"Costa Rica (spring)" via ACM in Google Reader

Flow

2012-05-16T15:09:00Z

Last week, we watched the documentary “Flow,” which is about the privatization of water resources leading to a lack of potable water for much of the world’s population. We then took a field trip to the town of Concepción de San Rafael de Heredia to see their water source and learn about water conservation efforts there.

When we arrived, we were so happy to breathe the fresh, slightly chilly air. I’ve said it before, but that’s one thing that I love about Costa Rica: even just an hour bus ride brought us to a completely different ecosystem. The weather here reminded me of Northern California; pine trees and mountains galore. We met up with an environmental lawyer/activist and a farmer, who have both worked hard on water conservation efforts in the region.

As we hiked up to see the water source for this county, our hosts explained to us the importance of avoiding privatization of the water supply. There are several large, powerful international companies that have taken over government control of water supply, claiming they will provide cleaner water for more people. Most of the time, the opposite happens: public water fountains are shut down, cutting the poorest citizens off completely from the water supply. Unable to afford iodine tablets for purification, they are then forced to drink untreated water from the polluted rivers and risk death from disease. The water supply in Concepción is owned by the people (through taxes), which is a very important step.

After hiking for awhile, our guides stopped us to explain that we had arrived at the border of the protected region. A law passed in 1888 protected a large area of land in Heredia Province from which much of the water supply originates, stating that no private ownership or building was allowed on this land. This law has been completely forgotten and ignored, which was clear to us by the fact that there was no difference between the land on either side of the border; private farms and houses continued with no interruption.

Here's the border of the protected area... there aren't even any signs marking it

Finally, we ended up at the stream that is the source of drinking water for the region. Our guides explained that before massive citizen fundraising efforts in recent years, water “treatment” consisted of taking water straight from the streams and dumping in unmeasured amounts of chlorine. Often, in the rainy season, sediment would be washed into the river and water from the tap would come out brown in color. Now, they have a much more technologically advanced system that removes sediments and treats the water with the proper amounts of chemicals. The water in Concepción can now actually be considered “potable.”


Water collection for human consumption... Don't swim in the drinking water stream.

Stream where the drinking water comes from

One thing that shocked me to learn was that many small towns in Costa Rica still drink river water with chlorine dumped in. And, according to our guide, that type of water “treatment” is included in the 95% potable water in Costa Rica that you read about in tourist guide books. He believes that is a flat-out lie, explaining that there is a difference between “safe for human consumption” and “potable;” Costa Rica may have 95% “safe for human consumption” water, but far, far less than that percentage is actually potable. Yikes!

We found some black raspberries on our hike!

This was all very educational and thought-provoking, but it was also fun to just go on a hike with my friends in a beautiful place! We hiked back from the stream (which was very exciting and involved one of my classmates twisting her ankle and being picked up in an ox cart… only in Costa Rica) to ACM director Chris Vaughan’s organic farm.

View from the road we hiked up

On the farm, we picked our own carrots for a snack, which we ate along with some gallos (corn tortilla sandwiches) made with homemade tortillas and fresh queso blanco from the region. The cheese tasted so fresh – one of my friends remarked that she could taste the cow in the cheese. It was good… but being a Wisconsinite I have to say it wasn’t as good as fresh cheese curds at the Dane County Farmer’s Market in Madison! We also snacked on home-baked tamal asado (like a dense cake, made with corn flour, sugar and sour cream). We then took a tour of the organic farm, seeing banana plants and avocado trees before running back onto the bus right before the rain started. It’s definitely transitioning into the rainy season here; sunny in the mornings and rainy in the afternoons.

Picking carrots

Eating gallos

Tamal asado con pasas (with raisins)

Baby aguacate (avocado) tree

It was a fun, quick field trip in the midst of cramming to finish our research projects!

Exploring San Jose

2012-05-14T21:01:00Z

I would guess that most people, when they plan a vacation to Costa Rica, don’t want to spend much time in its capital city San José. The draw of Costa Rica is really the nature, the unmatched biodiversity and wealth of ecosystems to explore. Still, now that I’ve been here for four months I feel like I’ve gotten the chance to experience many of the natural wonders of this country, and I chose to spend my free time in my last weeks here exploring San José (plus, I’ve had a lot of work to do on my project).

My friends and I have spent the last couple Sundays working on our projects in a McDonald’s in downtown San José. I know, I know, McDonald’s? Really?! But it’s in a central location, and is one of the few places with free wifi (though it hasn’t been working lately). And McDonalds' here are actually really classy – they have a “McCafé” that is just like a regular café, serving fancy coffee drinks and desserts and offering comfy chairs to sit and work at. We got into a Sunday habit of meeting at Mickey D’s, sipping our coffee as we worked for a few hours, and then wandering around downtown to get ice cream or buy souvenirs from the art market. It’s been a nice way to spend my Sundays, and I now feel much more comfortable with the bus system after many trips downtown.

Dove statue outside of the Teatro Nacional. There are dozens of these painted doves all over the city - San Jose's version of the Cow Parade

We also went on a field trip last Wednesday with our Spanish professors to tour the Teatro Nacional (National Theater). The building, supposedly built to replicate the Vienna Opera House, is ornate and a very impressive sight, especially when it’s lit up at night. It was built in the late 1800’s, after exportation to Europe made Costa Rican coffee farmers rich. These farmers, determined to boost Costa Rica’s appreciation of the fine arts, convinced the government to build this elaborate theater. Somehow, the coffee farmers didn’t end up paying as much as they originally claimed they would for the construction of this building; instead, an export tax on rice and beans meant that the lower agricultural class, who weren’t even allowed to enter the theater and reap the benefits of this investment, paid for a large percentage.

Still, whatever its history, the Teatro Nacional is a gorgeous building. Each room is ornately decorated, with marble statues and pillars brought from Italy, lavish candle holders and chandeliers, and paintings on nearly every inch of ceiling.


Dancer statue in the Teatro Nacional. Plus a trash can.

Fancy room in the Teatro Nacional. Connected to this room were the mens' and womens' smoking salons - separate, of course.

The theater. This picture was taken from the president's booth, where the presidente (or presidenta, as the current Costa Rican president is a woman) gets to sit to watch shows.

The most famous painting is Alegoría al café y el banana, which shows coffee and banana harvests. Our guide explained that this painting was done by an Italian artist who had never actually been to Costa Rica, a fact that is evident by several mistakes. The women depicted harvesting cacao have very light, European complexions, and are wearing shirts that expose their shoulders; at this time in Costa Rican history, women wore very modest clothing and would never show their shoulders. Also, the man in the center of the painting is holding his bunch of bananas all wrong – actual banana workers hoist the bunch onto their shoulders upside down.

Alegoria al cafe y el banano painting. It's hard to take pictures of things on the ceiling; sorry. But you can see the women with their skimpy shirts on the right, and the man awkwardly holding his bananas in the middle.

I had another San José adventure last Saturday night with Lauren and my host mom, Vicky. We decided to get tickets to La Media Docena, which is like Costa Rica’s version of Saturday Night Live. Lauren and I decided that seeing a comedy show would be the ultimate test of our Spanish fluency. And we were proud to discover that we understood the majority of the Spanish, and even most of the jokes that were specifically making fun of Costa Rican culture! We had a great time, and Vicky was especially excited when we got to take a picture with the most guapo comedian at the end of the show :).

I’m still hoping to explore some of the museums in San José before I go, but I’ve had a good time getting to know the city better these last couple of weeks.

Home Sweet Home

2012-05-04T20:25:27Z

I’m officially heading home in 15 days!! Wow!!

Please excuse the brevity of this blog. This is what happens when I try to squeeze in too much at one time.

The BIG Highlights:

Volcano Irazu: Including our “volcanologist” guide taking us on a private trail with picnic benches and a beautiful sight of Volcano Turrialba up in smoke.
Basilica in Cartago: Rubbed holy water on my stomach as it was hurting, as it is custom to apply the blessed water to ailing parts of the body.
Race in Ochomogo: Literally 5K up a mountain and 5K back down. Rough on the legs, beautiful for the eyes as I could see the entire Central Valley from the top. (pictures to come)
Visit to Tarcoles: Small fishing villages with a sustainable fishing cooperation, means nummy fish dishes and the chance to get my hands slimy.
Punta Leona Hotel and Club: A day to feel super spoiled with pools, a shower with a heat gradient, A/C, white sand beaches, breakfast buffet and jellyfish stings. (pictures to come)
Hotel LC: Lunch buffet with my host family reminding me of a classic Bon Appetit meal, but with a live band playing Bob Marley.

Highlights

2012-05-04T14:56:00Z

I’ve gotten a little behind on the updates... sorry! After I got back from my backpacking trip in Corcovado, life got really busy. I was rushing to finish all my data collection before I left my field site to return to San José, while still finding the time to chat with my host mom or draw pictures with my host sisters. To catch up, I thought I’d share some of the highlights of the last few weeks. Luckily, every evening after I tucked in my mosquito net and got settled in bed I would write in my journal before going to sleep, so it’s not too hard to remember what I’ve done:

Monday, 4/9: My host father’s cousin, who used to own a panadería (bakery) in Pueblo Nuevo, came to show us how to make the pastry dough for costillasand empanaditas, which are both made from a croissant-like filled with savory ingredients (like ground beef or melted cheese) or sweet ones (usually homemade jams). The only difference between the two is their shape: costillas are long and thin, while empanaditas are half moons. Seeing the pastries in process made me realize why they taste soooo good: in addition to the oil that went into the batter, the panadero (baker) folded three sticks of butter into the dough as he kneaded it! No wonder the costillas and empanaditasthat we made, filled with homemade guava jam, were so flaky and delicious…

Empanaditas filled with homemade guava jam

Yum!

Wednesday, 4/11: I left to go to my San José host sister’s wedding on the beach in Nosara, which is on the Pacific coast. It was definitely a bit of a shock to go from the tiny, rural town where I was doing my research to a wealthy beach village where most of the population is foreign and doesn’t speak Spanish! The whole wedding experience was absolutely gorgeous. One of my host mother Vicky’s friends rented a house for us to stay in for the weekend which meant we could cook meals together and hang out by the pool. I felt so content waking up in the morning and making breakfast (eggs, gallo pinto, and coffee) with Vicky – like I was with my own family. We spent a lot of our time that weekend helping to set up for the wedding, but it was fun to be part of the preparations. Vicky, my host sister Laura, and I made sangria to serve at the reception… mmmm… Even with all of the work to be done, there was time to hang out on the gorgeous beaches, watch the sunset from a restaurant, and go for a barefoot morning run in the sand (on my run I saw two baby turtles hatch from their nest and swim to the sea!) And the wedding itself was stunning. My host sister María José was beautiful, calm and happy. She works as a teacher in a bilingual Montessori school in town, so she invited all of the little girls she teaches to be her flower girls. The ceremony was right on the beach in the late afternoon, so just as it finished we were treated to a spectacular sunrise. Then we walked up a few sandy steps to the restaurant where the reception was held. We ate delicious food (shish kebabs with chimichurri sauce, baked potatoes with tahini dressing, beans and rice (wouldn’t be a Costa Rican meal without ‘em) and two kinds of salad) and then danced the night away, with a few breaks to admire the stars on the beach. I felt like I was in a movie, the wedding was so perfect.

The wedding was right on the beach

Flower girls blowing bubbles at sunset

My host family with the bride and groom

Host nephew Julian Andres, host sister Laura, me and host niece Maria Ines

My host mom Vicky and me

Thursday, 4/19: I finally finished counting earthworms! I figured out that over the course of my project I counted worms in 127 sites, for over 50 hours… yikes.

My study subjects.. we got really close.

Saturday, 4/21: I said goodbye to my host family in Pueblo Nuevo and headed back to my San José family for the last month of my project.

Sunday, 4/22: I ran a 10k trail race in Cartago with my friends Lauren and Tim. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into… when we arrived at the race site, we were excited because it was in a beautiful location with picturesque agricultural fields and pastures and rolling hills. Emphasis on the HILLS… more like mountains! We realized soon after starting that the course was insane: basically 5 kilometers of climbing straight up a mountain, and then 5k back down. I ended up having to walk a lot of the way up, but the way down was a breeze ;) And the camaraderie afterwards with the other runners reminded me of why I love running races like this. It was especially fun because all three of us got trophies (it was a suuuper small race) which will make a good souvenir to remember my trip… the race director had a hard time pronouncing our names when he announced us, though :)

Wednesday, 4/25: We went on a day trip with our class to see Irazú Volcano. Even the drive up to the national park at the peak was an adventure; we drove through the clouds and suddenly emerged above them into sunlight and beautiful rolling hills planted with crops like potatoes and onions (these kinds of crops grow well in the colder climate at the high elevation), with a blanket of clouds underneath us. It was a beautiful, surreal sight. When we got to the national park and stepped out of the bus, the climate (pretty chilly) and the vegetation (clovers and dandelions!) reminded me of home. We walked up to see the crater, which has a beautiful turquoise lake at the bottom. We also took a short hike to see another volcano, Turrialba, which is quite active right now. We could see a thick column of smoke coming out of the top… so cool! On the way back to San José we stopped in Cartago, to see the Basílica. I learned that this 400-some year old building is called a basilica, not a church, because it is dedicated to a patron saint, in this case La Virgen de Los Angeles. Legend has it a figure of the virgin was discovered on a rock in the 17^th century, and even when moved would always reappear on that same rock, so the Basilica was built in her honor over that rock. We saw that rock in the little museum attached to the basilica, along with displays of thousands of trinkets (called exvotos) that people give to ask favors of the virgin. For example, someone with lung cancer might give a little pewter pair of lungs.

Driving up to the volcano

The main crater

Volcan Turrialba

Oles go to Turrialba

La Basilica

That night, I finally got to see the Hunger Games in the movie theater. Most movie theaters in Costa Rica, along with many bars and restaurants, have two-for-one deals on Wednesdays, so the movie ticket that would normally have cost me 2000 colones ($4) only cost 1000 ($2)! Movie theaters are one thing that is way cheaper in Costa Rica than in the US.

Friday, 4/27: We took another ACM-organized trip, this time to the Pacific coast. We left Friday morning for Tárcoles, where we learned about the sustainable fishing cooperative there. The people of this beach town got scared after seeing the fish and shrimp populations plummet when big ships came into their waters and started bottom trawling for shrimp (conventionally-caught shrimp are really awful for the environment; the people in Tárcoles told me that for every one kilogram of shrimp that is caught in a bottom-trawling net, there can be up to 100 kilos of “bycatch,” any other aquatic animal that ends up caught in the net. These fish and other creatures, all dead, are simply tossed over the side of the boat back into the water. Several forward-thinking people in Tárcoles worked hard to get a one-year agreement for these ships to leave their waters, and are now fighting to keep them out for good. Besides the fishermen, the coop also provides a livelihood for tour guides, local women who host tourists for meals or overnight stays, and lujadoras (women who spend hours a day untangling fishing lines). After enjoying a mid-morning snack of fresh cevicheand a delicious lunch (more fish, of course), we headed to Punta Leona, which is a resort on the Pacific Coast. We managed to get a great deal to stay here for the night, but we felt like we were in a much more luxurious resort than we should have been able to afford on college students’ budgets. Our rooms had refrigerators, stoves, microwaves, and showers with hot water (not always guaranteed here in Costa Rica), and the resort boasted two private beaches and several pools! We all really needed a weekend to just relax, so we spent a lot of our time swimming in the pool and reading on the beach. The other sixteen ACM students and I were excited to see each other after two months by ourselves in the campo (our Spanglish term for our field sites), so it was nice to catch up.

