Massive Post: El Fín

So. I'm back stateside, and a big update is long overdue.

I haven't really updated since spring break in Nicaragua, so here is
what has happened in the past few weeks.

After staying at my host family's house again for one night, we left to go to Monteverde. You can read that link to know more about it, but basically: a bunch of Quakers from Alabama settled there in the 50s, it's now a part of a conservation area called Bosque Eterno de los Niños (Children's Eternal Rainforest), and it's famous because of the extinction of the Golden Toad,which was endemic to the area. We had to bring everything we needed for two weeks (for Monteverde and Cabo Blanco) and hike in with it. The hike wasn't bad--about 4km down a non-driveable dirt road and a little through the forest. The hike out was worse (mainly because it was uphill the whole way), but manageable. Thanks to my great towing of camera gear, my bag was pretty heavy.


We got to stay in this sweet building, which was in direct sight of the Arenal Volcano (See previous post for picture), and the porch outside of our rooms (second floor) had hammocks. It was awesome. We had a bunch of lectures on deforestation, climate change, and more. Mark Wainwright gave us a couple of awesome lectures on frogs (did you know that a tree frog is not a frog?), and led us on a couple of "frogging" trips at night. He's mentioned in this great article about frog stuff.

Other things of interest in Monteverde. There was a sweet scorpion we found, and I found out that they glow under UV light. Many animals utilize other parts of the light spectrum (e.g., most flowers have different patterns under UV light, since bees see in that spectrum), but this scorpion was, in a word, badass.


Also, one night after a good rain there was a complete moth-fest. About a million moths crowded around the lights by our rooms, and there were probably 200 moths in each room by the time we went to bed. They were cool.




On our free day, we had the option of going on a canopy walk. It was basically a series of bridges through the canopy. It was cool, but I'm glad I didn't have to pay the $20 to go on it.


Though I don't have much to say about Monteverde, I can say that it was one of my favorite places that we visited. It was calm, quiet, and relatively undisturbed, and we were without internet/phone for the week. Refreshing.

After hiking to the top, we stayed a night in a little place that I can't remember the name of in a nearby town, then the next morning we left to take the ferry across el Golfo de Nicoya (Nicoya Gulf) to head to Cabo Blanco.

It was big.

Cabo Blanco was the first natural reserve in Costa Rica. It is now an absolute reserve--it's not open to the public, and only a few select groups get to go there each year. This was the marine biology part of the program. J.B. Heisner from Cornell came down for a few days, gave a few lectures on marine biogeography and ecosystems, and led a faculty-led-project where we caught juvenile Damselfish, put them in small aquariums, and placed them by "wild" ones to see if the size of the fish (lots of fish of one species = fish; lots of fish from different species = fishes) made a difference in the behavior of the wild fish (they are territorial). It kind of failed, but that's OK.

There were about a million crabs at Cabo Blanco, both hermit crabs, pictured below, and harlequin crabs (which I now know are called "halloween crabs"), which I somehow managed to not get a picture of.


They. Were. Everywhere.


We spent lots of time exploring the tide pools (both during the day and, secretly, at night), and I saw a small anteater in a tree. Classroom for the week:

In yet another prayer flag run at 6am, I almost stepped on this ~2m long boa constrictor. It was a bit unnerving.


And I followed this guy, a Bare- for about an hour. This induced my first sunburn of Cabo Blanco.

One salty week later, we left for La Selva, where three weeks of intense-ness began.

First off, we went to the local Dole plantation. We had just read most of a book called "Breakfast of Biodiversity," which talked all about the shortcomings and bad stuff about the banana industry (favorite quote: "And with our penchant for viewing the world in isolated litle disconnected fragments, it is apparently difficult for us all to see the connection between the knife that slices the banana into our cereal bowl and the chain saw that slices tree trunks onto the rain forest floor."), so we were prepared to ask the hard questions. The guide expected this, but his answers were no less roundabout. Did you know that the bananas that you and I eat do not exist naturally? Have you noticed that there are no seeds? Also, a banana tree is not a tree.




Yep, they really do pick 'em green (and put chemicals on them so that latex/sap doesn't drip and get them all sticky). The little Dole stickers get put on by hand.



La Selva is the Organization for Tropical Studies' largest field station. The situation here was kind of like at Palo Verde: about three weeks, lots of fun, but a TON of work.

A view from the bridge of the main area--dining hall straight ahead, our rooms to the right.


View of the river from the same bridge (that linked the main area to all of the lab/classroom areas. I crossed it a lot).

The peccaries at La Selva are like the common house cat or shrew. They were completely unafraid of humans, were in the field area by the labs every day, and smelled really bad. Imagine bad body odor with a hint of pig and rotting. At one point I counted twenty seven in the same hundred square feet.


We didn't have many lectures here, and the ones we did have were by guest lecturers. We had one on mammals, the effects of wind power on wildlife, using satellite imagery to assess climate change and deforestation, and using stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to assess the diets of things, namely Azteca ants on Cecropia trees. That one (actually, those two) was given by Dr. Cindy Sagers of our very own U of A biology department. The great part: everyone came up to me after she left and said that she'd given the best lectures of the semester, and that they were jealous of ME since she was so cool. Turns out, she'll be my honors thesis advisor, which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the second independent project--but only after I talk about our two faculty led projects.

The first, led by Craig and his grad student Jen, involved catching tiny lizards (Norops humilis) and measuring the color of their dewlaps (the flap of skin under the necks of the males used for mating display and aggression). I don't know much more about it since I wasn't part of the group that wrote up the project, but it was fun. We got to run around and catch lizards for a few hours; they're very small and very fast.



