from the neighbors (I said yes to coffee the first day and after that had a cup awaiting me every morning), yes, the food was great! Being farmers, many of them were up at 5 or 5:30, I was the American sleeping in every day cause I set my alarm for 6:20!

The house was nice, but very simple. One large roof with dividers between rooms that didnt go to the ceiling so you could always hear everyone else. I showed Orlando how to play frisbee, oddly their sheepdog named Moncha was very afraid of the frisbee. A few times I talked with Orlando for over an hour about sports, or college and often Costa Rica vs. the States. Life is simple for them here. They don’t have a car, they ofcourse know and invite over neighbors, the familes are close. My dad comes from 13 children and has 4 brothers in town, my classmate Lexi lived with one down the road and Hannah lived with another.

OH, I have a few pictures, here is my house, you can see some of the crops on hill behind.

And Here is my family. My dad Alexis and mother Magda are in the chairs, and Orlando is on the far left (the biggest Tico I have seen) and the baby of the family Manuel Francisco in the middle (not the dog Moncha, who would not hold still). Look how happy we all are!

My life was very fun during the homestay, I would walk into town to do homework, or whatever. Many nights would involve walking around a few hours looking for tarantulas. I caught a total of 12, however, after 2 mini-disasters 5 were lost. lol Hmm… I need to go soon, so I am going to summarize even more. My experiments involved testing silks role in sensing prey vibrations in the burrow as well as testing if chemical cues exist in the silk that they may use for recognition of other individuals. If you would like a copy of my final paper I would be happy to send you a copy. It turned out really well, a few days ago we had a symposium in town and I presented my research, which also went really well. I am sure I am missing a lot of details, today we went into town and to the fig tree one more time. OKAY- I will probably post one more time when I am back in the states, crazy huh? Gotta go, we are off to hike a bit, arenal volcano tomorrow then San Jose and the airport. Adios! I am actually excited for the cold of Minnesota, though I think I will miss the lush greenness in a hurry.

Panamanian Parties

My problem is I am so slow at writing my posts that  I just never want to devote the time to write, so here is the deal. I am going to try to quickly finish up my field trip then throw a few comments on how it is living  in my homes stay.

Alright, I left off in La Salva si? Next we spent a day or 2 in Tirimbena nearby. We had some nice hikes, including one where we saw 6 hog-nosed pit vipers! This forest was also crawling with bullet ants, one of the more painful insect stings apparently, these guys are a full inch long. It is quite gorgeous too as you can see. We then received a lecture from a man studying what is commonly called the Honduran fruit bat, which chew the right part of large leafs so that they fold over into perfect tent shapes. Here is a picture of them, it is hard to see because they are in tiny clumps and each one is probably the size of a ping pong ball.

One night there we had nothing to do so everyone, including staff, did a talent show. Me and a few others did a silly rap about  our time so far in Costa Rica, but other people had some pretty hilarious skits including my professors in dresses and wigs. We then had another Humans day about the lumber industry, and we learned about various options from reduced-impact logging standards (sort of like an organic, sustainable sticker) to government subsidies to growing tree farms. The trouble is, in the head it is always economically superior for land owners to farm crops and chop forests. We compared tree farms in profits to pineapple, and wood made like 20x less money per year. This is organic pineapple, the owner said if you ate non organic pineapple out of the field you would end up in the hospital. Weird facts about these organic ones: by hand one worker can plant 8000 a day, they use cow blood for nitrogen and use ethylene gas to make it all fruit at once.

Alright, off to the Caribbean and the lovely town of Tortugero. No roads even go here, so we took boats in through rivers, on which we saw rosette spoonbills, river otters, an osprey grabbing a fish and some more caimans. This area has a large Jamaican influence and the culture was really fun. The reason we came though, is because this is the largest nesting site of green sea turtles   in the western hemisphere. The first morning we were out at 5:30 looking, but had no luck and apparently just missed a few turtles. We hiked around during the day and saw some cool things including this emerald basilisk. Of course there are sporadic lectures here and there, but that just goes with life.