Fresh ceviche...mmmm...

We stopped along the way to see crocodiles from a bridge. I wish you could tell from the picture how big these were... probably around 12 feet!

This is a fishing boat used for long trips of up to several weeks. The fishermen keep all of their supplies (sleeping bag, cook stove, food, even a tv!) in the net you can see at the top, and they sleep in the platform on the bottom.

…And now, I’m busy doing stats analysis and writing my final paper. I can’t believe I only have two weeks left of this program. The thing is, I’ve just recently started to feel completely comfortable here in Costa Rica, with the language, transportation, and the culture, and I’m not sure I’m quite ready to leave. Of course, I can’t wait to see my friends and family in the US, and to buy some decent peanut butter… but it’s going to be hard to say goodbye. For now, though, I’m trying to enjoy the time that remains as much as I can!

From Tirimbina to Tirrases: Trading parrots for graffiti

2012-05-04T03:47:09Z

It’s always hard to write about transitions, and doubly so now that it’s been a while. Whenever I get behind in my writing, it becomes that much harder to catch up since I never want to leave anything out. However, I have been informed that my online novels aren’t exactly a quick read, therefore I’ll attempt to make more informative photo captions to facilitate picture-skimming.

I’m back in San José again, and everything’s basically how it was the first month. It’s really nice to be back together as a group. I really missed everyone, maybe more than I realized at the time; I never got as close to any of the Ticos or Tirimbina volunteers (mostly from Holland) in el campo as I am with the other ACM students. I don’t know if that’s because of the language/culture barrier, or the fact that almost everyone there was either older (and usually married and/or had children) or much younger, or that I just didn’t have enough time to get to know many people. It’s probably a combination of all three factors, but regardless, it was really nice to hang out with everyone again (although we’ve been worse and worse about practicing our Spanish while we’re together).

We just got back from a short trip to the Pacific. We visited Tarcoles to learn about sustainable fishing, and then went to Punta Leona to spend the night. There’s not much to say about the trip, really. It was a bit less informative than the others, and was mostly a chance to relax and have some fun on the first weekend back.

Crocodile and Snowy Egret in Tárcoles

Crocodiles lining the river, taken from the bridge in Tárcoles

Close up of crocodile in Tarcoles

Mouth open crocodile cooling off by the river in Tarcoles

Our guide explaining the nets during our fishing tour in Tarcoles

Lobster from fishing cooperative at Tarcoles

I did learn about macaws, and went on a fun early morning birding tour, but in general I felt more like a tourist. We got some sort of special deal at what was basically a beach side resort for the night. It made me remember the terrible resorts we visited in Kenya and Tanzania that felt so Colonial and fake, though I felt a little better about this one since a fair amount of the people there were Ticos too. However, there are certain aspects that will probably always be a factor in resorts the world over: western tourists acting like they don’t have to respect other people/cultures just because they have money (thankfully I only encountered a few of these in Punta Leona, but whenever staff automatically address you in English in a non-English speaking country, you know it’s a bad sign), habituated animal life (in this case monkeys and raccoons), and a disregard for natural resources (perhaps not quite as noticeable Punta Leona, but the incredible number of pools there must use up a ridiculous amount of water). Nevertheless, I had a few adventures and a wonderful time. One of the most exciting parts was when we tried to get to a second beach to watch the sunset and ended up scrambling over rocks as the tide came in.

Sunset over rocks at Punta Leona on the Pacific Coast

Carli doing ballet on the beach at Punta Leona

Macaw at Punta Leona

Lots of macaws (I think there are four in this photo) in almond tree at Punta Leona

Turquoise-browed motmot at Punta Leona

Very young green iguana in the butterfly enclosure at Punta Leona

When we got back to San José we went to see the Avengers, which by some wonderful trick premiered in Costa Rica before the US. We saw it in 3D in English with Spanish subtitles, and it was very entertaining. I wish I could say I would’ve been able to see it in Spanish, but for fast-paced snappy dialogue I think English was a good choice. I also confirmed after looking through the entire mall food court that not only are vegetarians in short supply here, but fast food is actually pretty expense; the same items I might usually get at Taco Bell, for instance, are at least fifty cents more expensive, and the difference is supposedly even greater in most of the other chains like McDonalds, which is a bit surprising when you think about income differences between Costa Rica and the US.

***

So much has happened since my last blog post, principally my move from La Virgin to San José, but much has happened on either end of the transition. The weekend before my final week at Tirimbina, Danny and I went to the other Puerto Viejo in Limón. We’d both heard so much about it since the nearest town to us is Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí, that we decided we should visit the other namesake. It turned out it was a little further away than we had anticipated, but the busses were all straight-forward, and one was even two-storied.

Puerto Viejo was very interesting. I’d heard a lot about how Limón has a different culture than the rest of the country, and it definitely felt unique from anywhere else I’d traveled. It seemed both busier and calmer. There were always people on the streets, especially rastas (aka Rastafarians, it’s a big deal on the Caribbean), but the whole area seemed poorer—the roads had more potholes, there weren’t always sidewalks, and there was a fair amount of trash and stray dogs. Yet it was also more colorful, with flowers everywhere and many more arts and crafts stands. My host family in San José told me that the stereotype is that Limón is where drug addicted artists go, selling crafts and living day by day. I don’t know that I can exactly expel that stereotype (we got offered drugs more than just a few times, and there were some of the most impressive handmade jewelry and crafts that I’ve seen in the country), but I can say that I enjoyed the area much more than I thought I would. It was clearly a less safe place, but the people mixed and talked more in the street and on the beach than in other areas. I spent about an hour one night talking to a woman originally from Colombia who made some of the most original, beautiful necklaces I’ve ever seen; they were works of art. She was also really friendly and genuinely curious about my research with bats. There were a lot of people from different cultures there (Europeans, Central Americans, Africans, Asians), although mostly gringos—it was sort of a mixing point for a lot of different kinds of people. I guess that’s a factor of being a port town.

We stayed in a very, very cheap hostel (run down and rudimentary but with surprisingly comfy beds) and decided to save our money for a snorkeling excursion the next day. The first afternoon we explored the town and swam a little at the Playa Negra in town that has a sunken barge in the middle. I took my glasses off to swim and warned Danny that he would have to be my eyes (I’m pretty much blind), yet it was I who discovered the first jellyfish. We’d been splashing around for a while and I’d started to feel almost as though I was being bitten or irritated by something in the water, but figured that maybe I just had some cuts that were reacting to the salt water, when all of sudden, I saw something floating in the chest-high swells right next to me. It was small white jellyfish. I was initially curious and amused until I remembered that they’re supposed to be dangerous. Then we started seeing more and more of them, and I realized that the real danger is that they don’t swim away from you, so it would be perfectly easy to bump into one without even noticing it. Finally, my arms and legs starting stinging badly enough that we decided to get out and search for sea shells for a while instead. It wasn’t that bad so I didn’t put two and two together until the next day when I was talking with our boat guide who explained that jellyfish lose their tentacles in the water, which float around and sting people while they’re swimming. Not the most comfortable experience, but definitely very cool.

Our guide from our boat tour/ snorkeling adventure in Puerto Viejo

The next day, we got picked up at the hotel by van and drove to the put in at the next town over. There, we met a woman from Bulgaria (If I remember correctly; she told us stories about the Black Sea) who was also on the tour; our boat guide, a friendly old man who walked with a cane until he got into the boat and joked and laughed between gaps in his teeth; and his son, who managed to act slightly bored, relaxed, and like he was having an awesome time all at once the entire trip (very pura vida).

We motored out into the protected waters of Cahuita National Park and spent several hours snorkeling above the coral reefs (this time, at least, there were life jackets, or else I never would’ve been able to snorkel that long). It was stunning. Not that the snorkeling we did at Playa Zancudo wasn’t impressive, but this was at a whole different level. There were giant schools of the most brightly colored fish, sea urchins dotting strange undersea landscapes, flashy angelfish, striped black and white fish, giant blue parrotfish, and even lionfish (this is actually not a good sign since they are invasive predators, but still very beautiful). The sheer number of fish and different kinds of coral was amazing. We swam in some shallower areas where the fish would dart in and out of the coral in an array of amazing colors and shapes, and then along the edge of the deeper water. It was eerie, swimming with a deep dark ocean drop-off at my left and a teeming slope of coral at my right. The vastness and obscurity of the underwater cliff left me breathless, and it was spectacular to see swarms of little (or quite big) fish suddenly appear out of the gloomy abyss. It also made me realize how hopelessly little I know about marine life—the only fish I could even name was the lionfish, and that was only out of infamy.

A very habituated White-faced Capuchin monkey eating coconut in Cahuita National Park. Too close for comfort? Yes.

A very habituated White-faced Capuchin monkey eating coconut in Cahuita National Park at the beach. What a face!

After snorkeling, our guide dropped us off at Cahuita National Park and his son took us on a hike through the beachside jungle. It was a really different environment, but I was surprised at how many of the plants were similar to the ones I work with in Tirimbina even though the entire feel of the jungle was different. A lot of the places we went are inaccessible during the rainy season, and parts were much more swampy. I was very happy to see a yellow eyelash pitviper, which was the snake I most wanted to see in Costa Rica (look at the photo and you’ll see why. It’s gorgeous). Our guide told us a story of one US tourist who got bitten by one for being stupid and trying to get way, way too close despite repeated warnings. He liked chatting to us, and was a fun guide (although the other lady pointed out that by that point Danny and I knew so much we could explain almost as much as the guide could. Flattering, though not really true at this point). We also found a lot of habituated white-faced capuchin monkeys. I thought it was really interesting to see one that was clearly very old, and aged in a similar way to people. All together, it was a very special day.

A white-faced capuchin monkey at Cahuita National Park, looking very photogenic in the trees.

A habituated White faced capuchin at Cahuita National Park with its coconut

A stunning eyelash pit viper (bocaracá) in Cahuita National Park

The next day, we visited the Jaguar Rescue Center, which takes in injured, abandoned, or confiscated animals. We got a tour around the center and got to see a lot of really interesting animals like baby sloths and an ocelot. They had one room with juvenile howler monkeys that we entered and let the monkeys climb all over us (with supervision from trainers). They explained that power lines are the major cause of death and injury in the animals they see. A lot of times, the mother is electrocuted and the baby is orphaned, at which point it’s brought to them. In the case of sloths, if the mother drops a baby (because it’s being stressed, injured, or just accidentally), it takes them so long to get to the ground and they would be so vulnerable in doing so that usually they don’t try to find them again, which is why the rescue center has so many baby sloths. They explained that for the monkeys, they introduce them slowly to a troop that lives nearby in the jungle, until the monkey starts freely going between the rescue center and the forest and slowly transitions to the wild troop. I can’t say I think it’s a good idea to let monkeys climb all over people when they’re being prepared for release, but it was a really cool experience.

Adorable baby sloths (both three toed and two toed) at the Jaguar Rescue Center

The only downside to the trip was that I got sick the last day. We didn’t find out until we returned to San Jose, but the Caribbean Coast is pretty much the only place where it’s not a good idea to drink the tap water. This is probably the cause of my extreme discomfort and necessary fasting for an entire day including over six hours of bus rides. I’d never felt so glad to be home.

Juvenile Howler Monkeys with caretaker at Jaguar Rescue Center in Puerto Viejo de Limon.

***

The last week I was pretty much done with data collection, so I got a head start on data analysis and only took short walks in the jungle. One of the last nights, I went on a night hike with the volunteers to the field station. At first, it seemed like it would be a bit of a tortuous night: the station took an hour and a half to reach through a muddy jungle path, it started to pour, my headlamp ran out of batteries almost immediately (luckily my phone has a small flashlight built in), and the guide who was supposed to meet us at the field station never showed up. However, as soon as we decided to strike out on our own looking for frogs, our luck changed. Almost immediately, one of the volunteers spotted a red-eyed tree frog, one of the most impressive species I’ve ever seen. When it’s sitting on a leaf, it’s incredibly well disguised, but as soon as it moves and opens its eyes, it reveals its extraordinary colors. We spent a good 15 minutes letting it jump between us, admiring it’s striped side, watching it breath, and noting how its whole body seemed to fold together like a puzzle. Then, we explored around the pond filled with caimans, their eyes reflecting light from the middle of the water. We found an amazing assortment of frogs—some like tree bark, some with striped legs like a tiger, mating glass frogs, giant toads, and many more. It was raining so hard, however, that I barely took any photos. Even with an umbrella and inside a backpack, everything was still soaked in the end.

It’s a bad photo, but this demonstrates the size of the toads at Tirimbina (that’s my boot at the left).

Red-eyed tree frog (Rana calzonuda) that we caught at the field station in Tirimbina

On the way back, the rain began to edge off, and we were walking single file in the muddy darkness. As we went, every once in a while one of us would spot another frog or a lizard or something interesting; we didn’t expect to find anything more adrenaline-pumping than the caimans. But we did. It was the third person in line (right in front of me) to notice the movement on the side of the path, and when he shone his light down we all stopped. It was a snake, roughly a meter and half (relatively small for this species as it turned out), with large, well-defined brown scales in triangle patterns resembling leaves and an oversized, triangular head. It was one of the last venomous snakes on my list, and one I was not really hoping to encounter an hour and a half into the jungle at night—a terciopelo, or fer de lance, widely considered the most dangerous snake in Costa Rica because of it’s camouflage, venom, aggression, and relative abundance. It was slithering through the plants and as we crowded closer, it began to collect itself together and lift slightly off the ground. Sobered at the realization that since three people had already walked right past it, it could’ve easily bitten one of us before we knew it was there, we gave it some space.

The night finished spectacularly when we encountered a raccoon and a kinkajou on the bridge on the way out. It was strange to see a raccoon peeking out from the jungle trees. I’m so used to seeing them in an urban setting that it seemed out of place to see one in what is possibly more like the original habitat in which they evolved. The kinkajou was particularly special for me, however, since I hadn’t actually seen one outside of a cage before then. Its eyes reflected the light from the headlamps, making it easy to track as it maneuvered comfortably through the trees and metal lines from the bridge. Finally, it paused in a tree further away, giving us a perfect view as it stared calmly back at us. What a special night!

***

A male Double-Crested Basilisk (Basiliscus plumifrons) that woke me up from my nap at Tirimbina

Yet another tamagá that stayed in the same place on the side of the path for two days

In my last few days at Tirimbina, I started feeling very sorry to leave. I had just started to feel as though I belonged there and really understand how to get around and make friends. What really hit it home were the dogs. One in particular had always been very aggressive around me, even though it saw me twice a day every single day, and I had mostly given up the thought that it would ever get used to my presence. Then, in the last week I was there, when it saw that I would pet its mother (which I only achieved a week earlier), it let me pet it too. In the last few days, the two of them were such sweet dogs, and even came running up to me to get attention a few times. They don’t frequently get petted, and I was really missing pets, so it was a perfect match; I think only one of the grandkids really treats them with affection (which probably explains why they’re so aggressive all the time).

