Monteverde

So I have little to do at this point. My paper is nearly complete, pending only a few changes from the research paper/statistics guru hired by the ACM, Mike McCoy. I haven't really been up to a whole lot of interesting stuff since the last blog post. I spent a weekend with the host family in San Jose and then went to Monteverde, which was one of the highlights of the past 4 months.

Though Monteverde is relatively close to San Jose, the bus ride there is pretty long (about 5 hours or longer depending on traffic). 2 buses a day leave for Monteverde from San Jose. As our bus left on a Friday afternoon, you can imagine that it was pretty packed, but hey, it wouldn't be Costa Rica without the sweaty buses.

The first day in Monteverde, Kelsey and I went to the Selvatura Reserve to walk on the bridges they have in the canopy. Although there were no Resplendent Quetzales (see below) on this walk, we did manage to see a Coati Mundi foraging for insects about 150 feet above the forest floor. How it got there, we are not quite sure.

After that, we took a taxi straight to the Bat Museum. It's a place that was opened by one of the world's foremost bat scientists to educate the public about what I have come to realize are the most important mammals on the planet (and the most diverse). A single bat colony can eat 250 million tons of insects in a single night. Bats are also crucial pollinators for a large diversity of plants that humans rely on for agricultural and medicinal purposes. Their poop (guano) is also rich in phosphorus, the most important building block for DNA.

After that, we walked backed into town (Santa Elena) and went to an ice cream shop. There we met up with another Macalester student who is on a different study abroad program based in Santa Elena (OTS - owners of La Selva). She asked us if we wanted to climb a tree. No person in their right mind would ever refuse such an intriguing proposal so we followed her to the most impressive strangler fig I've ever seen. After climbing at least 100 feet up the inside of the tree's "trunk" we emerged at the top for a breathtaking view of the valley below. I wouldn't recommend this for people with a fear of heights.

The local supermarket had bratwurst. Kelsey and I ate 6 for dinner.

The next morning we woke up early and went to the Monteverde Reserve in search of the quetzal. After 4 hours of hiking, we had not seen a single quetzal despite hearing his melancholic call many times. It wasn't a huge letdown as the forest itself was one of the more beautiful I had ever seen. I'd been to Monteverde about 10 years earlier but we never made it to the reserve. For anyone thinking about visiting Monteverde, this park is the one attraction you must be sure to see!

Anyway, back to the story. We walked around for 4 hours but saw no quetzal. After the hike, we found a seat in the plaza in front of the reserve to wait for a taxi to swing by and pick us up. We had been seated for about 15 minutes when a woman began to scream in delight. She finally came to her senses and told us that a quetzal had landed in one of the only trees bordering the plaza. We raced over to see it. I caught a 2-second glimpse of his front before a clumsy Tico, obviously in awe, backed up into a trash can (knocking it over), trying to get a good view. The bird took flight and its long tail feathers followed its red belly and then it landed on a branch further away. We got to admire his backside for a few minutes and then he flew away in search of a more private piece of cloud forest canopy. It was really cool.

We took the taxi back to the hotel in Santa Elena, ate a quick lunch, and boarded the bus back to San Jose. All in all it was an excellent trip and I'd say that Kelsey and I were very efficient with the time we had in Monteverde. It is a place I'd say that every visitor (and resident) to Costa Rica must see.

Anyway, that's all for now. This Friday we are off to the Nicoya for the last trip in Costa Rica. I will be returning to the US on May 28th.

Rounding out Sarapiqui

The two months are up. I'm back from Sarapiqui, quite tanned, speaking fluent Spanish, and missing it already. I've come to realize that I rather don't like San Jose. As a young adult it's probably a fascinating place to be but to me it is a place of chaos (fueled chiefly by the total anarchy on the city's roads).

Currently I am in what you'd call "crunch time." I have only 2.5 remaining weeks to analyze the mountain of data I collected over the past 2 months, and then the idea is that I write something. I actually put off writing this blog for so long for that very reason. There is so much I'd love to do with the spiders that currently sit on my desk in my San Pedro house, but unfortunately I won't have time (and so for now on they are not spiders, but rather numbers and dates). My young host brothers take an inordinate amount of joy from pulling a random spider from my bag and asking me (the spider "expert") if it is venomous. To their disappointment, most aren't.