And while I was looking for lizards, we found THIS cool snake. It's a small fer-de-lance. Very poisonous.



While I'm at it, here is another cool thing. It's some sort of larvae of something, the name of which escapes me. All I know is that it was on a wall, it looks cool, and it also looks dangerous.



Anywho. The other faculty led project was led by Dr. Sagers. We worked with adult Cecropia trees. The Cecropia at La Selva (two species: Cecropia obtusifolia and Cecropia insignis) are dioecious, meaning they have both male plants and female plants. Only one species was flowering at the time, and the flowers are the only way you can tell the sexes apart, so we only worked with that one (obtusifolia). On the first day, we found adult C. obtusifolia trees, tagged them, recorded their height, diameter, sex, GPS location, etc., and then collected ants. On the second day we identified the ants to species level. We had hypothesized that the female trees would have more aggressive ants to protect their fruits, but we were wrong. The paper (written by four people), in case you're interested:

Cecropia%20FLP%20Final.pdf

Look at that male obtusifolia.

Another: remember the snake from the last post? It was a tree snake, and it was long.

This brings us to the independent project. Scott and I teamed up again, and after long debate, ended up working with juvenile Cecropia. Long story short: we found about 40 young trees, recorded their height, diameter, location, number of leaves, available light, and more. We took ants from the trees (not all of them had ants), had them identified, and took two leaves from each tree to assess the amount of herbivory. We were, in a way, re-proving the proven. It is well known that Cecropia trees have a mutualistic association with ants, particularly of the genus Azteca, but we found some literature that went against that. Our goal was to find out whether the presence of ants on the trees had an effect on the amount of herbivory that that tree had experienced, and we did. Here's the paper:

StephenIP2-Cecropia.pdf

We used a computer program to measure herbivory on these huge ass leaves. It took a long time. Most were worse than this one, and only a few as bad as this:



Some more pictures:

The inside of a Cecropia. The tree provides hollow nodes for nesting sites for the ants, as well as food bodies. The ants provide protection from herbivory.


Here's a picture of Dr. Sagers, a UofA grad student, and myself. He was there for a symposium on climate change, and the idea for this "three generation" picture surfaced.


I also collected samples of leaf tissue and ants to use for stable isotope analysis for my thesis. Those samples are waiting at the OTS office in San José for permits to come to Arkansas.

After the sleepless nights of IP writing, we had to study for our last plant test. Here is Susan giving us a last review of the plants we needed to know:


After the plant test, we had about a day to study for our two finals. I did better than last time, and that's all I'll say about it. After that I went to town and bought a machete, then came back and started working on the faculty led project write-up and the re-write of the IP paper. No fun, and it was all in the last week. To compensate, here are some things that were fun:

This bat was flying a loop on a sidewalk I was on at night, and somehow I managed to get this picture.

Bullet ants are big, and they hurt.

A rolled up tree fern.

A collared aracari (I think).

Harlequin beetle! It was huge.

Sweet spider.

Poison dart frog. They're globally endangered, but locally way too common.


And the kicker: A two-toed sloth exploring a porcupine in a tree. They touched noses.

After that crazy week, we packed up, bought last minute souvenirs, and left. I bought a sweet shirt. On the front: "Solamente cuando el último árbol esté muerto, el último río esté envenenado, y el último pez esté atrapado, entenderemos que no se puede comer dinero." Translated: "Only when the last tree is dead, the last river is poisoned, and the last fish is caught, will we understand that we can't eat money." I liked it.

After La Selva, we headed to Rincón de la Vieja, a national park with a volcano, lots of waterfalls, and some sweet bubbling mud plots. We stayed at an awesome lodge in THREE PERSON rooms. They had a pool.


One night Mike (from Vermont, and might be hosting Darby and myself on our way to Canada this summer) and I went on a night hike, mostly in the dark, under a full moon, to a lookout. Had a beer and some creamy sweet Cheetos, played with some horses, and came back. It was windy and awesome. The next day we went to the national park and hiked around all day.

Cool bromeliad (pineapple family).

Cool moss (hey, Mike!)

Leaf cutter ants (Atta cephalotes).

Really cool red-thorned Acacia and an ant on its extrafloral nectary (see Janzen 1966 for more).



And the mud plots! Think sulfury bubbly mud, Land Before Time style. It was cool.

Another sweet bromeliad, this time red. And very, very sharp. Trust me.

Boilin' spring. Stinky.

Eyelash viper we found on a rock.

And to end the day, we swam in an awesome swimming hole (here's to you, S.M.C.C.).

Last field sunset in Costa Rica. The next was in San José, because that's where we went the next day. We went to the OTS office to take care of paperwork and get T-shirts, then we went to our hotel. I went downtown and bought an Imperial shirt, then we had a party that night. Music trading, Facebook making and exchanging, and lots of hugs later, I was on a flight home. The flights weren't too bad. Ben and I got stopped at customs in Dallas/FTW, had to completely unpack our bags, and they cleaned our boots for us. Haha. More music trading, and then by 7:30 on Tuesday I was home (I'd gotten up at 4:45 that morning after going to bed after 2). Also, I went through one of these, and had no idea what it was. Odd. And they lost my snake boots! Oh well.

It's weird being home, but I'll save that for one last post.

A short post, with no intentions of satiation...