The people I worked with on a daily basis in Tirimbina. From the left: Manuel, Eugenia, me, Melqui, and Gato.

Me and my host family’s grandkids

There are a lot of small things that I miss already. The jungle there has a very different smell than the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Instead of the dusty, mossy pine smell it’s a wetter, sweeter, pungent smell that’s still hard for me to describe. I especially miss the natural beauty there—it’s seems an injustice to go to bed without the sound of the river lulling me to sleep or to wake up without the chorus of birdsong from the parrots and songbirds at dawn. I miss the people I worked with, especially Manuel and Gato since I worked with one or the other almost every day, but even more than that I miss seeing new exciting animals every single day. I miss my host family and the relaxed attitude everyone seems to have. I miss watching the pecho amarillos attacking their own reflection in the windows. I miss being slightly unimpressed by the sight of a toucan.

We saw a group of about eight collared peccaries moving to the river to drink, but this is the best photo I could get (they were very shy).

Gato holding an amazing blue-dusted butterfly

***

When we first got back to San José, we took a trip to Volcán Irazú and the Basilica in Cartago. Irazú was beautiful, and a completely different ecosystem from anywhere else since it was such a high altitude and actually cold. There were beautiful wildflowers all over, and a lot of tiny songbirds, though in general there didn’t seem to be the same sort of biodiversity. The view was incredible, however. We could see all the way to the Caribbean from one point, as well as an incredible view of Turrialba. Turrialba is a nearby volcano that is actually active at the moment; it’s not spewing out lava, but it is smoking, and the whole area smelled like sulfur because the wind was blowing in from its direction. A volcanologist went with us, and it reminded me how much I liked my geology course at CC. It’s so interesting to be able to read rocks like a mystery novel, trying to figure out what happened. Also, with volcanoes, a lot of different professions intersect, both in the sciences and society (things like restoration biology after an eruption, disaster management, psychology of those living nearby, national parks management, chemistry for the analysis of the gasses produced at different times of the year, etc.).

The crater at Volcán Irazú

The view of active Volcán Turrialba from Irazú

Then, we traded the chill for intense sun and heat at the Basilica, the most important church in Costa Rica dedicated to an indigenous virgin figure. It’s always a little awkward for me to visit giant churches since I’m not religious, but it’s a beautiful structure and very important culturally in a country where the state religion is Catholicism. Every year over the course of a few days two million people, approximately half the population of Costa Rica, walk from wherever their houses are all the way to the Basilica to ask for favors or just as part of tradition. It’s incredible to think of half of any country doing anything together, let alone something so taxing (it takes some people weeks to get there from remote areas). The most interesting part of the church itself, however, was the votos area below the basilica, where people bring little metal charms representing what they need help with or as offerings because they felt they had been granted a miracle. There were walls of little metal hands, heads, eyes, breasts, soccer trophies, and stranger figurines shaped like grasshoppers, cow udders, cross sections of lungs, and model yachts.

The Basilica in Cartago

Eye Votos at the Basilica (charms that people bring to the church representing what they need cured)

***

We’re in the home stretch now, and I’ve been really absorbed working on my paper. To be honest, I think I’m having an easier time with it than other students, in part because not all that much changed from my proposal, I got a head start on my data analysis (partially because I knew what I was doing already), and also because I have a fair amount of experience now writing research papers. It also helps that I actually like writing them. I know, it would seem weird to some people, but I get a strange satisfaction out of analyzing data and then putting it all together and really having a solid product. It’s also the time to really think about the implications of the study and reflect on the project as a whole. It makes all that time out in the jungle hanging bags of dirt on leaves for eight hours a day alone (except for bullet ants) in the rain actually mean something, and suddenly I don’t feel as ambiguous about why I did it in the first place. Putting it into the form of a paper in the context of other scientific literature, theories, and current bat management helps transform what I’ve done into something more than just a cool project I did that time in Costa Rica—not that it doesn’t still mean something personal and experiential to me, but now it has an added value to other people as well, and it contains that certain power that comes from honed knowledge and presentation. Or at least, that’s what I see when I stare at my twenty page report.

Only in Pueblo Nuevo

2012-04-26T14:01:00Z

Now that I'm back in San Jose, I've been able to add photos to some old blog entries, so check them out!

I’ve heard from numerous people about the “Only in Costa Rica” Facebook page, on which people can share stories or photos of uniquely tico events, like crazy motorcycle drivers and unfortunate misspellings on signs. I thought I’d write my own list of unique experiences I had in Pueblo Nuevo, my field site.

Only in Pueblo Nuevo…

…Have I spent a Saturday afternoon chatting with my extended host family, while making guava jam over a wood-fired stove.

…Have my host parents taken me on an early evening walk to the underwhelmingly-named “mirador” (lookout), which is a picnic shelter on top of a huge hill with a stunning view of Tortuguero National Park and the Caribbean Sea.

At the Mirador with Yeimy and Anyell

…Have we stopped on the way back from our walk to pick a snack of sour guavas (eaten with salt) and admire a family of white-faced capuchin monkeys.

… Has my mid-morning snack been “agua pipa” (coconut water) chopped down from the tree with a machete and sipped from the shell, and the sweet/sour pulp sucked off of cacao seeds.

After you finish drinking the coconut water, you can cut it open to eat out the white "meat." This time I was at home so I ate it with a spoon, but out in the field I would use another little piece of the shell to scoop it out.

…Have I had a field of yucca in my backyard and guava, cacao and coconut trees in the front.

…Is nearly everyone in the town related to everyone else.

… Have I watched so many “telenovelas” (soap operas).

… Have I lost a $200 GPS device in the middle of the forest, searched for an hour without success and returned home in desperation, only to return with my host father who found it easily!

… Are motorcycles and bicycles the primary mode of transportation; I’ve often seen an entire family squeezed onto one vehicle.

My host parents Liliana and Marcos on their motorcycle at the Mirador

…Does my schoolwork consist of hiking around a cacao plantation (that more resembles a jungle than a farm) and digging in the dirt.

…Have I spent four hours (which was four hours less than the other workers) helping to scoop cacao seeds out of the pods by hand at the request of one particular cacao buyer. The work that took forty people eight hours to complete by hand is normally done by just two people in the same amount of time using modern machinery. Fifteen years ago, however, none of the machinery that is currently used existed, and all of the cacao processing was done by hand like this!

This was the pile of cacao pods that my group scooped out. It probably took us about four hours to finish this pile.

…Is the sound of a rainstorm amplified many times by pounding off the metal roofs of the buildings. With a really heavy downpour, it’s so loud that it’s difficult to hold a conversation or watch tv, so most people just end up taking a nap until it passes.

…Have I learned how to ride a bike while holding a shovel and burlap sack full of supplies (the trick is to stick the handle of the shovel underneath the straps of your backpack).

…Does a perfectly clear, sunny day or starry night by no means mean that you can leave the house without a raincoat or umbrella.

…Are the mosquitoes at least three times bigger than mosquitoes in the US; almost completely resistant to DEET as well as clothing; and inexplicably intelligent, able to sniff out gringa blood from miles away but leaving the ticos in peace. I’m pretty sure some people here think I have varicela(chicken pox), haha.

…Are pet stores completely unnecessary. No dogs or cats are spayed or neutered, so there are plenty of them to go around. Pet parakeets are plucked off of the trees in the neighborhood. Geovanny, a sloth researcher on the cacao farm, even has a pet toucan named Pascual!

Pascual the toucan.

…Are there more bars (1) than grocery stores (0). Oh, wait, never mind… that’s Wisconsin too! Actually, that’s a lie; there are several pulperías, which are like small convenience stores where you can find basic groceries… I just really wanted to make that joke.

Pueblo Nuevo: the bar is the blue building on the right.

I’m back in San José now, which is a big city and has many of the conveniences (and inconveniences) of the United States. My time in Pueblo Nuevo was a chance to live a very different lifestyle, and while at times it was hard, I’m so glad I got to experience the tranquilo life in the campo.

Disfrutando la Vida

2012-04-23T03:27:27Z

A week ago I moved back to San Jose, a week early than planned, in order to analyze my data early and head back at the end of the program to Venecia to share my results with the high schools I had worked with. But in case my past blogs have been misleading, I haven’t only been cooking, eating and exploring… I have been working too! In the end, over seven weeks I was able to work with four different high schools and gather over 350 questionnaires (it’s easier said than done to convince high schoolers to bring in a signed permission slip). Besides handing out permission slips and questionnaires, I spent lots of time chatting with the students. Not only did this help my Spanish loads, it also helped me feel connected to each school and really enjoy my research! That was much more enjoyable than working with Excel and statistics programs, which is what I did this week! My partner and I are one week closer to understanding the level of knowledge of teens on cervical cancer, but are sick of working on computers.

Backtracking a week… Before I left Venecia, I tried to enjoy every last bit of my last week in the rural stay. Then since coming back to the city, I’ve tried to take advantage of having everything at your fingertips!

When I first arrived to Costa Rica, our tico professor told us that all ticos act as doctors (know the perfect solution to any ailment), presidents (know how to fix political problems) and soccer coaches (know what should have happened in the last game). Over the past few weeks, I have also learned that ticos are…

“Efficient”: I went with my neighbor’s friend with the intention of going to visit a mechanic. One errand turned into visiting two friends’ houses, one family member’s house, buying fruit and visiting Recreo Verde! Recreo Verde is a small tourist park with hot springs, a river, a small waterfall, cabins and the cave of death (dun dun dun…). The cave of death has volcanic gases and if any living being is to enter the cave, it’ll die from the fumes. All of these places are in the same area though, so I guess we killed six birds with one stone.
Loyal: One of my family’s dogs, Becky, is the most loyal dog I’ve ever seen. She will follow any family member wherever they go. This means I have to be observant though, because one day I went out for a run around my town and I eventually realized that Becky was right by my side!
Chefs: I’m sure you’ve already learned this from my past posts, but I can’t say it enough! The average tica that I’ve met spends loads of time in the kitchen. I am still learning new recipes and testing them out. New food highlights: two tiramisu variations (one made with cookies and another “deconstructed” version made with Bailey’s!), pineapple and rice drink, papaya/pineapple ice cream, mango cake and chimichangas.
Spontaneous: Last Saturday I went on a mini-road trip with my host mom, neighbor/cousin Eleanor and host sister Angelina to visit this beautiful lake at Bosque Alegre (literal translation: Happy Forest). Along the way, we stopped at this absolutely beautiful creek to wade in. I don’t think I’ve ever seen water so clear in my life. Then after enjoying a picnic at the overlook of the lake, we randomly visited Eleanor’s sister Alejandra’s work. She works at a tourist resort, which has a small “zoo” (birds, snakes, butterflie, three waterfalls and a hotel. On the way to the resort, we passed by an area where a horrible earthquake occurred three years ago. Houses, sodas (tiny roadside restaurants) and buildings were buried in rubble. Many died and more yet had to re-locate.
Cultural: This week I went to the “Art City Tour” with some other students. Free electric buses traveled being various museums and art galleries (which offered free admission) throughout the night. This was a perfect way to explore San Jose more! Additionally, on Saturday I spent the day with a few friends at an event called “Enamorate de tu ciudad” (Love your city!). Every Saturday in parks all around San Jose, there are dancers, musicians, games, art projects, etc. We love our city!!!
Colorful: I see color everywhere I look. I went to mass with my rural host family on the “day of compassion”. Following mass, I enjoyed another procession around town lead by flower girls who were tossing colorful tico flowers. All of the houses are bright, tropical colors, which is a big change from the normal beige! All of my fruits (papaya, mango, pineapple, banana, cas, etc.), birds and vegetation are bold colors. Not to mention the friendliness of the people!

3/4 down with my abroad experience. Wow!

The Women of Pueblo Nuevo

2012-04-18T12:12:00Z

My research here in Pueblo Nuevo is strictly biology related, and earthworms are the most complex animals that I study… but it’s hard not to be a bit of an anthropologist while living in a place that is so socioeconomically and culturally different from my past experience. One aspect of life here that is fascinating to me is the role of women. I’ve gotten to know several women in the pueblo, and have been very interested to find out about their lives.

Most of the women in Pueblo Nuevo marry very young, as young as fifteen (actually, many of them are not legally married to their partners, which I think has to do with the expense of a marriage license. They still refer to each other as “my husband” and “my wife,” though, and at least in the case of the cacao farm where I do my research, even women who are not legally married to workers are covered under the health insurance policy that all employers are required under Costa Rican law to provide for employees and their families). They have children very young as well, and the vast majority are homemakers. They wake up before sunrise to prepare breakfast and lunch for their husbands, most of whom work in cacao, banana or pineapple plantations nearby. The rest of the day is spent getting children ready for school, preparing lunch, doing laundry (my host mom probably does laundry three or four times a week), cleaning the house, preparing some coffee and snacks for their husband’s cafecitowhen he gets home from work, making dinner, and putting children to bed.

Machismois much more obvious here in Pueblo Nuevo than in San José; in San José I’ve met many women who are professionals, and men who cook dinner… my host father here can’t fry an egg or even make a pot of coffee to save his life! Still, it seems like that attitude is slowly changing. Many women are sick of having to ask their husbands for money every time they want to buy something, and they have come up with ways to earn a little money of their own. My host mother Liliana, for example, sells products from catalogs to women in the town, and sews handbags to sell as well. She also has a few months of beauty school experience (she dropped out after giving birth to her first child, because the hour-long weekly commute wasn’t realistic), so she paints nails or gives hair cuts for 1,000 colones ($2) each. This way, she has a little money of her own to buy perfumes and shampoos for her and her daughters, or to get herself an occasional treat at the pulpería when she’s out for a walk. Her dream is to go back and finish school, so that she can run a small beauty salon out of her house. My host father has a really hard time understanding his wife’s desire to earn her own money. He feels like he makes enough money at his job for his family to live comfortably, and he can give Liliana money when she asks for it, so there’s no reason for her to work. He’s not intentionally sexist; that’s just the example he was given by his own parents.

There is a small group of women in Pueblo Nuevo who are pushing the envelope even further to break free from their machistasociety. The Mujeres de Amazilia, who I mentioned in an earlier post as the women who cooked us a delicious lunch when the ACM group visited Finmac in February, are really a wonderful success story. They are a cooperative of women who buy bulk organic chocolate from Finmac (the organic chocolate farm where I’ve been doing my research), and work long hours in the kitchen of a converted house on the farm to make delicious chocolate bars. This system is really fascinating to me, because not only is it helping the women of Pueblo Nuevo to achieve financial independence, but the production and sale of chocolate bars here in Costa Rica keeps the profits within the local economy. A good bar of organic chocolate is expensive to buy in a grocery store, yet most countries where cacao is grown (in Central and South America, and Africa) are impoverished, and many cacao farmers struggle to make a living. Why? Because the cacao beans themselves are a commodity crop that is bought very cheaply and processed in Europe or the United States. The people who make the money aren’t the farmers, they are the processors. Hugo, the owner of Finmac has an economic advantage because he has the machinery to process the cacao beans into bulk chocolate. In this way, he adds value to his product and is able to make a greater profit margin when he sells it. The Mujeres de Amazilia take the chocolate one step further, actually making a finished product.