And now to pick up where I left off the last time. My Semana Santa was pretty brilliant. I left Puerto Viejo around 7:30 and met up with Kelsey in San Jose. We boarded the bus to San Isidro and eventually ended up in the hotel around 9 o'clock that night. I'm telling you, the ACM needs to start providing jets to each student - it would really help us get the full Costa Rica experience (actually, I suppose 75% of the authentic Costa Rica experience would involve some form of traveling - a healthy portion of the other 25%, at least for me, would involve fighting monkeys).

Uvita was waaaaaaay different from Dominical (though a GPS would disagree). We came during Semana Santa, Costa Rica's spring break, but Uvita was empty. The hotel was about 2.5 km from the beach, where we headed for the first day. Kelsey and I walked until we decided that the beach was empty enough. Only one person passed the entire day.

The next day we went to a nearby waterfall. This one perhaps not as dramatic as the one I previously described, but much more fun for thrill seekers like myself. I had the chance to slide down the waterfall (something Kelsey also tried after some coaxing). I jumped off a 35 ft. cliff time and time again, and I also had the chance to fly from a rope swing that hung even higher above the water. It was AWESOME. The waterfall was a nice contrast to the beach for it's shady environment (it was also hidden within the forest) and it's refreshingly cool waters. Unfortunately the falls were not as deserted as the beach, but the people there (all of whom were ticos, were very friendly).

On our third and final full day in Uvita, Kelsey and I splurged on a trip to Isla de Caño - a place I had been lucky enough to have seen before. The boat ride out lasts about an hour and a half and we saw plenty of sea turtles (who are actually very conspicous as tired birds fancy them for places to land in the open sea) and even dolphins jumping out of the water. When we arrived at the island we started snorkeling in the surrounding reefs but the water was a bit murkey. That lasted about an hour and then we headed to shore for lunch and relaxation time. After that we went snorkeling again, but this time in a much more vibrant site. Immediately after plunging into the luke warm water, I was confronted with a school of hundreds of enormous fish. I took the liberty of diving down to join them and for a few seconds I knew roughly what it felt like to be one of these fish (though I guess if I am self-conscious enough to make that reflection then I can never really know what it's like to be a fish - but that's more of a philosophical question, isn't it?)

The trip home from Uvita was unconventional. It involved a Mitsubishi Eclipse on the brink of collapse and a lot of water - I'll leave it at that (it's a shame I don't have pictures).

The rest of my time in Sarapiqui was spent working far too much. For a lack of other things to do in the final weeks, I worked about 12 hours a day with my spiders. I did, however, manage to snap a picture of a baby hummingbird seconds before it took its first flight:


I may have accelerated her departure from the nest - oh well, she'll be fine (her brother had already left, anyway).

Over the last few days, this very large insect could be found crawling on the window sills:


On my second to last day in Sarapiqui, I took a heap of photos of my house and the surrounding gardens, here are a few pictures (including: a delicious type of lime used to make a refreshing drink, La Guaria Morada (national flower), the a view of the backyard, the front porch, and one of the organically-grown pineapples in progress in the backyard):






Overall the rural stay was excellent. I was only glad to leave the heat (it rarely got below 90 degrees). On the return to San Jose I felt like a scientifically-inclined relative of Santa; hauling my huge sack of spiders along with all of my other luggage. The best news that came from leaving Sarapiqui was that my host family got me a La Selva t-shirt with a spider on it. It's awesome, I'm wearing it right now.

After a week in San Jose, I went back to Cahuita last weekend with some of the guys in the program. Overall it was very relaxing and I was happy to have had the chance to make it out to the point. The hike out there is about 40 minutes long through a very beautiful trail bordering the beach - I recommend it, though I do warn you that the monkeys are even more numerous out there. I got a good workout chasing those little buggers away from our backpacks, they are fearless, that is until a really big monkey (me) comes charging at them using its fiercest battle cry.

This week is pure work. I was happy to see Manchester United beat Arsenal with outstanding style. After seeing the Barcelona-Chelsea match I came to the conclusion that it would be an injustice if Manchester United is not victorious in the final in Rome - but I don't think I have much to worry about.

This weekend I have no plans but to work a fair amount. The following weekend I will most likely be traveling somewhere (perhaps Monteverde), and for my final week here I already have plans to stay in the country's first natural reserve on the southern tip of the Nicoya Peninsula (in Guanacaste). Should be a blast - I'll keep you updated.