Things at La Selva have been intense and insane. I haven't really had any free time, and that means I haven't had time to update this blog. I come home a week from tomorrow, so, unfortunately, the next update might be from Arkansas. From now until then, I have a plant test, a big paper to re-write, a smaller paper to first-write, another paper to review, and a smaller assignment to complete. Oh, and two huge, incredibly important finals the day after tomorrow. AND I have to find a machete to buy; it's one of the few (materialistic) goals I've had that I haven't fulfilled. I've been hanging out at La Selva for the past...week...two weeks...something like that. Poison dart frogs, sloths, and leaf-cutter ants galore. It's been a good time, but now it's crunch time and I have to go back to studying.

The past few weeks, in short (and in pictures):


This was the view off of my porch for a week in the cloud forest of Monteverde.


This crab was one of thousands at Cabo Blanco.



This snake was climbing a tree at La Selva a few days ago, and let's just say I'm glad I had a telephoto lens with me.



More later. Later might be in seven or eight days, but it's coming. Soon.

Nicaraguan Excursion

So, I’m back at my homestay after a week in Nigaragua. Here goes:

On the Saturday the 28^th, Scott, Leanne, and I went ziplining. It was pretty cool, I guess. Not too exciting, but it’s something you should do at least once—I wouldn’t pay to do it again unless there were other circumstances. Luckily, it was “free.” I don’t have any pictures from it, but other people took some. We met some secret service agents who were also ziplining. Apparently Biden was coming to San Jose a few days later, and they were there early to “scope it out,” which I think really meant “have fun.”

That night we went to a hostel in San Jose since it was cheaper than paying for another night at the homestays (our reservations/free/pre-paid nights were up as of noon that day). Tranquilo Backpackers, it was called. $10/night, free internet. It was cool. We went to eat at a Lebanese restaurant/hookah bar which was very cool. Definitely the BEST falafel and baba ghanoush I’ve ever had. Mmm.

The next morning we got up at 5 to pack and be at the bus station by 6:30, and our bus left at 7:30. We only stopped once, and that was at the border to take all of our bags off of the bus, stand in a line, and press a big button that was attached to a stoplight that had red and green lights. If the light was green, you went back to the bus (after having your passport stamped). If the light was red, you had to have your bag searched. Scott’s was red, but the guy told him to press it again and it was green. I also got a red light, but the guy just motioned me to go back to the bus. Score.

We got to Rivas, a city on the shores of Lake Nicaragua, caught a cab to the $2 ferry at San Jorge, and took it to la Isla de Ometepe (the Island of Ometepe) in Lake Nicaragua. On the ferry we met a Canadian guy who’s lived in central America for a decade who “knew a guy,” and before we knew it we were all in the back of a pickup with two Israeli girls for a total of $25 that took us to where we wanted to stay.

I say “wanted,” because we didn’t have reservations, and we just hoped that they had room. It was called Finca Magdalena (finca=farm in Spanish), and it was really cool. We ended up paying $2.50 a night in a dorm-style room, and we got all of our food there too. I ended up paying $40 for three nights, all of my food, which included quite a few beers and bottles of water. Not bad at all. (The two beers made in Nicaragua are Toña and Victoria. Toña is better.).

Finca Magdalena

The next day we rented horses for $8 each and rode to the “Ojo del Agua” (“Eye of the Water”), a small natural spring-turned-pool where we swam and relaxed for a few hours. Our guide had a hangover and fell asleep in a chair, so we didn’t wake him up and got an extra 45 minutes there.

On the way back, we rode along the beach and could see the smaller of the two volcanoes on the island, Maderas. Scott’s horse and my horse didn’t get along, however, and they decided to race along the beach. And by race, I mean a full out gallop. It was really cool, but my “huevos” didn’t appreciate it very much. I wish I hadn’t had my camera and back so that I could have really ridden the horse like I should have, but as it was I ended up flailing around and trying not to lose all of my stuff at the same time. It was worth it, though, even if the saddle stained my pants red.

Afterwards I had some awesome green curry at a little restaurant along the lake, and then Lili (one of the two South African girls we were with) and I lost track of Scott and Leanne and hopped on a bus back to the farm. I was quite literally hanging out of the door of the insanely packed bus for ~30 minutes, but that was way better than being inside the bus like that morning. I don’t think there is a point when those buses are ever full.

That $40 at the farm also included $5 for the guide that took us up the smaller of the two volcanoes on the island, Maderas. You have to take a guide, and ours was pretty cool. Along the way we saw some petroglyphs, as in the picture. The word “ometepe” literally means “two volcanoes” in the native language there, the name of which I can’t remember. At the top of the volcano was a small lagoon/pond/lake. It was a fairly difficult hike if only because of all of the mud on it, but it was worth it. I was sore until about three days after. The two Israeli girls (Mika and Ofra) went with us so we could all get a better discount, and that was cool too. They wre pretty interesting; I’ve never met so many Israelis in my life. There are quite a few in Costa Rica/Nicaragua, which means that Scott got to practice his Hebrew a lot (he’s fluent). Lunch at the top was nice, though it was only two sandwiches from the farm.

That night we could see some lava on the side of the larger volcano, Concepción, as in this picture. Neato.

And a couple more pictures of Concepción.

The next day we caught a mini-bus then a regular bus to the ferry and went back to Rivas, where we took a taxi (for a few more dollars and a few hours faster than the bus) to Granada. Granada is a touristy town along the lake that has some crazy cool Spanish colonial architecture. The food was touristy, the buildings were touristy, the people were nice, and it was really, really hot. We stayed for $6/night hostel style in the Kalala Lodge. The next day we went to the markets at Masaya. We ended up at the “local” market first, which consisted mainly of food and clothes (including a revolting meat section with pig heads, flies, and much more), but took a taxi to the touristy market. I had planned on buying most of my gifts there, but it turned out that the same touristy junk was at every store and the prices were silly. You ended up finding something you wanted and going to different stores to try to get the price down. I’m glad I had India to give me some bargaining practice, because I sure needed it there.