And the product is really good: they make bars of dark chocolate and milk chocolate, with add-ins like dried ginger, almonds, peanuts, and coffee. They’ve perfected their technique over the years, even receiving lessons from Madison chocolatier Gail Ambrosius, who has visited Finmac several times to work with the Amazilias! The chocolate bars are gaining popularity in the country, and tourist destinations like the Tirimbina Biological Reserve have begun selling them in their gift shops. This is really good news, because at the moment there are only about twelve Amazilias, and they don’t really have room for anymore. However, with their increasing success, they’ve been able to raise enough funds and secure a government loan to build a chocolate factory on the property! With more space, they’ll have more production capacity, and will hopefully be able to provide work for even more Pueblo Nuevo women. It’s really cool to see such a success story in such a small town!

So, that’s the story of the women in Pueblo Nuevo. A traditional machista culture with some strong women determined to exert their independence and change their role in society.

Pura Vida Lifestyle=Not Writing in Blog. Oops.

2012-04-14T22:17:00Z

Lo siento, my friends. I suppose I have fallen a bit behind in the past 4 weeks or so with my blog posts. It wasn't intentional or anything. I just usually have a hard time following through with blogging or writing down detailed activity in some kind of post or journal. Extreme emotions, hilarious activity, moments that I cannot guarantee memory will retain for me- those I easily spill over pages when necessary. Blogging information? Not so much. Le sigh. So let me present to you, to my best of memory, my past 4 weeks in Costa Rica.

Return to San José:

Reunited on St. Patrick's Day:

Yes, majority of my friends and I arrived to San José on March 17th to celebrate the holiday together. I am not surprised that the people of Costa Rica do not place a huge emphasis on Guinness or other Irish-related items, however, I was surprised that half of the people I spoke to never heard of this holiday. These people celebrate almost any and every day of a Saint... you know... SAINT Patrick's Day? I was a little confused, but overall, it was very relaxing to catch up with some of the friends I have made this semester.

Spending Some Time with my Host Family:

My original plans for the Sunday after my return were to go to downtown San José and explore an art festival with some friends. My host mother surprised me, though, by having her own mother stop by to say hello and spend some of the day with us. Why did this cause me to stay at home instead of wander around the city? Her mother has Alzheimer's, just as my own grandmother did. It brought back so many memories, especially observing her mannerisms and moments of utter confusion of who was surrounding her, who she was, and which day of the week it is. It broke my heart slightly, but I took advantage of the situation to sit down and try to talk to her about her life. She was incredibly kind and spoke slowly enough for me to understand that she has around 14 children, what she enjoys doing (taking walks), and laughing about her old memories. What meant more to me than anything, though, was how my host mother didn't pester me with questions about my grandmother. She just sat and watched us talk, and if I wanted to talk about my own experiences, she listened and urged me to continue talking to her about anything and everything. For the first time in both semesters abroad, I felt like I had a mother away from home.

After this visitation, I assumed I was just going to relax for the rest of the day. HAHA NOPE. We (my host mom, three sisters, and myself) went to a...a.... a baby shower.

It was loud, too many people, lack of food, moldy, laughter, babies, diapers, lack of money, praying, crying, not something I want to do again for a while. The end.

Changes to my Project:

The four or five days I spent in San José were relatively stressful. A lot of necessary issues were talked about during my time back in San José. I had to make last minute translations, raise the issue of how many creepy men actually exist in my town, find someone to escort me around when I am giving out my surveys, and have final approval to finally begin my project. While this was happening, I had to put together a mid-semester presentation that explained my situation, what my future expectations are, and how I plan to solve any issues related to my project. On the bright side, I found SPSS on one of the computers at ACM, which means I can analyze my data how I normally would at LFC. (I'm completely aware not many people will understand this level of excitement for me, but I've grown fond of my SPSS and analyzing my data in a specific way.)

General Thoughts:

What can I say? I'm living in Pura Vida as of right now. It should be pretty obvious, after reading the following activities, that I have had many opportunities to do and see things that I can't do in the States. I am growing closer to a group of friends that I was not expecting to make when I first flew down to Costa Rica. Now, I only have 5 weeks and 4 days until I land in Chicago. Am I sad? I suppose so. The beauty here is unbelievable and I didn't just go on vacation to a touristy city for a few weeks or for Spring Break. I actually am living here, getting to know the locals, eating the fresh food that I know will not be in Chicago. I won't get to see my friends as frequently throughout the school year or get to walk out into the overbearing smells of various fruits and plants that surround me in this country. I will have to let go of a huge aspect of the Pura Vida lifestyle as I settle into my last summer and senior year before embarking on bigger adventures in the future. Can I keep a hold of this lifestyle while enduring so much stress from research and projects and figuring out my life? The relaxing tone of voice that melts into me as I begin to worry too much or fret about unfinished work in my presence. I have to hope so. If I want to find peace in nature, I will have to drive either east or west until I hit mountains. I won't have a huge tico family carrying in fresh food through the door each morning, shouting at each other with excitement or anger, gossiping about the new fashion statements or new cars that have not yet hit Central America. Combate will no longer be on TV, or the exotic Latin American dancers. Where will I ever find this strong, delicious coffee in the States? I am going to miss people not counting their calories here, just scooping piles of those delicious fried plantines onto their plates, or drinking that fresh mango juice that was made just this morning. When will I be able to look outside my window and hear and see the intense colors of the tropical birds, them singing me a lullaby in the morning and at night. The beauty of the butterflies, how fragile each part of their bodies truly are, how closely they flutter to me. I might even miss taking the crowded bus to and from San Ramón everyday. The bus drivers are some of the few creepers in my town and I've built a silent connection with each one. Let's be honest, I'm going to miss quite a bit of this country.

But I am also very, very, very thrilled to finally be home for an extended amount of time. I crave to have more time with my family members and I realize only now that I never fully appreciated what my family and friends have done for me in the past. I took for granted those calm nights of watching scary movies or baking with my mother. I didn't realize how truly fortunate I was to only have to drive a few minutes before arriving at a good friend's house in Crystal Lake. My dog and cat, the pond in the backyard, watching my nephews play baseball or talk with my niece, Addison. I miss the little things, like toilet seats, warm showers, and eating cereal late at night while watching old movies on TV with my dad. I miss traveling into downtown and exploring the streets both in day and at night, feeling the cool breeze from Lake Michigan tickle my skin and blow through my hair. The concerts and Cubs games that are only half as exciting because they are in one of the best cities in the world. Oh, how could I not miss my freedom to do, say, believe, act however I want to, whenever I want to! It has been months, now, since I've been able to leave my house without using a taxi in the early evening. It has been months since I've been able to walk a few blocks and not have men follow me. It has been months since I've been able to openly express my religious and political views without being sent glares sharp as pointed glass. It has been months since I've been able to have a normal confrontation with an individual about an argument, instead of this passive aggressiveness that the people in this country (as well as in Spain) are so fond of. It has been months since I've been able to walk outside with a purse in my hand and not fear someone would hold me at gunpoint to take it away from me.

I miss so many things that I haven't even mentioned from both countries. The experiences of traveling and being a woman in this part of the world have been terrifying, but useful and necessary for my growth as a strong adult. I have realized what kind of family lifestyle I want to have in the future, based on my experience of a huge, loud, energetic family that I have been liming amongst here. I needed to study abroad in this country, just as much as I need to return home to continue to appreciate the little aspects of my life that I never noticed before leaving the country for such a long time.

The only thing I can hope to do at this point is reflect on my experiences thus far and continue to appreciate each adventure that I find the time to enjoy. I've always hated the expression that life is too short. How can that be? Life is the longest damn thing we have on this planet. But slowly, very slowly, I am starting to understand just how quickly life can speed up when we don't stop to appreciate what is surrounding us at every given moment.

Puntarenas:

This will be a really short segment of the blog, but I did take a day trip to see the ocean about a month ago. The beach was not the prettiest, but I did catch a glimpse of a beautiful sunset.

The sun said adios for the night.

Good-bye, ball of flaming heat that destroys my back.

Orange!

Some girl insisted on taking a picture of me. We were watching a cruise ship leave at night.

La Fortuna:

Mist made it almost impossible to take a good picture.

I went on an adventure with my friends Phoebe, Danny, and his friend, Tana. It was a little unexpected, but since I had nothing to do with my project for a few weeks, I figured I might as well explore more parts of this country while I still have the time. Not a single regret was had over my 4 day vacation.

Hot Springs:

Ello, friends! ^.^

This even was one of my better decisions to partake in. Danny, Tana, and I ventured off to some mildly (really) fantastic hot springs in Arenal. There was a water slide that went 45 mph (!!!), hot water with beds you could just lay down in, mini waterfall-related things, wet bars, and a free buffet.

This photo doesn't really capture just how happy I was. The water was hot. HOT.

I would recommend this activity for anyone, even people who have yet to get to know each other. Somewhere between the fast slides and basking in the hot water (this is especially important when some people on get cold showers here in Costa Rica *cough*), you will get to know so many people and realize the next morning that not having hot springs in your life every day of the year is a horrible, tragic thing.

Horseback Riding:

Photo credit goes to Phoebe!

On an early Friday morning, Phoebe and I awoke to go horseback riding for 4 hours. Why? Because it was awesome, that's why. We rode horses with a guide to the famous waterfall en La Fortuna, battled our way through a rocky river to get a closer look at the waterfall, and took a "small" hike back to our horses.

Phoebe by the waterfall!

All went well, for the most part. I realized it is very important to avoid telling at tico that a gringa, like myself, enjoys dancing. Especially dancing to Shakira. Sigh. Cue creepiness.

Trying to take a picture while horseback riding.

I'm not sure why I thought it was a good idea to take a picture and trust that my horse wouldn't strategically start galloping.

Rappelling:

Surprise! Water! H2O!

Well, this was an adventure, to say the least. Danny, Tana, and I rappelled down waterfalls, jumped into a pretty deep hole under water (I wish I knew why I agreed to that), did some free falling, hiked, saw a poisonous spider (yeah, I know), enjoyed a huge lunch, and experienced the "limo" to and from our destination. I am only going to post pictures because I do not know how to full explain this experience otherwise.

Yeah, this happened.

It was challenging, especially if you are not keen on jumping off of a waterfall. I felt exceptionally accomplished afterward, though.

Relaxation:

Our view from the hostel.

I sat out by the pool for a bit, had hilarious conversations with my friends, found sushi (EEL! :D), met new people from countries like Australia to England, opened up about parts from my previous years to a friend, and stared with utter disbelief at how green and beautiful the volcano and surrounding areas actually were.

*I will add photos here eventually

Free Week?

I had moments of extreme clarity during this week. Since I had to wait for approval from the Human Subjects Committee at LFC, my director told me to relax and enjoy life. My stress levels had been increasingly rising to, as much as I don't want to admit this, an alarming panic state. Instead of worrying when I would receive approval, my director encouraged me to take it easy and live the "Pura Vida" lifestyle. While others were busy collecting data, I spent some time outside near a mountain I live on, reading new books, figuring out summer and fall goals for my senior year. It was a free space that I honestly needed this spring semester and am, now thinking back on it, grateful I was given a few days before receiving approval. Since I won't start collecting data until the Monday after Semana Santa, I will have 2 weeks to collect data from 200 participants. 100 participants are part of a younger generation, while the other half are part of an older generation. If there are any last minute doubts about my project, I do not really have time to fix remaining details. After this point in time, only 3 weeks remain. Exciting, thrilling, and terrifying wrapped into one heap on a plate already a little too full.

La Semana Santa:

Monteverde:

Butterflies and Frogs:
*Photos will be added asap

This particular experience was both interesting and slightly disappointing. We saw and held many butterflies, however, my favorite butterfly was not there. Whatever. No big deal. Not like one of my main reasons for going here was to see this specific butterfly. Pish posh! The frogs, though, were pretty neat. We went both in the day time and at night, but I was secretly hoping to hold one. Nope. Sigh.

Horseback Riding:

My horse for the day.

Would you like some tequila? How about a bike and construction helmets? Maybe some skittish horses that gallop without command? This whole scenario screamed sketch to us, but it was still an awesome experience. We went horseback riding for 4 hours or so, saw the fields of Guanacaste, used some aloe from the actual plants, refrained from sketchy conversations, and held a huge beetle named Johnny.

He apparently enjoys bananas.

Gazing out over the land of Guanacaste.

Not a bad morning.

Ziplining, Surprise Tarzan Swing, and Night Walk:
Oh, Gaelle. There is quite an exciting side to you that should really be made more obvious for others to see. Without your taunting, there is no way I would have jumped off a bridge, 145 ft tall, on a tarzan swing. No way at all. And going on a night walk with me to see some huge spiders? I need to bottle this impulse and spastic energy for my own self in the future.


Definitely a foot away when I took this. Success!

We weren't allowed to get really close to this girl... thank you, amazing lens! ^.^

I can't bring myself to add any ziplining pictures yet. I look so... so incredibly durpy. I can't even handle the embarrassment. Maybe I'll post some...soon.

Osa:

8 Hour Bus Ride. Yay:

Lucky me, I happened to be having some stomach problems right before an 8 hour bus ride. It was joyous, really. I can't complain, though, since the destination was well worth the long journey. What is even comparable to the beauty I witnessed? The ocean, free to do as it pleased, us at its mercy while on such a small boat and island. I suppose nothing can ever truly compare to the wonders of Norway, but Southern Costa Rica is a close match. Oh dear playa, I might be visiting you again in the future.

Making Friends at the Hostel:

We're classy.

While at the hostel, we made some friends that were from the States (as well as the adorable dog, Sky?). The reason I'm posting this as a separate paragraph is because one of the people we met is from the Illinois area, and specifically he has family in my hometown, Crystal Lake. Hell, his aunt was my sewing teacher in middle school! I was completely mind blown, as many of you might be able to imagine. Who would have thought that of all places in the world, I would meet someone who is not only aware of where Crystal Lake is, but would be spending Easter there and only about 3 minutes from my own house? I still can't get over it. Small world.

Delicious Food:

I really should just mention how delicious the mango crepes were. Really, oh my I can't even. Those are something I will need to cook up when I return home. Really. I'm sure there were other delicious substances, but why mention those on here? :)

Playa Zancudo:

I'm not sure why I was so surprised to have as many adventures as I did. I guess i was expecting to just lay on a beach all day, reading and relaxing in the water. Instead, we did quite a few activities that definitely made the trip for me. We took a boat ride to go hunt down some dolphins (!!!) and in the process of this, we stopped to snorkel for a bit. Because I'm a lucky person, my leg started to cramp up halfway through this activity, but I still managed to see some pretty neat fish! ^.^
Also on our boat ride, we managed to spot a monkey, some birds, and I immensely enjoyed my time eating peanut butter and nutella.