Next morning we really meant business and got up at 4:30, and I managed to see the one straggling baby of a clutch, though others in our group had better luck. Disappointing, but can’t win all the time, and we had no time to mop around because we were off to Panama! The welcome was not what I expected however, we walked over a very old little wood bridge, that had a single lane for cars to drive on as well. We got on boats at night and made it to Bocas del Torro, our island home for the next 4 days. When we awoke we found out truly what a paradise we were in.

We were in little beach houses 40 feet from the ocean, here is the one road to our little neck of the island. A restaurant there feed us the whole time, basically all seafood. I got made fun of my some Californians and east coast natives too for my lack of knowledge in how to eat lobster, shrimp, octopus, etc. but I got it down and really liked it. There were hammocks everywhere and the water was so clear and corals everywhere that during breaks we would go snorkel off shore from our houses! For four days we did all marine diversity. Our days consisted of long snorkeling sessions, a lesson on the boat, more snorkeling and then a night lecture or time to chill. Due to our marine lifestyle almost no one took any pictures. Our TA had a good underwater camera though, and I will get his pictures at the end of the semester, but I will just say that this was the most other worldly and amazing thing I have seen. Such vibrant colors and diverse life moving everywhere. We saw eels, a hawksbill sea turtle, squid, a sting ray, dolphins and tons of fish. My favorite thing was when we snorkeled near a mangrove marsh. What an amazing and gorgeous combination of mangrove stilt roots covered in colorful corlas and fish! We snorkeled in many other locations too such as off other tiny islands like this one where we learned about marine birds such as frigate birds. 

One person took a few okay pictures while snorkeling, here is one. Ask me about them when you see me in person. Our time in Panama was wrapped up going to a bat cave with 1000s of bats with our bat expert Richard and on the last night it was our professor Allen’s birthday so a Calypso band came and played for us all night on the beach, I loved the old happy Jamaican singer and it was a fun chill night that was so perfect of an ending to an amazing trip. Sorry I have so few pictures of Panama. I could sure get us to the beach life though (minus the sun screen layers, I only once got the back of my calves burned, pretty good I thought).  Well, next time I can finally talk about my home stay. I promise I am doing great!

Crashing through the Carribean

Yes, I am alive even though you haven’t heard from me since September. I actually returned to Monteverde on Monday, but we right away started working on our independent research projects and studying for our exam on the species and lectures from the field trip so I did not have time to write. That exam was this morning and I think it went really well overall. Alright, lets see how well I can retell the tales of traveling through forests on the Atlantic slope.

On Friday, September 30th, we all packed up clothes and stuff we needed for the next week, then we hiked 16km into the forest and we did not see electricity for 6 days. The packs were heavy and made it harder to be agile (when crossing a river, for example), but I loved how genuine and not touristy the experience was. Like usual the jungle was absolutely gorgeous and I cannot show just how lush it was. We hiked to a small station that used to be a man’s (Eladio) farm house, but he sold the land to be protected and now is sought after by biologist for his extensive knowledge. He is actually the last man to see the golden toad, for example.

We stayed at his place for 3 days and it was a fantastic time! Talk about living rustically, there was one room where we ate by candlelight (1/2 of us on the floor), the other room had beds for everyone and we had to use nets here cause of the bugs (bats liked our rooms too). The food was packed in by two horses. Days were spent hiking more and a few lectures. One day was all about fungus in the tropics, another we researched epipylls and their affects on the forest (epiphylls are things like liverworts and lichens that live on other leaves are very tiny). We did more cool night explorations and saw glass frogs, a few snakes and mice as well. Here is a Fer-de-lance during the day. They are the 2nd largest viper here and very dangerous. Later on the trip I accidentally walked within 3 feet of one on a night hike. Eladio told an amazing story about one time when he was bite by a Fer-de-lance, within an hour he was bleeding out every poor of his body and even his eyes and by the time he got to the hospital (6 hours later) they thought he may lose his hand, but he ended up just fine. I think his case was extreme though.