That night we stumbled upon a photo exhibition put on by a local organization called niñoVista (children view, literally) that teaches kids how to take pictures and the skills associated with that. It was really cool. Some of the pictures were pretty good, and they were playing Jack Johnson the whole time. I liked it.

After Haiti, Nicaragua is the second poorest country in Latin America; however, I felt safer in Granada during the day than I did in San Jose. Weird.

We also happened to be there during the beginning of the Semana Santa (Holy Week), a.k.a. Easter. This was a procession that started at around 7:30 a.m. when I was having breakfast, and continued until later that night. The band was horrible.

After some huevos rancheros, Lili and I rented kayaks for $8/hour and paddled around the lake. It was pretty cool, and I only got a little sunburned. The lake can be pretty choppy, but we were long the coast going in between little islands. There were usually one or two houses on each island, and everyone used rowboats to get around. We even passed a small school that inhabited a whole island, and there were boats lined up along the shore of it. Pretty cool. That night we treated ourselves to a really nice dinner ($13 for me) at a restaurant called The Third Eye. It was trying to be a hippy-ish, spiritual, laid back place with “expensive” food, and I got lasagna and garlic bread and a salad and a watermelon juice and an awesome iced tea with lemon and ginger.

Here is a barrage of pictures from Granada.

The next morning, yesterday, we got up at 4:45 to get at the bus station by 5:30 for our bus to San Jose that left at 6. However, we found out when we got there that the bus left from Managua at 6 and didn’t get to Granada until 7. It didn’t say that anywhere on the ticket. Lamesauce. 9 hours and another border stop later, we made it back to the Tranquilo Backpackers, got some dinner at a supermarket, and went to bed. This morning I got back to my homestay at around 11, sat outside and read until someone got home to let me in, and then took a nap after doing laundry and taking a shower.

Now I have to go finish packing and get to bed so I can be at the OTS offices by 7:30 so we can leave to go to Monte Verde. A week there, then a week at Cabo Blanco, and then we’ll go to La Selva. Two weeks without internet/phone and only a little electricity. Whoa!

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.

Surprising Samsara

(Man throwing pesticides in a rice field. They get paid by the bag.)

Pues, ahora estoy en San Jose viviendo con una famila costarricense y estudiando el español. Pero, antes de esto, necesito volverse atrás. . .

(Well, now I’m in San Jose living with a Costa Rican family and studying Spanish. But, before that, I need to backtrack. . .)

The last thing I mentioned here was that I was about to start my independent project. Let’s start there, after I talk about our faculty-led projects.

Two professors from the U.S. came to lead projects for two days at Palo Verde. One project was on howler monkeys and one was on Ipomea carnea (Basically, morning glories, but a species where the vine is woody. The flowers only last for a day.). So one morning, we got up at 5 and followed groups of howler monkeys through the forest for about seven hours, recording the amount of time they ate, slept, played, peed, looked at us, traveled, you name it. How did we find them to begin with? Well, the howl. Google it and listen to them—they’re crazy, and would probably be terrifying if you were alone in the forest and didn’t know what the noise was. The other day (we had split into two groups and switched on the second day) we got up at 5 and counted how many bees went into flowers (one control, one with the stamen (with the pollen) removed, one with the floral display/landing area/whatever you want to call it trimmed back) for about seven hours.

On to the independent projects. Scott, another student in the program, and myself got the big idea to study a certain ant, Ectatomma ruidum, regarding its foraging energetics regarding amino acids. That is, we were going to see where it placed its energy in foraging, and whether it recruited other ants to a particular amino acid source over others. The idea was that since ants, just like humans, have essential amino acids (ones they have to get from their diet since their bodies can’t produce them), they would prefer to eat (and recruit other ants to) essential amino acid sources as opposed to non-essential amino acid sources.

Here is us working diligently. It was hot. My shins got sunburned.

For these projects, we have a few days to prepare, look up literature/download papers (on the extremely slow internet), and come up with ideas. So, Scott and I spent that time reading papers about ant foraging (and as much on this particular species as possible) and coming up with a methodology (which amino acids to use, how to mix them, etc.).

(Here is the scorpion that was hiding in one of my roommate's jackets that stung him when he picked the jacket up. Ha.)

Then the fun started. After finding ten nests—which you can only find if you happen to discover either 1) one of the ants and follow it back to the nest, or 2) the nest itself, the entrance of which is nothing more than a tiny (as wide as the ant itself), inconspicuous hole in the ground—we mixed our amino acid solutions (1 part amino acid, 10 parts sugar (sucrose), 100 parts water, by weight), and on the first of four days of data collection, were immediately given the middle finger by mother nature.

(Can YOU see the nest hole? I didn't think so. But it's there.)

This means that not only did the ants not even come out to discover our theoretically tasty treats, but they didn’t even come out to forage, period. We tried four times that day, including once at night, and these ants, which had been active the previous day, never, ever came out of their nests. We put the mixtures in petri dishes, soaked cotton balls in the stuff, even cooked rice in a beaker on a hot plate in the (horrible) lab and put the mixtures on that. Nothing worked. It was ridiculous, and we were screwed. With 25% of the time allocated to us for data collection thrown in the smelliest dumpster ever, we had to come up with a new project by the next day.

(Rice is quite difficult to cook in a chemistry lab with very little equipment. It didn't work.)