Dolphins!

FYI: I do have more pictures to add. Just not right now. ^.^
While swimming in the water, I tried out some boogie boarding, which was probably hilarious if you have any idea of how awkward I am with water-related activities and groups of people. Just imagine combining the two together and that should be a real comedy for you. The whole activity was rather relaxing, though. Just swimming with the waves, going with the flow of them, almost succumbing myself to the power of the ocean.

Jason (was in Crystal Lake on Easter!) was attempting to guide me through boogie boarding. Embarrassment.

This adventure doesn't sound as exciting, but I definitely had a field day with the rock and shell collecting. Seriously. It was barely drizzling, the water was warm, overcast skies (my favorite), and the waves were starting to feel restless because of an approaching storm. I felt so alive! Almost an electric feeling within me as I danced across the sands, relishing in how far back the tide was and how deep into the water I could go to hunt down more shells to take home with me. I pranced along, letting the rain soak me down until I felt like nothing more than another part of the wave, calming of every insecurity as I finally learned how to relax.

I'm on a boat, bitch.

Another adventure that was had was swimming at night in the ocean in the bio luminescence. If only i had a picture to show how completely awesome this experience was! I felt like a twirling star under water. I don't care whatsoever how gross it actually is to imagine why we were lighting up. The only thing that matters is I was swimming in warm water, in the middle of the night, slightly intoxicated, and felt like a flying star underwater. Like I'll have that experience again anytime soon, really.
Our final day on this trip was in Golfito (at least it was for Phoebe, Kayla, and I). My back was so incredibly burnt, I was probably the most crabby little creature that only knew how to "Rawr!" and "Anger meep!" at other human beings. The crabbiness faded slightly when I finally found some aloe, and even more so when I ordered bacon, eggs, and..and....PANCAKES. Tra la la la! The three of us attempted to kayak near our hostel, however, a storm threatened to attack us so we decided to head back early.

Good morning!

Creeping on a monkey.

Because it was the Friday before Easter, almost nothing was open to buy food, so I focused majority of my energy on resting my back and reading "Into The Wild". This is a book I highly recommend to anyone and everyone, although would probably benefit more people in my age bracket. The book captured me with its utter intensity and ability to give a detailed outline of main character's life without him being the one to tell the story. We are all so young, so adventurous, so full of crazy ideas to still do as we age. I don't think we stop to consider the consequences as we rage forward in a stream of nonsense, chanting "Live each day to the fullest"! We don't imagine that by doing so, it might be our last day and in reality, we weren't living that day to the fullest. We were living that day full of ignorance and naivety that only wise experiences can help us escape from. Would you live as the main character lived? That intensity and passionate edge to explore this world without boundaries, yet no understanding of how to bandage an argument or mistake that happened years ago. What is the give and take here?

Playa Zancudo

2012-04-12T23:30:49Z

Despite my worries of leaving for my “spring break” trip mid-stride in my research, I’m really quite glad I went. It was both relaxing and exciting and I did a whole bunch of things that I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. It was also a week of overcoming fears and I feel very proud of my admittedly somewhat small accomplishments.

We went to Playa Zancudo, down south near the Panamanian border across from the Osa Peninsula. We split a beachfront cabina and spent the time going on boat tours, relaxing on the beach reading, and swimming in the ocean.

Hermit Crabs eating fruit on the beach

One thing to keep in mind is that I learned how to swim a bit later than most kids, partly due to my dislike of submerging my head (My sensory organs are important to me: I don’t like water in my eyes, nor how distorted everything sounds underwater, and forget water up the nose) and so am not exactly the most confident of swimmers. I’m sure that I could be a strong swimmer, if only I could just get over my fear of what I suppose must be drowning. I’m not actually sure what it is that makes me so nervous about swimming. Maybe it’s actually just fear of being uncomfortable, since ultimately I usually trust that either I or the people I’m with would be able to save me if anything bad ever happened (which it never does).

Another thing to note is that I grew up visiting the Oregon coast, and that’s basically my only interaction I’ve had with the ocean. The Oregon coast is not for swimming. It is cold, rocky, rainy, and the waves are choppy and dangerous; what it is, is beautiful, so it’s much more for looking at than it is for really swimming.

These two things combined meant that when all the other kids immediately ran out into the water and started swimming out with the big waves, I hesitated at the shore, staring at the waves, unsure if it was really a good idea to go farther than ankle deep. The first incentive, however, was that it was really, really hot out, and the water felt amazing. The ocean was shockingly warm, yet also still cool enough to be refreshing in the heat of the day. Another comforting factor was that at playa zancudo the beach is mercifully flat, meaning that you can walk out into the water and have quite an impressively long way to go before you can’t touch bottom any more. So then the only issue became the waves. It was unnerving to be in waist-high water and suddenly have a wave coming in above my head. Despite the fact that everyone told me beforehand that it was actually safer a little further out, it still took me about a day of getting pounded by the surf to learn that I actually needed to go out to a point before where most of the waves were breaking. I even felt pretty comfortable by the end that I could handle a wave breaking over my head. The wave would come at me, obscuring the horizon and roaring as it built to a break just above my head and I would think I was about to die, but then I would jump, and it would pass, and in the end I would be wet but completely fine (even, gasp!, having fun). I loved how after the waves passed, they would leave a wake of fresh bubbles on the surface, like a hot tub jet stream.

Nicole at Zancudo Beach

It wasn’t until Kayla brought me a boogie board and showed me how to use it, however, that all fear vanished and I really started having the most fun. I think that somehow it gave me a (probably false) sense of safety to be able to ride on top of the waves rather than be slammed against them. Suddenly, instead of dreading the giant, roaring, white capped waves, I was seeking them out to fly out on top of them, the rippling water rushing across my back, carrying me with it a few feet. Kayla managed to ride one all the way back to the shore. I never managed the same feat, but it was still an awesome experience.

One of the most unique features of Playa Zancudo, however, is that it has bioluminescent bacteria. The night I went to go see them it wasn’t as impressive as it had been before apparently, but it was still pretty cool. It was like fireflies under the water that responded to movement. It was also a fairly big step for me to feel comfortable going into the ocean at night. It felt so eerie; the tide was out and so there was a long stretch of beach just glistening in the moonlight. Then, when we actually went into the ocean, which was now warmer than the air, the combination of the darkness and my lack of glasses made me nearly blind to anything besides the little glowing specs in the water. Looking out further at the ocean, it was just a misty darkness that completely obscured everything: when a wave would come in, I would only see it when it was a few feet away, though they seemed much less powerful at night.

***

One day, we decided to go on a boat tour around the bay. We met a woman staying in the cabin next to ours who’d met a guy with a boat who said he’d take us out for a reasonable price (there were, as always, a few hitches in the end, but all completely worth it from my point of view). We motored out, and immediately started seeing frigate birds, and even a crocodile. It was a reminder of how much I love boats and why, when I was little, I used to have a fantasy of living on one. It’s so calming to be out on the water slowly drifting, and at times simply fun to go bouncing over the waves. I’ve also noticed that while I get so motion sick on cars and airplanes, I don’t seem to get nauseous on boats (though I’m sure if I actually were to live on one, I would probably notice some amount of sea sickness after the first day).

Squirrel Monkey that was chasing a crane

The tour brought a big first for me: snorkeling. The boat driver stopped at a beautiful, wave-less inlet of reef, and presented us with the necessary materials: masks, breathing tubes (not sure what they’re officially called), and flippers. Nicole had told me that there would probably be life jackets, but of course there weren’t. I had never jumped off a boat before, let alone deeper than I could touch, so I was a bit nervous, but I managed to get into the water without submerging my head, albeit rather ungainly. As soon as I was in the water, a few giant scarlet macaws, the first I’d seen, flew overhead, cackling their impressively loud chatter as the sped in and out of the forest that was covered with brightly flowering yellow trees. A good luck sign if ever I saw one.

Frigate Birds fighting above our boat

Learning to snorkel felt like rewiring my brain, and no matter how hard I told my body that I could in fact breath using the tube, I felt a surge of fear when I inhaled. I had the breathing tube firmly in my mouth, biting down on the mouthpiece. However, I could feel the water against my lips, which must’ve been a signal to my brain not to respire, because every breath caught in my throat and I could feel my body begin to panic as I shakily inhaled and exhaled, trying to teach my body that I wasn’t about to drown, no matter how much it apparently thought I was. Finally, I managed to get to a point where at the very least the exhales were smooth, and I could begin paying attention to the water below me.

It was incredible. The salt water made floating incredibly easy, so I barely had to move my arms or feet to navigate above the reefs without disturbing the multi-colored fishes darting in and out of the rocks and coral. I followed behind a giant yellow parrotfish that was probably more than a foot long, as it picked at food under the large formations. I also saw tiny blue and yellow fishes in a range of shapes and sizes, and beautiful angelfish that seemed more shy than the others.

Dolphins swimming beside the boats

After snorkeling (and coughing up what felt like half a lung full of water that I still don’t know how I swallowed/inhaled) we went on the hunt for dolphins. We’d heard that there were whale sharks in the area, making their way north with their babies, the same ones that would eventually go past Nicole’s home port of Seattle and even pass by the same coasts I’d visited so often in Oregon, but they hadn’t been seen in a few days. We did finally find bottlenose dolphins. My first sight of one was from quite a ways away, when I saw something giant and dark leap out of the water, leaving a white plume of water taller than the specs of boats that were in the water next to them. When we got closer, we motored alongside the pod, and watched as the dolphins, blatantly ignoring us, leapt and played in the water. We could never be sure where they would surface next, until we saw the water begin to part or heard the telltale sound of them exhaling from their blowholes. The sound is always so funny; it sounds almost rude, like someone exhaling quickly with a mouth full of water, or a really deep burp, not at all what I’d pictured coming from those lithe graceful swimmers; I realized that it reminds me a lot of Darth Vadar’s breathing noises, actually. We were even lucky enough to see a few babies, their tiny fins disappearing into the waves, just half the size of their parents’.

I love the way the dolphin tails look as they dive under

***

I spent the last night in Golfito with Kayla and Carli. We kayaked on the water until a thunderstorm forced us back, and then I spent the rest of the time working on finishing my book.

When I originally sat down to write my reflections about my Playa Zancudo trip, it was just the morning after finishing Los Juegos del Hambre, or The Hunger Games, in Spanish. This meant that I couldn’t actually stop thinking about the story enough to focus in and write about anything because I still felt upset, vaguely disturbed or angry, and deeply impressed. The themes that the novel deals with require a lot of time to process for me, and there was something that I still can’t put my finger on that made me keep thinking about it. I can accept many of what I think are pretty far-fetched assumptions of the Hunger Games universe (let’s be honest, I don’t think even a far-removed, well-off public would actually like to watch a teenager’s long, drawn-out, brutal, and tortured death on television, especially if we’re already accepting that cannibalism isn’t ok), but I think the overall message isn’t fully delivered in the first book, partially because I don’t think the main character has fully processed what has happened herself. We’ll see how I feel after the next two, although it will be a while before I have the time to get into them again.

As a side note, I was also really proud that I managed to read the whole thing in Spanish and understand what was happening without having read it in English before (with the exception of the first four chapters). The writing, especially with its first-person in-the-moment style, is not particularly complex, which helped and also made it a relatively fast read. There were certainly quite a few words that I didn’t know (usually plants or foods) but I did just fine without a dictionary. I also thought it was interesting that I could tell it was probably a Spanish translation from the word choice (and use of vosotros).

***

Back doing fieldwork, I’ve pretty much finished with the assessment of abundances and am moving on to finding tents. It’s incredibly frustrating since I still don’t have the experience to be able to spot the tents, and I’m worried that since there are so few there won’t be enough of my particular species to really do statistics with. I’m starting to doubt the whole project sometimes, and I worry whether it will really work out to be anything resembling publishable by the end. I know that’s not the real goal, but I’ve put so much work into the project that I really want the results to mean something that other people will care about too.

Snake eating a toad

***

I saw my second kinkajou a few days ago. I haven’t been seeing as many animals lately, so it was a welcome break. Technically, as far as cool animal sightings in the wild goes, it was kind of cheating since the others had caught it as part of a mammal study (Gato and I just happened to walking by and got to see the kinkajou as they released it). Before I left to come to Costa Rica, one of my goals was to see a kinkajou, so I’ve counted myself lucky to see them in the wild. They are only slightly less cute than my animal shows and books made them out to be (many more teeth and much more skittish), but still amazing to watch scaling the trees. They’re in the raccoon family, but look more like an estranged cousin of a monkey mixed with some squirrel. Gato showed me the scars on his finger where one just barely bit him once and said that Eugenia has an even more impressive one. I can’t wait to ask her to tell me her ferocious kinkajou story.

***

Lizard (basilisk?) outside our kitchen window

One night, Nery decided to go to Church on a weekday, and so I stayed home with Misael for dinner. Usually at dinner, he likes to talk with Nery in his barely audible voice that I would have a hard time picking up even if he was speaking in English, so I don’t talk with him all that often. I always love when I get the chance, however, since he’s so full of stories. One day, a week or so ago, I was chatting with Amy, when he came up and asked if he wanted to see his grandfather tiger trap (they call a lot of large felines here tigers). It turns out it’s just like those toothed bear traps I’ve seen photos of in the U.S. as well. He set it up and snapped it shut on a few sticks to show us, and then assured me that it’s about 100 years old and he’s never used it to catch anything, although he remembers his father using it when he was a child after something started hunting their animals.

Misael setting up the bear trap (bear courtesy of Amy)

This night, however, he decided to talk about something a bit less concrete. After we sat down in front of the TV equipped with a lollipop each (the sweets always seem to come out more frequently when Nery’s not at home), he started telling me about how he likes to collect strange sticks from the forest to carve into things. He once found a rock in the river that had a whole straight through it, but when he brought it back to the house, it kept jumping on its own, so he decided it was cursed and gave it away. He explained that this whole region used to be inhabited by Indians, whose spirits are still present and make strange things happen. He’s definitely right about the indigenous people part, there’s even an ancient tomb at Tirimbina that Misael told me he had clued an archeologist into years ago when it used to be his land. He said there are also other places in the area that haven’t been excavated/discovered yet. The part about strange things happening was probably the most interesting part of the story, however.

When Misael was little, he lived nearby, where Tirimbina is now, I think. His mother raised him and a large number of siblings in a dirt-floored cabin near the river. There was no power, and his father sometimes left for days at a time for work. Just the setting alone is enough to think of ghost stories: a little boy, sitting alone in the kitchen with only the light of kerosene lamp, removing corn kernels from the cob, knowing that light emanating from their small house on the edge of the forest is the only one for miles at a time when nighttime meant solid darkness and many more wild animals at the door. This is back in the time where the tiger trap really did catch large cats trying to take down a cow. Add to that stories of Indian burial grounds, jungle witches, and apparitions, and you can bet I didn’t hear a single thing that was on TV that night.