I really enjoyed our time at Eladio’s because it was also quite relaxing. Afternoon breaks were spent birdwatching from our hill or playing hacky sack (I’m not good, but I have really started to like it). On the Atlantic side at mid elevations like here it rains 8 meters a year so one day we got rained out and instead we had a lecture on Costa Rican slang which was very informative, I took thorough notes. I also read a book I brought called Crazy Love by Francis Chan, I highly recommend it, he looks back at Jesus and looks at how it is impossible to be only a lukewarm christian yet that is so pervasive in America. On the same topic, one night a couple of us discussed religion for a few hours, it was really fruitful and interesting.

Next we hiked 14km to the other side of the forest to the station at Poco Sol, which was gorgeous and much more civilized. After a long hike we were greeted by a lake in the jungle to swim in. Here we had a bird day including catching some with mist nests. My J-term class of avian biology really paid of this day. Here is Richard, the bat expert, who apparently on the side seems to know everything about birds too. He taught us a ton of different calls, my favorite was  Montezuma Oropendola, my link to its song is failing unfortunately. Of course this involved more bird watching, which was limited by the rain unfortunately. Everything I owned was already wet by this point.

We didn’t stay here long before we moved down to the lowlands of La Salva, a very famous and rich forest. Just getting there was fun, we were in the back of trucks and saw all kinds of toucans and things heading over. La Salva felt a bit touristy, but was intensely beautiful. We saw peccaries, the yellow eye-lashed viper and many frogs here such as the classic red eyed tree frog (Agalychnis callidryas) or the blue jean poison dart frog (Oophaga pumilio) . There was some other program there and we played them in soccer, it felt really good just to run around since we hadn’t seen a field in a long long time, though I still don’t get soccer. 

These field trips really are just whirlwinds of activity. Their ability to pack in lectures and things to see is incredible. I love it, but I have never lived in such a single mindset as this, it is truly biology 24/7. I have woken up spitting out species names here. Lately I struggle to take my mind off of my research project and how it is going to work. However, I have spent far too much time posting this and my research proposal is due Monday and tomorrow we head out to our home stays for almost a whole month. I live on a farm with 2 retired teachers about an hour from the station (I am the farthest of anyone), I am so excited! I will report on the amazing wonders of sea turtles in Tortugero and coral reefs in Panama at Bocas del Toro next time, along with my research project. Just to get you excited for that I will reveal my topic: The use of silk in the burrows of Megaphobema mesomelas, the Costa Rican red-legged tarantula.

Back into the jungle

The whirlwind of mid terms are done! I took 2 and a half hours on a test this morning, then had a 15 minute speech in Spanish class, but we are leaving Monteverde tomorrow at 8AM for the next 17 days. We will hike 16km into the jungle to a site with no roads or electricity for 4 days. After that we will continue along the Atlantic coast and eventually end up in Panama, before coming back through San Jose. This field trip should be so much fun, we all know each other so well and will appreciate the break from the class room. I am not bringing my computer and probably will not blog for the next 2 and a half weeks, but I may have sporadic short internet on other peoples iphones and things so email me if need to contact me.

Sorry I don’t have any exciting stories or pictures, just wait and I will put a bunch up from our time on the Atlantic coast. Alright, back into the jungle…

A busy bee up a fig tree

I should keep this brief, we have a 3 hour midterm for our Tropical Community Ecology class tomorrow and it is a quarter of our grade. I have done all the readings and gone over the lectures a few times already, I’m just not too sure what the test will be like. Should be fine. Life is very busy due to school work, the past weekend was basically all studying, with one or two breaks in there and a movie at night (Requiem for a Dream, super sad btw). Some exciting news is my roommate and best buddy Brandon recently found out his long time girlfriend is pregnant, so congratulations to him, he is pretty excited.