So after our final attempt, Scott and I sat down and tried to come up with other ideas for a project that we could start first thing in the morning. That was more difficult that it sounds, and I think it sounds pretty difficult. But, gracias a todo que es bien y santo, one of the Costa Rican students, David, was also having trouble with his project (our Tico teacher, Mau (Mauricio), had called him, and enacted, a fish dying out of the water earlier that day. It was funny.). He was working alone (you could work in groups of up to four people), and wanted to do something with lianas (woody vines that you imagine being in a rainforest; bejucos en español), but his ideas were too big to be done with one person.

So, at about midnight (late for us), we were coming up with hypotheses and methods that we hoped would fly by our professors and we could start working in the morning. At about 1:30 we went to bed, and at 6:30, after eating breakfast, we smooth talked our way into being able to do this project.

(Scott climbing through some vines in the old-growth forest.)

(An Acacia ant coming out of one of the thorns on, obviously, an Acacia tree. Ant-plant mutualism: the plant provides shelter and amino acids in the form of Extra Floral Nectaries to the ants, and the ants protect the plant from herbivores, lianas, etc. Cool.)

(David hugging a huge tree (122.5 cm in diameter) that had tons of prickles. Qué playito.)

Basic premise: we used GPS to locate three different successional stages of forest a few kilometers from the station—early secondary, late secondary, and old-growth (primary, technically, but not quite)—and, in six 2x50m transects, we counted, measured, and assessed the bark type and "deciduousness" of every single tree and liana. It took a long time; the jungle isn’t easy to bushwhack, and we couldn’t have machetes because it’s a national park. Essentially, we were trying to see the relationships between liana abundance and forest age, as well as their preference (a word I’m not supposed to utter since lianas don’t have “preferences” since they aren’t alive, said one of my teachers) towards certain bark types and the deciduousness of their hosts. The days were long (and hot), we ran out of water halfway through the first day, and not a single one of us knew anything about statistics.

(Sleepy white-faced capuchin.)

Bejuco grande.

(On one of the first days we were warned: "If you happen to be falling, don't reach out to grab anything." This was why.)

This was bad because in biology/ecology, pretty much everything you do is based around statistics. This meant that during our analysis we had to be fed the stats stuff by hand by one of our professors (I have typed “professors” twice thus far, and each time I’ve first typed “profesors.” Professors in Spanish is “profesores.”) We each had to write a paper about our project individually, got to turn in a first draft (for a few points), and then a final, revised draft after getting comments from the teachers (for more points). More on that later.

(Mau sitting on a red mangrove. Sweetest classroom ever.)

The day after we turned in our drafts, we took a field trip. This was bad timing, but you’ll see that later. We went to visit/explore mangroves at Punta Morales, en el Golfo de Nicoya (the Nicoya Gulf) on the pacific side, which was really cool. Mangroves are ecosystems along coasts that only contain a few species of plants, all of which are trees. They are only able to exist there because of their adaptations to living with salt. (Most) Mangroves get freshwater from inland sources and saltwater from the sea, and so they have to deal with both situations.

(Note the lack of understory. Also note the ground; an enlarged version of this is below)

They don’t like salt any more than other plants, however, and they have some pretty sweet tricks to deal with it. For example, most of the trees exude salt from glands in their leaves, forming crystals that you can lick. Some store salt in older leaves that will soon fall, and if you tear one open you can see how thick it is inside.

(Note the salt crystals.)

As the soil these trees live on is basically a very fine mud/silt, there is no oxygen in the substrate. Therefore, some species have roots that come above ground (lentisols) for gas exchange (see picture below), some exchange it through pores in their bark on the trunk, etc. Some species are on stilt roots, which can only be explained with a picture. The red mangroves basically form a giant jungle gym, which was pretty fun to “monkey around” on. Har de har harr.

There was a beach nearby, and ‘twas the first time I got to go to a beach at night, drink beer, and eat salsa. It was nice, but I also got sunburned (not at night; during the day, of course), and am still peeling. In the tropics, el sol es muy fuerte.

This is a tree (Bursera simarouba) whose bark peels off during the dry season. The green bark underneath takes care of the photosynthetic needs since all of the leaves have also fallen. Ticos call it the "gringo" tree. (Gringo=white person, most of which get sunburned and peel a lot. Hilarious.)

We also talked to a lady cleaning oysters; she worked with a group of women who grow/cultivate oysters near the mangroves as part of a project through el Universidad de Costa Rica.

Then, the “highlight” of the field trip, if you can call it that. We went to the Megafauna Park. Megafauna are big ole extinct animals—everything from dinosaurs to mastodons to giant sloths. At the Megafauna park, there were lots of statues of said animals. It was probably the largest waste of time ever, especially when we had two midterms to take, a dichotomous plant key to make, our papers to rewrite, and our insect identifications to complete (which, luckily, I’d done during the first week at Palo Verde), all within the next three days.

Back at Palo Verde, we had to study for our tests, but excitingly, some of us had to do ethics presentations. At Las Cruces, we all signed up to lead discussions on various topics relating to ethics in science—everything to altering data to unethical methodology—and mine, the first one, happened to fall on the day after we got back from the field trip and two nights before our midterms. So basically I wasted a day reading papers about shooting birds with shotguns in the name of science instead of studying for huge-ass tests that I was in no way prepared for. That was fun.