One of the stories he told me was of when he was working in the living room and looked up to see a strange black man staring at him from the doorway. He sat, stunned and scared, until the man disappeared into the kitchen and Misael ran for his mother. He said she was a very brave woman, even after seeing her own set of strange things (including what he described as a little witch under the bed). She picked up the lamp, and holding it over her head, they went to investigate. The kitchen was empty… the same end as all the stories.

I’ve also had the opportunity to talk with Nery more in depth as well. That conversation was not quite as comfortable, although I think I understand a little better why she believes so much in Dios—it’s not like she’s had a lot of support from anything else in life. That being said, long lectures about the glory of eternal life versus eternal condemnation and the importance of believing in God to the point you would be willing to be tortured to death before saying you don’t believe in him is a little wearying in any language.

***

Today I found a beautiful butterfly in the room upstairs, flapping against one of the many windows. I opened the nearest window with a latch and gently put my finger under its spindly black legs, trying my best to avoid touching the wings, until it finally stopped fluttering away and held on. I could just barely feel it’s light weight on my fingertips as it rested, wings open, for a full minute as I held it out into the rosy evening sky. There were other butterflies stuck in the room too, but this one was the impetus to stop and release them—it was too beautiful to find desiccated and lifeless in the windowsill in the morning. It had a pattern like small eyespots on both the outside and inside of the wings, but the inside was dominated by that shiny bright blue that is also shared by Blue Morphos, although this one also had tinges of a deep purple hue, and yellow eyes that complemented the blue in a more complex way. As it sat on my finger, waiting for that unknown signal to go flying into the darkening citrus trees, I suddenly thought that if magic had a color, this subtly shifting light of blue and purple hues would be it. It’s a color that’s not really a color, but more a way the light plays with iridescence, distracting to the point of awe. There’s no way to really feel the magnitude of its presence until you’ve been walking for hours in a jungle that’s all shades of green and dark, and a butterfly with that shade of iridescence flies by and it suddenly seems like rays of otherworldly light are flittering through the trees, where you can’t quite follow its path, but you can’t take your eyes off it. Maybe it is magic, after all.

To be a tico

2012-04-12T18:32:00Z

The research has been going really well. I am learning a lot about the CEN-CINAI programing. I have gathered all my data, and have spent the last few weeks working on anthropological descriptions. The most intriguing facet of my research has been how children are treated in the Costa Rican culture. From what I can tell, children are the center of attention for any occasion. Any mistake made, any wronging or misbehavior, is reprimanded with a "mi amor" (my love), and mere words of wisdom. Frustration with children seems non existent in the areas I have visited. One day I would very much enjoy to do further research on the way children are treated and viewed in the Costa Rica, and if there is a connection with the countries happiness index, as well lasting effects on the close nit family unit.

Picture of a my research space in the CEN

Anyways, I have also been having amazing adventures every weekend. One weekend was spent at Festival Imperial, which was a giant electronic music festival that amounted to 30,000 people. It was crazy to see some of my favorite types of music surrounded by a completely different culture. Turns out the ticos (Costa Ricans) are very much on board with the futuristic sounds of dubstep and house music. I will say, I saw a few of the ticos get frightened during certain bass sounds that pierced our eardrums. In the end, everyone was dancing up storm which is all I wanted to do.

Festival Imperial with some ACM friends

I have continued volunteering at the family animal reserve. What surprised me most about my time spent with the animals, is that I learned the sounds, the mannerisms, and the smells of many different species of Costa Rica. All of this knowledge came in handy when I took my spring break trip, which is called Semana Santa here.

In order to experience smaller crowds and biodiversity up the wahzoo, I traveled to the souther peninsula by the name Osa Penisula. I spend four days backpacking in Corcovado National Park followed by two days at Playa Zancudo. The backpacking trip in Corcovado was amazing. I saw a multitude of wildlife. Tapir, fours different species of monkeys, ant eaters, crocodiles, wild pigs, macaws, coati, and many different species of birds. I was unlucky when my camera ran out of battery on the hike in, but I still managed to get various photos of wildlife and scenery.

Tapir

Playa Corcovado

Squirrel Monkey

The trail

Playa Zancudo means mosquito beach, but there were not many mosquitos. I believe that the name is used as a means of deterring massive crowds. The beach was beautiful. The wave were nothing to fear and the cabins that I stayed at were very inexpensive and right on the beach! If I headed approximately 3km south along the beach the wave got bigger, and the surfing got renowned. If I were to have taken a 30 minute car ride I would have happened upon a surf town by the name of Pavones. The famous 5 minute left breaking wave lives in this area. When I was staying in Zancudo the swell in Pavones was too big for me. 9 ft waves would not have been a good idea in my physical and competence level. I did surf thought and it was an absolute blast. I realize now that at some point in my life I am going to have to live somewhere that accommodates a surf every morning life style.

Walkway from the cabin to the beach

The best part at Zancudo came with the setting of the sun. The sunsets were spectacular. During this time the low tide made the beach stretch out for a good 50 meters. The water was very timid and the small film over the sand created amazing reflections of the clouds. When the night came around, we were blessed with cloud coverage. Weird, I know, but with the lack of a star and moon lit sky, came a ocean full of it's own light. Bioluminescense lit up the ocean. I swam around proclaiming, "look at me, Im a star!" Every movement that I made in ocean caused tiny little organisms to lit up around me. I was swimming in an swarm of ocean fireflies.

Best Sunsets

Pura Vida, until next time.

Course 2012: Rural Life & Extremely Rural Life

2012-04-09T04:49:54Z

HOW TO…

1. Milk a Goat: Surprise surprise, once again I hit the road with my host mom and sister for cafecito. Don’t fret, we didn’t dare skip the coffee and homemade breads made over a wood fire. Soon enough though, I received a free course on extreme small-scale sustenance “farming” from my host mom’s friend Elisa. We walked down behind her house where there were growing all sorts of flowers, natural medicines (aloe vera, herbal remedies, etc.) fruits (lime, guanabana, banana, etc.), vegetables (yuca, corn, etc.) and animals (dogs, cats, chickens, pig and goats). It seems if they barely need a grocery store! Before my crash course ended, I had to pass the final exam: milk a goat. If this sounds like an easy task, think again! I tried so many times before I finally got a few drops of milk. This was a triumphant moment, especially since they weren’t going to let me leave until I passed and I was feeling bad for the poor goat!

2. Eat Green Guanabana: The last high school I worked at had only 300 students. Hence, I started to get to know some of the students– including some flirty little boys. But my last day, a few of the girls brought me some tico foods to try. One girl bottled up water from a “pipa” (green coconut), while another brought me guanabana. I had to walk a long ways that afternoon, so the pipa water was so refreshing for my journey. I also snacked on my guanabana along the way- you eat it just like an apple. It was super bitter though, so now I learned that I’m supposed to add lime and salt!

4. Find BBC Filming Crew: National Geographic claims that Corcovado National Park is “the most biologically intense place on Earth” (holding 2.5% of the world’s biodiversity on one peninsula… Costa Rica has 6% of the world’s biodiversity). My friends Emma, Tim and David set out to find if this is true by taking a mini-backpacking trip. After a bus ride to San Jose (3 hrs), “red-eye” bus ride to the coastal town of Golfito (6 hrs), a water taxi to Osa Peninsula (1 hr), a collective bus to Carata (3 hrs) and a beach hike to the park entrance (1 hr)… we finally made it! We spent our first night at La Leona Ranger Station alongside the beach. We ate our dinner on a log along the beach and fell asleep to the sound of the waves. Perfect way to start out our trip. The next morning, we hit the road early for our 10 mile hike. Within the first 15 minutes of our hike, we already ran into scarlet macaws and a few “barrels” of monkeys. During our hike to the next ranger station “Sirena” we barely ran into people. It seemed as if we had the trail to ourselves. When we arrived, we heard that the BBC filming crew was also staying there! They were filming for a new series, “Dark”. We stayed at this station for two nights. The next day we went out for multiple day hikes. This felt so easy- without a large pack on our backs! Along our hike back, we hiked with a few German students and stopped in a lagoon for a swim. This day was cooler than our first long day, which was a great relief. Overall, a perfect trip- my favorite travel memories so far. During the entire trip we saw: blue morpho butterflies, spider monkeys, white-faced capuchins, squirrel monkeys (endangered), scarlety macaws, anteater, herons, great curassow (bird species), tapirs (endangered), dracula spiders, other spiders with 3-D webs, Jesus Christ lizard (walks on water!), endless hermit crabs, coatis, toucans, peccaries, a snake snacking on a lizard and a crocodile. By the end of the trip, we felt spoiled because monkeys no longer seemed exciting!

4. Survive without a Stove: Plug your nose. Or work up some hunger! Typical day- Breakfast: Oatmeal that was soaked in water overnight with a dollop of peanut butter. Mid-morning snack: Trail mix. Lunch: Wheat tortilla with peanut butter, granola and chopped carrot. The first few days we also had bananas and a mango. Dinner: Tuna with vegetables mixed with carrot or cucumber and crushed bread or leftover bread. Especially for dinner, it looked disgusting. But we were all hungry, so it tasted “riquisimo!”. For our last night we also had a chocolate drink mix- for 60 cents, it was a great treat! Our first meal out of the park consisted of a classical tico casado (beans, rice, salad, picadillo (chopped potato with seasonings), fish filet and a drink (rice and pineapple)… and tons of ice cream!

5. Escape Wild Peccaries: While searching for a supposed swimming hole (that we never found!), we ran into a nasty smell. At the same moment that Emma said she read that wild peccaries have a pungent scent, we looked to the side of the trail and found a wild peccary. And another! According to the books, if they attack you, you should run and climb up a tree. In Osa, just make sure that you don’t climb up a tree where monkeys are throwing down fruit at you! Thankfully, they fled just seconds after we saw them.

6. Have Patience: Welcome to Semana Santa in Latin America. Here, everyone has off from work Thursday-Sunday and kids are off all week from school. On our return trip to our rural sites, I ran into the craziness. After a 9-hour bus ride to San Jose, I went from an extremely remote area with few people to a full bus terminal with at least 300 people waiting for buses to San Carlos. Tons of Ticos travel during this time and San Jose becomes a ghost town. It took me an hour and a half until I was on the road again. What a day.

7. Remember the Stations of the Cross: According to my host mom’s warning, on Good Friday “you pray a lot!”. The town church held a procession around town in the morning. This was basically a reenactment of the Passion of the Christ– with actors following a script. Later this afternoon, we went to mass where we heard all of the stations of the cross. Following, at night, we went back into town to walk around the church for the stations of the cross. And as we speak, my host family and I are watching the Passion of the Christ- with Mel Gibson.

8. Tell an Orange from a Lime: Take note- tico limes are orange. Confusing? I agree. But take a bite and you’ll quickly learn. But the other day my host mom wanted to make a fish dish called “ceviche”- which basks in lime juice throughout the day, which supposedly eliminates the need to cook the fish. This recipe calls for a lot of limes, so in the morning during my run I stopped at her friend’s house (with the goats) to pick 20 limes from their trees. Talk about eating local!

9. Make Homemade Cinnamon Rolls: Although I didn’t have any ham, au gratin potatoes or ramen noodle salad, I did have cinnamon rolls this Easter. With my neighbors, we made them by scratch. If I had any hopes that these were a healthy treat, those are long gone. But I can say, they are delicious!! (Everything in moderation. : D) The recipe was very similar to one that I made with my Olaf roommate, Allison. The main difference is that we didn’t use a bread machine or wait for the dough to rise. Also, we snacked on the raw cinnamon rolls for a treat! We made a double batch, and from start to finish we used about 6 lbs. flour.

10. Enjoy Rural Life: Come one week and I will be in the “big city”. I already feel sad to be leaving!! Now when I go for a run, I bump into people I know. I don’t feel like such a tourist, but more a part of the family, neighborhood and community. Who would have thought.

Chao, Lauren

The Maiden Voyage of my Birthday Present

2012-04-05T23:46:00Z

This year, I got a brand new backpacking pack for my birthday. What better place to break it in than Corcovado National Park, labeled by National Geographic as “the most biologically intense place on earth”? Tim, Lauren, David and I decided to take advantage of Semana Santa (Easter week) to backpack for three nights in this amazing place, and it was an unforgettable experience.

Getting there certainly wasn’t easy, because the park is located in the Osa Peninsula, in the very south of Costa Rica. I left Pueblo Nuevo on Friday afternoon, stopped at my San José home to pick up my backpack, and headed out to the bus stop to catch our bus that left at 10:30 pm. We drove through the night, and arrived in Golfito at 4 am, with three hours to wait until we had to catch a water taxi to our setting off place, Puerto Jiménez. Thankfully, Iveth (the building manager at ACM) is from Puerto Jiménez and was heading home for the holidays, so she was on the same bus as us and could show us around town and introduce us to her family members. They even tried to help find us a guide to take us around the park, but unfortunately no one they knew was available.

We originally were planning on hiking without a guide, but once we arrived in Puerto Jiménez in the morning and talked to some other tourists and locals, nearly everyone highly recommended hiking with a guide in order to fully enjoy the experience. However, the cheapest price we could find for a guide would have cost us $90 each for the three days…tough to swing on a college student’s budget. The colectivo (truck transportation to the park) didn’t leave until the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to debate. We bought groceries, and at Iveth’s suggestion ate lunch at a town fair they were holding to raise money for building a nursing home in town. Homemade tamales, salad and a natural fruit juice for $2. Yum!

Homemade tamale

It was a really tough decision, but in the end we decided not to go with the guide. Unfortunately, this meant we were without a cook stove (the rest of the gear, like tents, mosquito nets and sleeping bags, were lent to us by ACM) and by that time all of the places where we could have rented one were closed for lunch! We quick ran back to the grocery store and bought some food that we could eat without cooking (hence the interesting meals you’ll notice that we ate during the trip), then went to wait for the colectivo to take us to Carate, a tiny town right near the entrance to the par. After a three-hour long bumpy ride, we finally arrived. By this time, it was about 4:30 pm, so we knew we should head off right away to get to our campsite before dark. We walked about 2 miles along the beach, in the gorgeous light of the setting sun, and arrived at La Leona ranger station. We set up camp and made peanut butter sandwiches with bananas for dinner, and passed out around 7 pm – it had already been a looong day!

Beach hiking at dusk

Driftwood on the beach

The sunset from our campsite, which was right on the beach

The next morning, we ate more pb&b sandwiches and packed up camp, heading out on the 16 kilometer trail to our next destination, Sirena Biological Station. Not even ten minutes into our hike we saw a family of spider monkeys climbing among the trees, and then we knew it was going to be an incredible experience. We realized that because we had all of our own gear and we’ve been here long enough and gone on enough tours to be able to identify quite a few animals, it probably was the right decision for us to save money and not hire a guide. Sure enough, we were able to see and identify white-faced capuchins, an anteater, scarlet macaws, and squirrel monkeys (endangered!) One really awesome moment that made us take off our packs and watch for a while was seeing a family of squirrel monkeys in one tree, so close we could see the expressions on their faces, and a pair of scarlet macaws fighting in the neighboring tree.