Okay on to one of the favorite things I have seen here, the fig tree. About 15 minutes into the woods from the station is a hug fig tree that is overhanging a steep precipice with a small creek at the bottom(1st picture). Most figs are hemi-epiphytic, which means in this instance that the seeds start off the ground on a host tree and it sends roots down to the ground to establish connection with the nutrients and water of the soil (2). Unlike some other epiphytes, these are often called stranger figs because they wrap around the tree they are on, eventually enveloping the other tree and limiting its resources until it often dies. With this fig, the inner tree has completely died so that it is a hollow tube quite similar to a jungle gym tube(3,4). Once uptop there is some branches and a growth you can fit a few people on and see a view at the level of the canopy (5,6). I am told one time it was measured and from this standing site down to the river bed is 180ft, though you only climb up the tree maybe 50 feet. This is one of the most incredible things of nature I have ever seen, it pains me how little justice these pictures give, but they should help a little. Okay, I should really study now. Buenos noches!

We were perched near the first branch on the right. The river is way below, out of view even from this trail.

Base of many stilts, the tunnel is the intertwining ones on the left.

Small holes make perfect hand holes and reduce the claustrophobia, a little.

Light at the end of the tunnel.

Jake and Brandon smiling up in the tree.

This view is unreal…

Flying time

Well, I kept thinking I would find time to write here and before I knew it a week has flown by. Where to begin…

Last Saturday we spent 3 hours testing, they went alright but there were aspects of the test I wasn’t ready for so my grades were only okay. That night then, we went down to the bar to watch my professor Allen play in his band. He is like 55, but is the lead singer, and the lead guitarist is a 50 year old British guy who draws the birds for Costa Rican bird books. The other 3 are young Costa Ricans. There name is Chanchos de Monte, which means wild pig of the mountain. They were really good an played music ranging from Red hot chili peppers and Nine inch nails, to older music and Spanish songs that I liked even more then the American ones. It was definitely the most fun I have ever had dancing. I think this is because with rock acceptable dancing is just jumping up and down, and I was with all people I knew including my professors who were the funnest of all. My TA Moncho at one point threw his t-shirt at the base player, which he thought was funny.

The rest of the week was full of classes, my Spanish is starting to get back up to where I should feel it is.  Tuesday we did research from 8am till 9pm and my experiment entirely failed. We were trying to test a theory that moderately disturbed zones would allow for the greatest amount of diversity compared to the established forest understory or harsh conditions of a recently disturbed open area. It was a bit windy though, and the bees we wanted just weren’t out.  So it goes though. The highlight of the week was a day on animal farms on Thursday. We went to the local cheese factory and had some great cheese! Then we went to a large operation pig farm which was pretty sad to see, I love eating meat but seeing the conditions many of the animals are kept in is hard to see. Then we went to a small organic farm owned by Jesus, who has been on his farm for 30 some years. He has small amounts of everything, and we helped milk his cows. I milked the cow into a glass that I drank, it was warm, but creamy and good. We then finished off the day watching a documentary on meat production conditions in America and then discussed why we choose to eat meat or not. It was extremely interesting and I have never so seriously considered the question before in my life. I am not saying I am going to be a vegetarian, but I don’t know, its interesting.

Today was insect day, we had some lectures in the morning then went to a butterfly garden which was really gorgeous. We wrapped up the day by catching bugs around the station and practicing identifying them, it was overall a good day. Weekend should be crazy, simply because we have 2 midterms this week and then on Friday we are off on a field trip of the Atlantic for 18 days! I can’t wait. Sorry this is so abbreviated, I will do better for now on.

Coffee beans and Parades

Hola! I am too stuffed with quesadillas and ice cream to study for the impending exam so here I am. Alright, yesterday was a very interesting day. One of our classes here is called Humans in the Tropics, it is worth less credits then the other classes, but once every week or 2 we devote the whole day to it and study how society has effected the tropical environment and visa-versa. Yesterday we learned about small farm agriculture, specifically coffee farms. A quick lecture from our professor Branko (our amphibian expert who is really fun and jokes around with me a lot) and we were off to Eugenio’s farm. He lives on 4 hectares of land in the San Luis valley that has been in the family since his great grandfather. He works in town and is not about making money, so it was an organic farm that was spread about between trees and nothing like the endless rows of bananas and African oil palms we have seen on road trips thus far.  As the country becomes more urbanized just like in America it becomes more and more difficult to be economically sustainable on such small operations. A few of the other farmers have been able to get by thanks to tourism coming to Monteverde, some of who make more money on coffee farm tours then they do on their coffee.  Eugenio grows bananas, oranges, spikey chayote, odd tropical pumpkins, sugar cane, corn and I don’t even know what else, but the focus is on coffee beans. Coffee is much more flavorful when grown at high elevations and in the shade, most coffee beans we consume are genetically modified beans to be able to handle constant direct sunlight and also are grown at lower elevations. After a very interesting walk around Eugenio’s land his mom served us some coffee all made on the farm. I suspect some of my readers will be devastated to hear that a person who doesn’t like coffee was here where the best coffee  is grown with a cup of joe straight from the farm. Dont’ worry I drank a cup. It was incredibly strong, but other people liked it.