After our midterms (which were very difficult and covered basically everything we’d done since we got here), I did my plant key (also difficult) and started rewriting my paper. That night, however, was pretty entertaining. We took a break and celebrated Purim, a Jewish holiday (because there are about 4.25 Jews in our group), which celebrates—long story short and as I understand it—the escape of the Jews from a bad guy named Haman who was trying to kill them for various reasons. The thing about Purim is that it’s a drink-till-you-drop holiday in that you’re supposed to drink so much/enough that you can’t differentiate an enemy from a friend, and you’re supposed to be in costume. I wore a paper yammukah with a Star of David and a picture of Mau in the center that said "Mauzltov." It was pretty sweet, and I’ll stop there.

The next day began the rewriting of the papers. After all day and more statistical tests and more background reading (our papers were torn to shreds and I had to completely rewrite my introduction and discussion), at about 3:30 a.m. I turned in my paper. So, long story short, after three extensions and two up-until-4 a.m.-nights, I turned in my first ever scientific paper, which you can read here, if you’re interested. I’d say it’s manageable even for people who don’t know anything about lianas, the rainforest, or even science. Here it is:

LianaIndependentProject.pdf

At least I didn’t fall on a cactus, like one of the girls in our group, or drop my iPod in the muddy marsh, like one of the guys.

The day before this was March 10, the 50^th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising in 1959 after the Chinese invasion in the same year. As you may know, I’m kind of interested in this subject (see my previous blog if you haven’t already on my studies on Tibetan culture last semester in India/Nepal), and so I brought prayer flags to hang up with me to Costa Rica. I brought four sets, hadn’t hung any. After I finished my paper at 3 a.m., I decided there couldn’t be a better time, with March 10^th just passing and all, to go hang some. So basically, I stared hiking up a trail in the dark with flags in my pocket alone in the rainforest in the middle of the night. A bat almost ran into my face.

However, halfway up, the batteries in my flashlight decided that they didn’t feel like working anymore. In the tropical forest, the canopy is high and the light is low. This presents a problem when you’re walking in sandals at night on a steep slope and you’re a good few hundred meters from where you started. The next decision I made probably wasn’t one of the smartest ones ever: I decided to say “screw it,” and kept going. How’s that for dedication?

I hung the flags in a spot by some huge rocks where you could see out over the marsh and could see a city in the distance. By this time it was 4 a.m. (it takes a bit longer when you can’t see anything) and the moon was out in full force, thankfully. My eyes had adjusted some, which was good, and it was quite windy, which was bad for tying knots. But I did it, and I’m glad I did. I don’t have pictures of them, though I don’t really mind. It was an ordeal I’m sure not to forget, and I don’t need pictures to do so. My trip last semester, the people I met, the things I saw and learned, even the food I ate have been on my mind all the time since I’ve been here, so it was kind of a relief, in a way, to do that.

Entonces, after two hours of sleep, I ate breakfast, packed everything up, and left for San Jose at 8 a.m. So far I’ve lost my towel, my small keychain-like flashlight, and my headphones. Lame.

(Bye, Palo Verde Biological Station!)

San Jose is much louder, smellier, and has many more people than the forest, but that’s OK. My homestay family is nice. Rodrigo the husband is a mechanic and isn’t around much, the son/daughter aren’t here, and Maria Elieth, the mother, is really nice and cooks good food. I haven’t had a bean here yet! However, they have a small fat Chihuahua-like dog—exactly the kind of dog that I don’t like. Oh well. I’ve picked up a wireless internet connection here a couple of times, though it’s weak. I can use wireless at the school, so that’s good, but I’m not going to bring my computer every day for common-sense-in-a-big-city purposes. It’s odd to go to sleep with sounds of cars and motorcycles and people yelling.

There are two other students from the language school staying here: a lady from Wisconsin and an older, retired mining engineer who now spends his time traveling, reading, and being laid back, from what I gather. He’s pretty interesting. He likes going to/staying at monasteries because they’re quiet, and has an obsession with buying books. He mentioned that, and then I mentioned that I stayed at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in south India for a month last semester, and he asked where, etc., and I found out he’s stayed in Dharamsala for a while and a monastery close to Kathmandu as well (he doesn’t like Buddhist monasteries as much because they are so loud all the time, which I completely understand.). Finally, someone I can relate my experiences in the eastern hemisphere to! He also gave me a book, A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life by Shantideva, which came straight from the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, to which I happily said, essentially, “no, I haven’t read it, but I know a lot about it, and thank you very much.” He told me not to return it. I miss India.

Spanish classes are intense, and I’m in one of the advanced levels. It’s completely in Spanish, even explanations. Today we just reviewed some, but I can tell we’re going to be moving quickly. I’ve done my homework but am still reviewing grammar (though I took a rather long break to type this), and I’m going to bed soon.

On Saturday (tomorrow, I guess) some of us are going white-water rafting, and I may be going to Nicaragua for the week-long break we have. I won’t say more—gotta keep you on your toes.

Hill of the Dead; Palo Verde Volume 1

So I've returned safely from the Hill of the Dead (Cuerici Biological Station) and am now currently sitting in a hot room with two fans next to a marsh in el Parque Nacional Palo Verde (Palo Verde National Park) in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. Time to back track.

After spending a couple of weeks at Las Cruces Biological Station, we migrated to Cuerici, a small reserve in the mountains about four or five hours from San José. Cuerici isn't a national park, but rather a reserve area (semi-protected, I guess) and trout farm run by don Carlos, a true "papa bear"-type figure. Here he is now, super-casually sticking his machete in a tree along the continental divide. He always, always wore that hat. It had a parrot on it. I liked him.