Heading off in the morning

Anteater

The hike to Sirena followed the beach, and the trail was about half along the sandy shore and half in the forest. A couple of times it was difficult to find the trail again after walking in the sand (high tide does a pretty good job of erasing footprints), but we knew as long as we kept walking along the beach we were heading in the right direction, and we always eventually found the forest trail again.

The gorgeous beach we hiked along for several kilometers

This was the entrance back into the forest after hiking along the beach; tricky to see!

We didn’t see as many animals while walking along the beach, but it was fun hiking because it involved some exciting rock scrambling and because we were the only ones on the beach for miles. That was definitely the only time in Costa Rica I’ve had a beach to myself! In fact, I think we only ran into three other groups of people in all the seven hours we were hiking. One group gave us a heads up that there was a pair of tapirs up ahead, which was so cool to see! It was really amazing to see the animals in this preserved wilderness area, because they were “tame,” but not in the obnoxious way that the monkeys and raccoons in Manuel Antonio were tame, begging and stealing food from people. Instead, the animals here were just disinterested, as if they knew they had nothing to fear from humans. This allowed us to see wild animals very close, which was incredible.

Tapirs!

They were so close!

We stopped for lunch on the beach (tortillas with peanut butter, granola and carrots was our lunch staple) and then only had about an hour left to hike. We crossed one final river, and then arrived at Sirena Biological Station. It was the weirdest thing after seven hours of hiking in the wild jungle to emerge into a mowed airstrip and find the biological station with electricity, running water, showers, and flush toilets! We were also very excited for the foam mattresses and covered sleeping platform, which meant we didn’t have to set up our tent and could just sleep under our mosquito nets and sheets – much more comfortable in the heat! After setting up camp, relaxing on the beach for awhile, and showering (such a luxury on a backpacking trip!) we made our “gourmet” dinner: canned tuna, crumbled up bread and refried beans all mixed together with some lime juice, cucumbers and carrots. It looked pretty disgusting, but didn’t taste that bad for a last-minute improvisation… at least it filled us up! And it was better than paying for meals at the station – those cost $25 each. We went to sleep at about 8 pm, absolutely exhausted.

Sirena Biological Station

The "honeymoon suite" that Lauren and I shared

The next morning, we ~~choked down~~ enjoyed the plain oatmeal we had prepared the night before by soaking it in water… eating it with peanut butter made it more palatable, and again, at least it filled us up! We had one more night at Sirena, so we were able to spend this day leisurely exploring the trails around the station. On our morning hike, we saw many more monkeys, a couple of “pavones de montaña” (Great Curassow), and lots of giant spiders. We also met the crew of a BBC documentary as they were leaving from two weeks of filming nocturnal animals from Sirena Station. Apparently, the documentary is called “Dark” and will be coming out soon, so check it out!

In the afternoon, we set off in search of a swimming hole that a ranger had told us about. We had some difficulty finding the path, and headed back to ask someone for directions… Lauren and I were walking ahead of the boys, and all of a sudden we smelled this incredible strong, pungent smell. This sparked my memory of something I’d read in a guidebook, and I realized it was the smell of peccaries (wild boars)! I looked over and there were two of them right by the path! We were kind of scared, because we’ve heard they can be aggressive and have been known to charge people in herds, but there were only two and they ran away as soon as they noticed us. Another animal sighting to check off the list!

We never actually ended up making it to the swimming hole, because the path was difficult to follow and covered with spiderwebs. We headed back instead to wash up and make dinner: our tuna “casserole” again, with leftover oatmeal instead of bread this time. It looked even less appetizing than the first night, but really tasted surprisingly good… although everything tastes good while you’re camping!

The next morning, we woke up early, packed up camp, ate our cold oatmeal with peanut butter, and headed off back towards Carate – we had 20 kilometers to cover that day and had to be sure to catch the only colectivo back to Puerto Jiménez at 4:00 pm, so we needed to start early. We ended up walking with some new friends we met at the ranger station: Johannes, a German biology student studying at the Universidad Nacional here in Costa Rica who’s been to Corcovado before and was very knowledgeable; his friend Barbara who was visiting from Germany, and their tico friends. They were good company, and we had a very pleasant hike back. We laughed when we stopped for lunch and we (the Americans) brought out our jar of peanut butter while they (the Europeans) got out their jar of Nutella… how cliché. We traded tastes of each other’s and that Nutella tasted soooo good.

Other highlights of the hike back were seeing a snake eating a lizard – so cool! We stayed and watched that for a while – and swimming in the Río Madrigal.

Snake eating a lizard! You can see the snake's mouth (it's orange and gray) biting down on the lizard's body (white-ish gray)

We got back to Carate with plenty of time to spare before the colectivo ride, and the ride itself was actually really fun because our new friends started singing and we joined in and sang together for a good chunk of the three hour trip. I’m now convinced that everyone in the world, no matter what language they speak, knows the lyrics to “Bohemian Rhapsody.”

When we got back to Puerto Jiménez, the first thing on our minds was food! The casado (typical Costa Rican meal of rice, beans, meat or fish, salad, and plantains) I got at the little soda(small restaurant) we stopped at tasted so delicious. So did the ice cream stop afterwards… mmmmm…

After dinner, we were picked up to go to our hostel, which was really awesome, and we wished we could have stayed there longer! It was called Celvantes Jungle Lodge, and was just opened three months ago by a couple of guys from San Francisco on 75 hectares in the jungle. The dorms were in open-air cabins spaced around the property, and they had a really comfortable communal space to hang out with a bar and shared kitchen.

The next day was a LOT of traveling, from 4:30 am to 7:30 pm on several buses to get back to Pueblo Nuevo. Lauren, Tim and I subsisted off of a loaf of bread, six bananas, a jar of pineapple jam, and a sleeve of cookies. Needless to say, I was very excited for some real food and a comfy bed when I got back!

Animals we saw in Corcovado:

· Blue morpho butterflies

· Spider monkeys

· White-faced capuchins

· Scarlet macaws

· Squirrel monkeys (endangered!)

· Anteater

· Herons

· Great Curassow

· Tapirs (endangered!)

· Giant spiders with cool 3D webs

· Jesus Christ lizard

· Hundreds of hermit crabs

· Coatis

· Toucans

· Peccaries

· Unidentified snake eating a lizard

· Crocodile

Little adventures of daily life

2012-04-01T18:15:48Z

My first few days back in La Virgin and Tirimbina were very special, and reminded me what a different and amazing place this is. My first full day back was spent making preparations for a joint 4 and 40^thbirthday party for one of the grandkids and older son (the part for the son was actually a surprise since his was last week and everyone had told him it was just a party for the grandkid). I got to “help” make arroz con pollo (a very special dish for important occasions, especially parties with lots of people), pan de leche, and salad, by which I mean I grated some carrots, helped the grandkids clean up when they made a mess, and mostly kept the little ones distracted. It reminded me of Fourth of July preparations as we ran around collecting chairs and tables in the heat.

Nery Making Arroz con Pollo

Amy eating ice cream out of a plastic bag. It's how they do it here, apparently.

There were nearly forty people at the party—all family, except for me; they were even almost all from our same street except for one son and his family that live farther away. Showny, one of the twins, explained to me that with family you always know what you’re getting and you can trust them, but when you start inviting other people, you never know what’ll happen. Plus, the family is big enough to actually have a decent-sized party just among themselves. Showny is also determinedly trying to bring the other side of the family that lives in San José for a visit during Easter Week to get to know them better. It’s so interesting to see how even the younger ticos still prefer to spend time with family than meet new people outside of familial relations. I think I understand a bit better why I’ve heard and read a lot about how ex-pats in Costa Rica have a really hard time actually being accepted into circles of friends here, as friendly as ticos are, simply because they aren’t relatives.

I was surprised how many people I didn’t actually know at the party, which I discovered is because many of the men work the entire week in construction near the Nicaraguan border and are only home on the weekends. Similarly, a lot of the kids are in school for much of the day and some actually travel all the way to San José to learn English on the weekends. I was really impressed with one of the nephews who’s also in school to become a biologist/naturalist and spends most of his free time trying to read bilingual animal guides.

The party was really low-key and fun. They set up a TV outside so everyone could watch the Saprissa versus San Carlos soccer game while drinking black coffee with sugar, eating pan de leche (basically like fluffy sweet bread or somewhat-sweet cake), and playing with the grandkids. I thought it was really sweet to see how even with sports TV going, the men all paid a lot of attention to the kids. I guess children trump machismo when it comes down to it, which is relieving since I know that’s not even always the case in the states.

The family party

TV seems to be much bigger part of life here than I’m used to in the states. It’s frequently on low volume while people are doing other things and even when the focus is on the television, people often talk over it and have completely unrelated conversations. This is really difficult as a second language learner and as someone who didn’t grow up with a lot of television, because I don’t really know how to tune it out. When a TV is on, it’s really difficult for me to block it out, and if the sound is on, doubly so. It’s also difficult to pick out the conversation you’re trying to concentrate on from the sounds of the TV (or vice versa, as the case may be), and in the end I frequently can’t keep concentrated and end up wandering in my own brain instead. Learning a new language is however a very good excuse for watching TV because technically I’m practice my Spanish while doing so. I think my favorite program so far is the ongoing Verano Toreador. It’s basically bull riding and other stupid bull-related games. The program is sponsored by La Teja, a popular tabloid that features an almost nude woman on the back of each issue (I don’t think I really need to explain much more about it’s content beyond that), and would be a fascinating sociological study. I think my favorite event is when they have a five on five soccer match in the middle of the bull ring—the players run around trying to score but also have to contend with a medium sized bull that will run at them and attack the goals or ball. So strange, yet so amusing. If nothing else, I’ve learned that getting run over by a bull is clearly not as dangerous as I thought it would be, although ultimately I just feel bad for the animals.

***

Costa Rica may well turn me into a herpetologist. On my way to Tirimbina to use internet on my first day back, I saw the tip of a long black tail on the side of the road. As I got closer, I traced the tail back into the grass on the side of the road, and felt my eyebrows rising as I kept on tracing it further and further back. It was a beautiful black and yellow snake, and I’m pretty sure it was longer than I am tall (I could barely see the head)—by far the biggest snake I have ever seen in the wild. It was a sunny day, and in retrospect I suspect it was probably out near the road sunning itself. It’s body had a strange curved, almost lumpy shape to it that for some reason made me think it was dead until I got closer and it slithered away under the fence into Tirimbina. I still don’t really know what it was, but the most probable seems to be the oriole snake, which everyone here describes as non-venomous but aggressive.

I think it’s really interesting that with so many strange creatures in the jungle, when I first catch sight of them and realize that there’s something there, I feel it in my stomach: a sort of panicky gripping sensation that makes me feel very alert. It’s a little different when I see snakes, however, perhaps because I haven’t actually discovered them as they were moving; it’s more of a feeling of awe and almost disbelief. Then, later, I usually start to worry about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t somehow seen it, though by now I’m sure I’ve passed by plenty of snakes without ever seeing them (they are incredibly well camouflaged and don’t like to move).

Later in the week I had the good fortune of finally seeing what I think is one of the most beautiful snakes in Costa Rica: the Eyelash Pitviper, or Bocaracá. I was working with Gato when over the radio a bunch of people started talking excitedly about the find. We happened to be very nearby, so we took a break to go take a look. It was on the side of the path hunting for lizards, Gato and one of the guides explained (though apparently hunting means about the same thing as resting—sitting very, very still and camouflaged). It’s a venomous snake, but that’s not why everyone was so excited. It was gorgeous. I’d been hoping I might get to see one, but hadn’t really thought I’d get to. Eyelash Pitvipers come in a variety of colors, including the most famous bright yellow, and are named after the strange ridges of skin above their eyes. This one was fairly large and had a beautiful dark green with deep reddish-orange patterns that looked very artistic and were more subtly handsome compared to the brighter colors it can sometimes be. If I hadn’t had more work to do, I could’ve stayed there for hours taking photos of it, it was so stunning. I know a lot of people are afraid of snakes, but that shouldn’t stop them from admiring their beauty (in fact, sometimes their deadly nature somehow adds to the aesthetic); of all the beautiful creatures I saw that day (toucans, parrots, etc), it was by far the handsomest of them all.

Bocaracá, or Eyelash Pit Viper

***

My first day back at work, I headed up the stairs to grab my backpack, and discovered a panicked little bird fluttering around the room. It was one of the pecho amarillos, or kiskadee. They’re sweet little birds with black and white faces and stunning yellow chests. I have no idea how it got inside, but as soon as I came up the stairs it started panicking and fluttering around. I tried to inch around it to open the windows, but I think it just got too overwhelmed and made no attempts to fly towards the available exits. I was worried it might have a broken wing, so I went and got my host parents. Misael, my host padre, gently caught it and showed it to me. It started chirping anxiously, but then calmed down a bit. Misael showed me that beneath the dull yellowish feathers on it’s head, it had a brilliant orange at the base. We took it downstairs and he held it out the window, and off it flew, not a single problem with its wing.

***

As far as my project goes, this has been the most stressful week so far, and not because I’ve been very busy or anything like that—In fact, quite the opposite. It seems like my project has come to a standstill and the worst part is that all I think I would need to get this second part going would be a 15 to 30 minute conversation with my advisor with his undivided attention; it doesn’t even have to be in English (not that that would actually be an option). The problem is that he’s an incredibly busy person, and half the time he isn’t even here. Usually, it’s not a problem, but I’m trying to start phase two of my project, and I can’t get the go ahead until I can talk with him. To make matters worse, right now is when the funding scientists for Tirimbina are meeting to discuss the research at Tirimbina and the future of the reserve itself. So in comparison to talking with all of them, my project is a bit less important for him, and even when I do get a few seconds to talk, he’s clearly not actually paying any attention.

I did finally get the methodology figured out, but it was supremely stressful since we decided to tweak it pretty significantly from what I thought I was going to do. I recognize that figuring out the kinks of a project is part of research, but it’ll be nice when I have the expertise so that I can tweak without constantly needing to affirm that what I’m doing is correct. I also spent about two days not doing anything of real significant value, which was very, very hard for me. I constantly worry about time constraints, and I do not like sitting in an office doing nothing, especially when that nothing is waiting, since I don’t feel like I can do anything useful in the meantime. I was so happy to finally be back out in the forest. This new part is potentially a bit more work, but I think I’m going to like it a lot.

***

One of the days while I was waiting around, frustrated at not being able to start my project, Manuel offered if I wanted to go out with him to look for motmots. I eagerly agreed, and had a really fun time hiking around. We didn’t find the motmots, but we did find a hummingbird and it’s nest, common tent-making bats, and another species of bat that roosts in old termite nests. Manuel is really interesting to talk with, since he isn’t technically a biologist yet he knows an incredible amount about the forest and always teaches me a lot.

Common tent-making bats

Hummingbird who's nest we found

That same day, I randomly ran into a group of CC students who are in Costa Rica for a class on globalization. It was very weird to see people I know from school here, but it really made me realize how, even with all the frustrations of my project at times, I am incredibly lucky to be working here. They all seemed pretty impressed with Tirimbina, and it made me feel really proud to be able to explain what I’ve been doing.

