Cahuita, Spanish, Nicaragua

So this past week has been a blur. This connection is extremely finicky, and I don't really know why it's working, so this will be brief.


Last weekend eight of us went to Cahuita, a town on the Caribbean that is next to the Cahuita National Park. It's a sweet little Caribbean-influenced "getaway," with a much larger number of people of African descent than elsewhere in Costa Rica, some fantastic food (the jerk chicken was absolutely worth the 5,000 colones...mmm), and a laid-back reggae style that everyone should experience at least once.

The Spanish spoken there had a very cool Jamaican feel to it, and it was nice to get away from the city. On Saturday we took some lunch and went to a beach in the national park, and then on Sunday some of us hung around a black sand beach (la Playa Negra) before we came back to San José. I didn't take many pictures, but here are a couple.

Where we stayed. For $10/night each, we got a big beach-style house with a stove and a refridgerator and a locked gate. It was nice.




In other news, Spanish classes are over. I'm not too sad. On one of the last days we went to the zoo, so here are a few pictures. The only animals in the zoo that weren't from Costa Rica were the two lions they had.

There were lots of birds with lots of colors.

A pile of turtles.

Scarlet macaws. They're endangerd, and they are (almost) always in pairs. I saw two fly overhead twice in Palo Verde.

The jaguar was sleepy, as were the other big cats.

All of the white-nosed coatis were sleeping too.

Tomorrow I'm going zip lining through the canopy with a couple of people. We get back in the afternoon, relax/get things together, stay in a hostel close to the bus station, then at 6:30 on Sunday morning we go catch the bus to Nicaragua, where we'll be for the week. We're spending a few days on the Isla de Ometepe, the island in the middle of Lake Nicaragua that has two volcanoes on it, and then a few days in Granada. Should be fun! The bus ride to Nicaragua is only 8 hours; it was 4 to Cahuita on the coast. Gotta love small countries.

I'll be back on the 4th of April, and then we head to Monte Verde, then Cabo Blanco, then La Selva. Whoa.

Too Many Possible Titles, So I Chose This One

So Las Cruces is pretty mazing, and I’m behind on many things already, including (but not limited to) readings, blog entries, knowing scientific terms for things I have no reason to know already, and, of course, sleep.

On Thursday, we toured the gardens with Rodolfo (Rodo), one of the important people here (not sure of his title, exactly). He is quite the character, and is pretty funny: “Questons? Comments? Regrets?” The garden has species from all over the world. I can’t really explain it without pictures, I guess.

We split into two groups that day, and half went on the garden walk and half went to the neighboring town of San Vito to buy snake boots (5700 colónes, or about $11) and various other supplies. The boots aren’t that comfortable, and they are the hottest, sweatiest footwear I’ve ever had. Plus, they don’t protect you against the big snakes, only the little ones that you don’t see, which is what your regular shoes could do. Kind of silly.

A few of us went on a night walk in the garden that night. The bugs and sounds and smells (and temperature, of course) are all very different when the sun is sleeping.

So far we’ve had various lectures on Costa Rican history and politics, one on coffee, various plant, fruit, and insect taxonomy/morphology (blegh), and about biological vs. statistical hypotheses. Oh yeah—and one on “Dangerous and Annoying Creatures," such as this one (sorry, Darby):

I’m already feeling pretty behind, because many/most of the kids in the group have definitely had taxonomy classes before. Did I know what the hell a Bromeliaceae was before I got here? No. But most of them did; apparently it’s the family that pineapple belongs to. Most of them are epiphytes, pineapple being a terrestrial exception. Yep, didn’t know what an epiphyte was either. Nor did I know what Cyclanthaceae, Moraceae, Marantaceae, Melastomataceae, Heliconiaceae, Rutaceae, Rubiaceae, Passifloraceae, Piperaceae, or Zingiberaceae were. I still don’t know, actually. Those are just plant families, much less the other terms for parts or insects, which are even harder. Ha. The Costa Rican students definitely know way more than any of us, though. They learn the scientific names in school like nobody’s business. This is going to be tricky. I wish my teachers had emphasized scientific names, but they definitely haven't

The next morning we took the jungle trail to the Rio Java, which is mostly a creek in the dry season, to observe the layers of the forest (canopy, undergrowth, etc., etc.).

See the snake boots in action!

Last night we had our fruit “lab,” which was basically just a feeding frenzy on local fruits (and vegetables). Some were gross, some were good, some I just couldn’t make myself try, such as Noni.

But speaking of fruits, I’ve found the answer to the fruit/vegetable conflict regarding our familiar tomato. In 1883, the U.S. government declared tariffs on all vegetables. This list included the tomato. However, a farmer in Florida challenged this, saying his tomatoes were in fact fruits, not vegetables. The Supreme Court ruled that tomatoes were indeed vegetables, because they were usually served with the meal, and not with dessert. What kind of bogus answer is that? Tomatoes are in fact fruit, since they are the seed-bearing part of the plant.

Also, oranges (and lemons and limes) are technically berries, each little ball on a blackberry is itself a fruit (it’s called an aggregate fruit), and each little diamond-shaped thing on the side of a pineapple was one flower—pineapples are called “multiple” fruits. Each one of a strawberry’s seeds is in fact a fruit, and the rest of the fleshy material is simply an enlarged receptacle; the seeds are individual achenes. Squash and cucumbers are also fruits (they are the ovaries, containing the seeds used for reproduction), but we classify them as vegetables because we’re silly. Any part of the rest of the plant should really be called the vegetable part. Look up the definition of a vegetable on different websites, and you’ll get different answers everywhere.

Yep. Bet you didn’t know.

Today is a free day. I went to breakfast at 6:30, then came back and slept until ten. It was quite glorious. Some people went into San Vito, some went on a hike, and I decided to stay here and participate in academia. Boo.

A shout out to those back home who still don't have power: that really sucks. It's warm here. I'll enjoy it for you.