Anywho, Cuerici has been (and probably will be) the most primitive of the stations we visit. No internet for a week--gasp!--and an emergency-only phone. At Cuerici we explored the Montane Oak Forest, which is a completely different ecosystem than the Tropical Lowland Forest of Las Cruces or the Tropical Dry Forest of Palo Verde. Basically, a bunch of people (around seven) got together to buy the land that has become Cuerici, only one of whom actually lives and works there, don Carlos. His family has owned the land for generations, and he has, essentially, single-handedly created a private reserve with the purpose of preserving/regrowing the old oak forest and educating people about it. Here's the building/house where we stayed (upstairs in one big room). It had a wood burning stove, a dining area, hot showers, and a classroom/lab attached to it with a huge fireplace inside. It got pretty cold at night--four blankets weren't enough if you weren't wearing sufficient clothing. It was nice to not have internet for a week. We went to bed at around 9:30 every night. Haha.




Don Carlos also runs a trout farm. Trout ("trucha") is an introduced species of fish in this area, and no fish occur naturally at such a high elevation. This is the main "crop" in the area, along with some blackberries. He generates his own electricity with a turbine hooked up to a small creek (being sure to watch how much water he takes from it), and allows a stray horse left by a French couple to roam his property, using the manure to help feed the worms that he feeds to the trout. Don Carlos both uses his land sustainably and conserves it, a rarity for Costa Rica, much less the rest of the world. Here is the aforementioned ungulate involved in a staring contest with the author:



One day we went up to an area of Páramo ecosystem. You could see the pacific ocean, and it looked more like a shrubby desert in the Andes than anywhere else in Costa Rica. There are more facts in this picture than I'd like to explain at the moment, but if you ask, you shall receive. In short, note the leaf shapes and reflectiveness of the flowers.


There were some speckled lizards that would bite and hold on to anything, including the ears of South Africans.



Typical Bromeliad.


One of the reasons that Cerro de la Muerte is called such is because when the fog rolls in like this, people suddenly become completely incompetent at driving. The same thing happens when there is ice. The automobile accident rate is ridiculously high in Costa Rica, and this only adds to those figures.



Here's a view from a lookout point on a trail at the station:


This moss is called Barba del Viejo, or Old Man's Beard. It was pretty sweet, and covered many trees, including this small one.



One day we took a morning hike, resulting in these "typical" rainforest pictures.



Look at that cute little epiphytic bromeliad growing on a stump with a sketchy looking tree in the background. It was quite foggy.


Three other students and myself (voluntarily) got up at 4:55 a.m. to hike up the road to see the sunrise on one of the last days. The clouds were completely covering the valley--usually you can see all the way to the Pacific. Way cool.


This tree was really, really tall. like hundreds of feet tall. Not as big as "El Abuelo" (the grandfather) the HUGE (about five people, arms spread out, across), centuries-old oak that we saw on the day we hiked across the continental divide and my camera battery conveniently chose to die.




So jump ahead a few days, and we're at Palo Verde Biological Station. It's the complete opposite of Cuerici: dry, hot, and lots of mammals and tons of birds. So far I've seen two raccoons, a couple of male coati, some howler monkies and white-faced capuchins, and countless storks, cranes, and egrets. Oh, also lots of iguanas (and bugs)!




This marsh used to be a cattle farm. They're doing some crazy difficult things to try to restore it that I won't go into right now. Here's a sunset from the second day.



And a Ctenosaur (black iguana). There are lots of them here.




A note about Palo Verde from our orientation materials:

Through an agreement with the Costa Rica National Park Service, OTS maintains this field station within the Palo Verde National Park. This reserve, located in the northwestern region of the country, lies on the boundary between an extensive marsh and seasonally dry forest underlain with limestone. It protects part of the lower Tempisque River Basin, the largest river drainage of the historic province of Guanacaste. Palo Verde is recognized internationally as one of the most important wetland habitats for nesting waterfowl. It is also a great place to see monkeys, deer, lizards, and crocodiles. Several trails lead to lookout points with incredible scenic vistas, favorite spots for watching the sunset. The park is currently impacted by rice and sugar cane cultivation in surrounding wetlands. It is also unique among Costa Rican parks in that domestic animals (namely, cattle) have been incorporated into its management program; a somewhat controversial decision that we will have a closer look at when we are there. The field station is rustic.


That said, coati!


Howler monkey and baby.



Today we went to sugarcane and rice fields. I've seen two scorpions, one of which was as small as a penny. Crazy.

As a testament to our location, we get complimentary bug nets for our beds. Luckily, however, there aren't that many mosquitoes right now because it's the dry season.

Also, yesterday was my birthday. It's the third birthday in a row this week, but my cake (banana) has definitely been the best, in my opinion. Yep, I spent my 21st looking at water hyacinths and crocodiles in a lagoon and getting lectured on both the potential seed dispersal effects of Gomphotheres and ant-acacia interactions in a Dry Forest ecosystem.

We're here until mid-March. Next week we have to start our independent projects. I might do mine on something to do with spatial-temporal learning and dietary needs of the ant Ectatomma Ruidum.

Bedtime.

"I STRONGLY DISAGREE WITH YOU"

It’s been a little while, but here is my last entry for a week. We’re leaving tomorrow morning to go to Cuerici (A.K.A. Cerro de la Muerta [Hill of the Dead]) for 6 days. No internet/phone, so don’t be afraid if you can’t get in touch with me. I’m all right.