We then went and talked with Guillermo, a local farmer extensively involved in the free trade coop, which is a group of farmers who sell their coffee together so that they can be more competitive, plus, they are then able to make deals to make sure when coffee prices fluctuate wildly the farmer is not left hanging. For example, last year one pound of coffee beans were sold by the farmer for $1.50. This year, it is up to $3.10. Just for perspective for those curious, one hector of land produces roughly 3,000lbs of beans. There has been a lot of problems with the farmers getting ripped off, in fact coffee production has been decreasing here even though it is demanded, but the farmer just doesn’t get a fair price. One example, Eugenio went through a 3 year process to be considered organic and then sold his beans for an additional 20 cents per pound. Yet the bag gets to be sold for $4 dollars more in the U.S. Who is making all the money?

We then ended in a local coffee shop to talk to a very interesting man named Ken from Atlanta Georgia. I had a cup there, and they put really delicious cream in my cup and I actually really liked it! Ken was a lawyer but decided he wanted to retire here in Costa Rica, so he bought some land and started doing coffee beans mainly for himself. Then something happened with his bank or something I didn’t understand, but he lost all his money. So Ken decided to get into the coffee business 2 years ago, except he wanted to shake things up. He started a group called Thrive Farmers, which cuts out middle men and doesn’t pay farmers until the customer buys the coffee. Then, it is the guarantee of the company that at that point 50% goes to the farmer no matter what. A bag that would go for $18 in the US, the farmer receives 60 cents! Ken says $9 goes to the farmer! They have an odd system of teaching the farmers how to be entrepreneurs and also give out micro loans. Farmers are interested, in one year they have gone from 191 sacks to 2035. Sorry I can’t get into the economics, but it was a very interesting conversation. We finished the day with one more lecture wrapping up concepts on the current farming situation and our impressions of the very market savvy Ken compared to the Ticos and how their perspective and operations had their plus and minuses.

Today was Costa Rica’s day of independence so we went into town for the morning and watched the cute little parade of Monteverde. There were all kind so kids playing with drums and litte girls in bright traditional dresses dancing all over. The rest of the day was lectures and Spanish. Alright, I think it is study time. Buenos noches!

Oh yeah, school….

During the field trip we were so busy exploring and seeing things they hardly had time to give us lectures and it felt like we were on vacation. Well, it is our first week here at the research station and it feels like school has really begun now. We had 3 lectures in biology, from 8-9:30, 10-11:30 and then 1-2. At least we mixed it up from biology though, at 2:30 we headed down to Spanish class until 6! I have 2 other students in my class with our professor and for all of 15 minutes we attempted to have conversations or play games in in Spanish, it was very tiring. So I am using this blog as a way to relax before I study for the evening. Yay school!! I suppose it isn’t that different then Gustavus, it just feels like a lot. I do have 105 species memorized for our quiz on Saturday.

Don’t worry though, I am still having fun. The lectures are often interesting and in between, I played catch with a Frisbee, or during another break we happened to see this cute little tarantula in front of the door. I am not sure how many people were willing to follow my link in the previous post and look through a whole album so I will have to see how people respond to actually putting the photo right on my blog and if the response is positive I can put a few of my favorite photos from the first field trip.