Here’s a blurb about it from our orientation materials:

“Cuerici is located at an altitude of 2,900 meters near Cerro de la Muerte in the Talamanca Mountain Range of Costa Rica. This small farm and biological station includes about 200 hectares of primary forest bordering the Rio Macho Forest Reserve and Chirripo National Park. Both of these protected areas mark the northwestern edge of La Amistad Conservation Area. Ancient, tall oaks dominate the forest at this altitude (primarily Quercus costarricenses and Q. copeyensis). Some of these trees are estimated to be nearly 1,000 years old. Near Cerro de la Muerte, at 3,200 meters, the trees give way to high-altitude paramo, a unique tropical ecosystem specially adapted to temperatures that fluctuate rapidly between warm, sunny days and nights below freezing. Páramo is dominated by shrub land where drainage is adequate and by bogs where drainage is poor. The station at Cuerici is a large, rustic cabin complete with a large fireplace for roasting marshmallows and a wood burning stove to keep visitors warm during the exceptionally chilly nights. The surrounding oak forests, which were heavily exploited for charcoal, are an important habitat for the resplendent quetzal. The region produces organic blackberry, much of which is exported to the United States.”

Anyway, here are some words about the past few days.

On the 5th we went on a hike past the Río Java to take our first field observations. It´s pretty odd, actually, to just sit somewhere for thirty minutes and write what is happening to all of your senses. You should try it sometime: get some paper, go to a park or the woods or even your backyard, sit down. And look around you. I bet you ten thousand colones that you’ll see, hear, and smell things that you’ve never noticed before. (I double dare you).

While hiking on the trail, we came across the largest ant colony I’ve ever seen. See the picture below. It’s no optical illusion—that tall guy is tall.



On the way back, the unexpected (yet slightly expected) happened. About five of us were lagging behind (me because of my picture-taking addiction, the others because they are a little slow, of course) and ran into a friendly little bug on the trail. And by friendly little bug, I mean huge ass tarantula. Big spider. Everyone was sticking their foot out to see if it would crawl on it. However, it decided that my foot was the best choice (and I hadn’t even stuck it out yet), and embarked on a ridiculously fast journey—a straight shot to the groin. So, naturally, I took pictures. Here it is on my leg:


And here it is after I picked it up and it started crawling up my arm. At this point, I handed it off to one of the Costa Rican students, Andres. After he tried to kiss it (jokingly, of course), it reared up in defense (meaning that it wasn’t happy and you should get ready for some fang action) and we put him on the nearest tree.



(You should have seen Darby’s reaction when I told her.)

On the 6th, we hopped in the cars and drove a few kilometers to the Gamboa farm. We were learning/experiencing the effects of forest fragmentation and island biogeography. Basically, when people cut down patches of forest, it changes the microclimate and biodiversity along the edges and greatly affects the species living in the remaining “fragments.” I won’t go into too much detail, but basically, what happens in the resulting “edge effects” are carried deeper and deeper into the fragment until the whole mini-ecosystem is affected greatly. So I don’t bore you, I’ll leave the rest to my old friend Wikipedia.

(I thought these leaves were cool.)

(Our Costa Rican professor Mau (Mauricio), looking qué suave.)

We’ve watched two videos on fair trade coffee. Coffee is the second highest traded commodity besides oil, and that’s something that I bet no one reading this knew. OK, someone might have. Anyways, the point was that buying fair trade assures that the farmers get a fair price for their coffee crop. It's an important thing--companies like Starbucks, Folgers, etc., are buying coffee at ridiculously low prices and selling it for ridiculously high prices. E.g., you can make about 35 cups of coffee out of about a pound of coffee. Big companies that don't do fair trade buy coffee at world market price at, let's say, a dollar a pound. Then Starbucks sells a (cheap) cup of coffee for $2. That's 35 cups per pound, at $2 a cup. The farmer got $1 per pound, and can rarely afford to send his kids to school. Now think about the $6 cups of coffee they sell. Just think about it.

One of the farmers participating in fair trade in the video we watched has a farm in Agua Buena, a town about 10 min from here. His name is Roberto Jimenez, and he's one of the coolest guys ever. He grows café arabica (as opposed to robusta, the lesser quality one with more caffeine and bitterness), bananas, plantains, sugarcane, mangoes, and more on his "finca" (farm).

(Drying coffee)

(Greenhouse)

(An ancient, still functioning/used sugar cane press. Used to be cranked by 2 oxen, now he just does it with the hand crank.)

(He also has a couple of pigs and cows)

(Roberto holding some fresh beans. He works hard and knows his shit. True.)

He's part of a fair trade co-op that produces sustainable and, apparently, really good coffee. He uses his bananas and other trees to shade his coffee plants; he's doing it the right way, and uses about 80% less pesticides than other farmers. What he does use is organic and he makes himself. His finca resembles more of a rainforest than your average farm, and he's trying to do his work in an ecologically friendly mindset. He uses natural fences and erosion control and provides homes to many a bird, which non-shade grown coffee plantations do not. He was obviously very interested in and had his heart set on helping the environment and protecting the lands instead of making a dime (literally). Inspiring.

You can even buy it online and they'll pack some up (according to your grind/roast specifications) and mail it to you. And you're supporting the coffee growers instead of the corporations. You pay a few cents more per cup and increase the quality of life of countless individuals instead of fattening the coffers of a bunch of CEOs somewhere. Cool? I think so.


On to other news: here's Mike (one of the funniest kids on the trip) up in a huge strangler fig.







And here are a couple from a night walk:

(under the leaf of a Heliconiaceae)

Lastly, I finished my insect identifying, and got a 100% on my plant test. Woo! I guessed on four, too. I also finished my statistics homework. For future references, I hate statistics.

A couple of birds (chestnut mandibled toucan and a blue crowned mat mat, respectively), and an agouti about 15 feet away from me!

See you after Cuerici!


(By the way, coffee is a member of the Rubiaceae family. Trivia.)