I am really settling into Monteverde nicely. I need to take pictures of the forest, because Monteverde is just to the west of the mountain peak where the trade winds dump rain on the Atlantic side it is misting for much of the day, perfect epiphyte weather. Those are the “air plants” that don’t have roots in the ground. This makes the forest look incredible, as every branch is covered in moss and epiphyte plants or hemi-epiphytes that send send massive roots down to the ground. In fact orchids are common epiphytes and no place else in the world has more named orchids then right here in Monteverde. Sorry to talk so much about it without pictures, I promise they will come soon.

Alright, no more procrastination. Hope all is well up in Minnesota or wherever else my readers are, tell me when it starts to feel like fall, the daylight and temperature doesn’t really change much here. Alright, buenos noches, pura vida mis amigos!

Chilling inside

So I don’t have much to say because we have been pretty relaxed since the field trip. In fact, I just finished watching Toy Story 3. Today was our first day of Spanish, we hiked down our driveway type road for 20 minutes into town where this gorgeous Spanish immersion program is. My Spanish is quite rusty to say the least, but today we just talked with them so they could figure out what level to place us in. We will have class 2-3 times a week for 3-4 hours and it focused almost entirely on speaking, it should be very intensive and I am not looking forward to it, but I am glad that I will learn so much. Tomorrow we are spending the whole day getting to know the forest here and Sunday is my first day off of the trip! So we will go into town and study in a coffee shop and probably just explore.

Great new though, my friend with the best camera put her photos up on Facebook. I apologize for not putting ones on here directly, but she has a large collection of great nature photos, though she is not heavy on the sunsets or photos of people. Here is a link to her album, or just go to my facebook and see my last status. Please comments on which ones you liked or any questions you have about the animals or people. For those a bit behind in the FB craze tell me if you can’t figure out how to see the photos. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2010273416870.2100468.1244760118

 

Pura Vida!

I have been really bad at posting here, but my field trip is officially done and for the first time I am in dry warm cloths here at the biological research station in Monteverde, the beautiful cloud rainforest. Okay, back in Santa Rosa. One day we hiked 26 kilometers, that was a long day! We walked through another beautiful old growth forest, with howler monkeys making tons of noise. At the end we got to a beautiful beach, it is known for a famous surfing spot called witch’s rock. I got some of the professors to play frisbee on the most perfect beach I have seen, I can’t describe it. By the way, my camera is indeed shot, but I plan on stealing someones pictures very soon and I will put up a bunch of them somehow so just hold on a day o two, I promise!

Wednesday was the last day of our trip and our professors made sure it was a good. As Allen the head professor said, it was a day more about the soul then the mind. We romped around on a volcano to start the day, seeing hot pools and smelling sulfur, then headed over to a beautiful pool beneath a 100 foot waterfall. On the way we got surrounded by a troop of 30+ coatis, a relative of our racoons. They are completely unconcerned about humans and were within 10 feet at times. We then headed over to a beach to chill and watch the sunset from the water and right at the end some dolphins swam by. It then got really interesting, my professors had a bit to drink and we all sang funny popular songs and the Ticos (Costa Ricans) sang from hilarious local songs. Allen plays in a band and was amazing on the guitar and could sing well and amazingly high. It was an amazing day that numerous times reminded me of the locals favorite saying, pura vida, or pure life, a life philosophy of simple living and enjoying the beauty around them. I really like that phrase.

Today we stopped in at a cat reservation center and watched and learned about jaguars, margays, ocelots, jaguarundis, pumas and oncillas, or little spotted cats. The jaguar was so incredible and beautiful, he weighed over 100 kilos and had the biggest canines and paws. Finally we drove up the mountain and through the misty clouds into Monteverde. I have a beautiful room with a view of the opposing valley. The station has nice wood everywhere and we feasted on lasagna and ice cream for dinner. Classes should start getting really intense soon, but for now we are all just enjoying our beautiful new home in dry and warm clothes. It is surprisingly cool up here, I am actually wearing sweatpants and a long sleeve right now. I will write again soon, but for now I need to try to see if I can see any of the Packer game. GO PACK GO!!!