***

I went with my host madre, Nery, to the supermarket the other day. It was really fun to get to see more of what she buys, get out into the town more, and just get to see more of what daily life is like here. I offered to cook a dinner, since they’d never eaten eggplant or zucchini. I made a tasty stew out of them, which made me feel a little homesick. It was also really funny for me to be able to introduce my host familia to new foods since there have been so many vegetables here that are different, I didn’t think there’d be much for me to show them. Amy came with us to the store, and kept asking me every few minutes whether we had ____(insert food item here) in the US.

***

The indirect approach of squishing mosquitoes doesn’t seem to be doing anything in the long run, so I thought I’d take this moment to make a direct appeal:

Queridos Zancudos,

Your obsession with biting exclusively my elbows and toes is unhealthy and unusual. Please cease and desist. For example, I currently have eight bites on my right elbow alone—just because I can’t kill you when you land there doesn’t give you the right to cover it in itchy bumps. Do not misinterpret me; this is not permission to expand your forays to other parts of my body. I know I’m the only gringa around, but I’m sure ticos taste just as good. Better yet, try the wild animals. They live just across that river over there and they don’t have hands and bug spray to kill you with.

I look forward to our improving relations,

Phoebe

But seriously, it’s ridiculous. The book I read about tropical ecology before I left that said the mosquitoes in the tropics weren’t that bad LIED. Maybe in other parts of Costa Rica it’s not as bad, or compared to wherever the authors were from in the states (Michigan?), and at least they don’t carry malaria, but I’m smashing them left and right even as I sit here typing this (Bam! I just grabbed one directly out of the air. I am a pro). I also discovered that 100% DEET melts my plastic clipboard and does weird things to plastics in general, so I can’t always use it, and it doesn’t always help when I do. My anti-itch cream is also seriously inadequate for this kind of assault. I’m trying to be Zen about it and have taken a strange delight in counting my bug bites (I guess that’s sort of part of accepting the pain and then moving beyond it?). To be honest, I don’t know why it’s not an even bigger problem for me than it is; I’m not exactly known for being able to handle obnoxious, continuous pain for long periods of time without copious amounts of whining. I guess I usually have enough to distract me from the pain or at night I’m usually too tired to care; however, that sort of sleepy, lazy hour before bed can really be torture at night when I realize that certain parts of my body are literally more bites than skin (and yes I am correctly using the word literally here. Let the reality of that sink in for a moment).

In the end, however, mosquitoes aren’t even the hardest or most obnoxious part of tropical research. That honor might go to heat rash, although I haven’t (yet) experienced the array of fungal infections and parasitic insects that could potentially accompany long hours in the jungle. It’s so hot here, and I sweat so much that it’s a pretty inevitable part of life. Oh the stories I could tell about heat rash. Unfortunately, I’m not really sure you’d want to read them and I don’t particularly want those recollections recorded forever in cyberspace. Some things are probably better left forgotten.

The point is that it is not always the most comfortable of work. Thankfully, I fully understood that before coming here (I was actually starting to get strangely interested in the prospect of having a bot fly until I gratefully learned that they’re actually pretty rare). One thing I definitely learned from this week is that despite all of the uncomfortable aspects of working in the jungle, I’d so much rather be out there doing my research than stuck in the office planning. I know that that is definitely a part of the job, but I’m hoping I can make it as small as possible.

***

I know it’s a jungle out there, and competition in the tropics is at its fiercest (and most interesting), but sometimes I learn things I just didn’t want to know about the truth behind what some beloved animals do to survive. Take toucans, for example. I always knew that they had very strong beaks (verified by one of the students on the program who got bitten by a semi-domesticated one), which I always figured was because they used them to crack open really hard nuts or fruits. That’s not quite the whole story. I felt somewhat betrayed to learn that in fact they are quite capable predators as well and eat everything from venomous snakes to baby birds. The last point was driven home today when my host dad told me he was going to show me a nest he’d found of baby trogons, a species of bird I have yet to really get a good look at, but discovered that the young had been eaten, probably by a toucan. When I made a horrified face and said something along the lines of “oh no, not toucans!” as if I was going to start crying, he paused, laughed confusedly, and quickly added, “it could’ve been some other animal though.” I don’t know why I didn’t know of their predatory behaviors before coming here, nor why it upsets me so much more to think of a toucan eating baby trogons than, say, an ocelot, but despite all that, every time I see their bright colors and ungainly appearance, I still feel a sense of joy…followed by reproach.

***

We have another mantis in the office. I think Eugenia (one of the other researchers and sort of the general boss) is slowly turning it in to an office pet in her attempts to keep it alive “for science”. It started out in a giant plastic bag, but every day it’s getting fancier and fancier enclosures. Now it’s in a giant bucket with sticks and a multitude of crickets, covered with mesh and shaded with folded papers. I wouldn’t be surprised if tomorrow I show up and she’s bought it a real cage. Either that or it’s died. I keep telling her that it’s not eating because it’s depressed, but she insists (always with a hint of worry) it’s doing fine. She swears that it did finally eat a grasshopper, but I think it could’ve also escaped though the mesh. The mantis is actually quite a beautiful animal, it’s as long as my index finger and camouflaged like a leaf. I do hope it survives, but I’m not sure any animal survives for long in our office—Gato’s project is basically to kill all the butterflies he finds to add to the catalog of a long-term butterfly monitoring investigation, and Eugenia seems to be the sort of person who instead of killing dangerous critters like giant scorpions, just sticks them in jars to die a slow death where we can all watch them (I can, however, completely relate to this since I used to do the same thing with Black Widow spiders when I was little).

Gato capturing a very large caterpillar. Whenever I work with him we make detours to catch them, and it's always really interesting.

***

The new project is going well. I’m determining the abundances of my three plant species to be used later with bat tent-building preferences. It’s been really nice to work with Gato. I’ve been learning a lot about butterflies as we go, and with this project it’s not as tight of a time budget, so it’s a bit less stressful. I’m also getting a good overview of lots of different areas, and going much deeper into the forest than before. Every day I see new interesting things and a wide range of habitats, and I’m feeling excited all over again to be in the jungle. I’m about to head out to a week long vacation for Semana Santa, which will be very nice, but I feel like I just got back into the swing of things here.

lizard camouflaged like moss

Frog I saw while doing fieldwork. I touched it.

Volcanoes, Waterfalls, and Hotsprings, Oh My!

2012-03-29T12:35:00Z

This past weekend I went with Tim and Lauren to La Fortuna, a town in Northeastern Costa Rica that couldn’t possibly avoid being a tourist destination; it boasts a national park, Arenal Volcano, hot springs, waterfalls, and caves nearby. We decided to embrace being tourists for a weekend, and we had a great time.

One wonderful advantage to traveling in Costa Rica is its public transportation system; you can take a bus to almost anywhere in the country for very cheap… if you’re willing to be patient. Pueblo Nuevo, where I’m living right now, is pretty remote, so I spent many hours on buses this weekend. Luckily, Costa Rica is a beautiful country, so the views from the window were always nice. I left on Friday afternoon to catch a bus to Guácimo, then another bus to Guápiles where I met Tim, then another bus to Puerto Viejo, then another bus to Venecia, where Lauren lives. We enjoyed meeting Lauren’s sweet host family and checking out the town fair. Early the next morning we headed out to La Fortuna, and arrived at 10 am, in enough time for a day of adventure.

As soon as we stepped off of the bus, we were hounded by tour companies speaking to us in English and trying to get us to sign up for a tour. It’s kind of annoying how in tourist destinations people just assume we prefer to speak in English, when we’ve been working for two months now to improve our Spanish… but we just try to respond in Spanish and most people get the hint. We did end up deciding to sign up for a tour, after realizing that park entry fees and transportation would be pretty expensive even if we went on our own.

While waiting for our tour to start, we packed up peanut butter sandwiches, carrots and bananas for lunch, and walked to a swimming hole in a river close to our hostel. The sun was shining (something I hadn’t seen in a while!) and the river was beautiful, with a waterfall, a rope swing, and big rocks to sit on and eat our lunch. It looked like the rivers I’ve explored with my family in the UP, only, you know, tropical. We happily ate our sandwiches and swam in the river before heading back to get ready for our tour.

Lunch spot

We swam underneath the waterfall on the right, and it would suck us under and shoot us out downstream!

We had told the tour company that we spoke Spanish, so for our tour we were grouped with a tico family from San José. It was really fun to meet the family, but also to get to know the other, English-speaking half of the group. We were quite an eclectic group of people, from the San José family to study abroad students (us) to vacationers from Finland, Australia and Canada.

For the tour, we first drove to the Arenal Observatory Lodge, a beautiful hotel with a stunning vista of the volcano and nearby Lake Arenal, and many miles of forest trails. We all decided that if we had a bit more money to spend, we would definitely stay there instead of our hostel! We headed off for a two-hour hike on the trails of the observatory. The highlight of the hike was playing in a waterfall, jumping off the rocks into the water and standing underneath the falls. We were also pleasantly surprised to end up walking through a pine forest for the last part of our hike. Lauren, Tim and I remarked to our tour guide that the pine trees reminded us of home, although I’ve never seen a toucan in a pine tree before!

Volcan Arenal

Jumping off the waterfall! This picture makes it look way more impressive than it actually was; I probably jumped from five feet above the water

After watching the sunset from the deck of the Observatory Lodge, we headed off to the last stop of our tour, swimming in a thermal river! We stopped along the way to see some amazing glow-in-the-dark beetles. They look like fireflies from a distance, but their lights are much stronger and don’t flicker on and off like fireflies. Very cool. We then arrived at the thermal river, with 100 degree F water. It wasn’t too hot, just warm enough to be able to hang out comfortably for a while, and warm up after being cold and wet in the chilly night air. We got volcanic mud masks on our faces, which apparently would cost $200 at a spa in the US. Whether or not that’s true, it was fun and my face did feel a little smoother afterwards!

Overall, the tour was definitely the most tourist-y thing I’ve done so far in Costa Rica, but I really enjoyed it. I had a great time, and it was cool to meet and chat with other young people traveling in the country.

We arrived back to our hostel in time to take advantage of the free shared kitchen and make a FEAST for dinner! We’ve been missing fresh veggies and vegetarian food, so we made falafel! They were kind of improvised tico-Mediterranean fusion falafel, because we didn’t have flour so we used corn masa to hold them together, and we ate them in tortillas with bell peppers, tomatoes and avocado… but they were delicious!

Dinner feast

The next morning, we woke up early to try and hike Cerro Chato, a much older, inactive volcano near Arenal that has a beautiful lagoon in its crater. We ran the 4 km to the trail head, where we were told it would take 2.5 hours to hike up and down… well, we only had 1.5 hours before we had to leave to catch the bus! We decided to risk it and try to hike really really fast up. The hike was beautiful, starting in pasture lands and transitioning into forest as we climbed. However, the deceptively short 3 kilometers were really challenging! Lauren and Tim are super strong cross country runners, but I was struggling to make it up quickly enough. I did manage to make it up to the top in time, though! We saw the gorgeous turquoise waters of Lago Cerro Chato before hurrying back down the mountain.

And… nine hours and six bus rides later, I was back in Pueblo Nuevo! Many hours of travel, but the weekend was worth it.

La Mitad.

2012-03-29T05:09:42Z

In less than two months I’ll be back home. Wow!!

Here’s my attempt to fill you in on the excitement of my last two weeks:

The BIG Things:

1. TORTUGUERO NATIONAL PARK: Not turtle season, but it’s a semi-close location which is situated between a long canal and the ocean. We took a 2-hour long boat ride out to the park… much more fun than a bus! The trip was great, despite the constant rain. My highlights from the trip were seeing an anteater (outside of a restaurant!), star-gazing at night (sooo many stars and three planets), and a going on a boat tour of the park (my favorite animals: a river otter which we spotted fishing & at least 40 monkeys right before our eyes). We definitely learned the advantage of zip-lock bags and a decent rain jacket.

2. TOWN TOUR (GUIDES: 2 HIGH SCHOOLERS): My neighbor Eleanor and her friend Ricardo (9th graders) took me around town a bit. This included an in-depth explanation of the classic tico burial process. I also saw Ricardo’s pets: love parakeets (which die if left without its partner), dogs, chickens, parrot and horses. Talk about a zoo!

3. “INVITATION-ONLY” TOWN DINNER: My host dad is a member of “ASADAS”, which is the aqueduct town association. Hence, my family was invited to a town dinner, along with other town leaders. While we ate, a band played classic Costa Rican folk music.

–Headed back to San Jose for 4 days with the rest of my class.–

4. MY HOST NEPHEW’S BIRTHDAY PARTY: Classic tico birthday parties are very similar to gringo ones! There were kid games such as “pin the tail on the donkey”, water balloons and musical chairs. We ate tostadas with refried beans, meat and vegetables, followed by cake and ice cream. To finish off the event was a pinata. I wasn’t surprised!

5. INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS: In San Jose, there was a week-long cultural celebration. There were international foods, artisan booths, cultural events and presentations- all for free! It was similar to a small state fair. One night we saw a Russian techno accordion duo (one-of-a-kind event). My Uncle Dave knows how to play the accordian… so I think he should join in and make this group a trio! I also saw a mystery Spanish horse event (don’t know how to explain it!).

–Back to Venecia.–

6. VENECIA EXPO: In my town, the past few weekends have been a fair. (Think of a mini-county fair this time.) There were local artisans, singers, dancers, rides, food, bars, farm animals and various events. For example, I saw an elderly folk dance group and a “tope” (parade of 400 horses).

7. LA FORTUNA TRIP: This past weekend I went to La Fortuna with a few friends. This is a super touristy location in Costa Rica. We spent our Saturday lunch under a bridge at a river with a few waterfalls. This was perfect. We swam under the waterfall, which had such great pressure that it sucked us under and spat us out further down. SO FUN! Later we took a tour. It led us around Volcano Arenal, on a few hour hike through the national park there, to another waterfall (where we jumped off a mini-ledge into a pool of water and sat under the waterfall) and hot springs at night. The next morning we woke up early to hike Cerro Chato, which is a neighboring volcano which has a crystal clear lagoon in it’s crater. We had to book it up and down in order to make the bus, but it was still a blast.

The Little Things:

1. PEREZOSO CROSSING: This morning I went out for a run… where I saw a sloth (“perezoso”) crossing the road! I could tell that it was a male by the spotting on it’s back. It took 5 minutes to cross half of the road, climb up a ditch and situate itself in the tree. So cool!

2. FOOD EXCHANGE: My host mom has been teaching me how to make lots of different tico dishes. Everyday she thinks of something new to make! One day I made my family french toast, which they loved. Also, I baked a “toasted coconut mango banana bread” from a recipe my mom found. Thanks mom!! My family loved it.

3. SNAIL MAIL: Even with the address “100 meters north of the Dos Pinos, Next to the mechanic shop Alsoin, Venecia, San Carlos, Costa Rica, Central America”, cards from my godmother Sharon and mom have made it to me! I love receiving mail! I wonder how often mail makes it here, because I received three letters in one day!

4. RETAKING CLASS: I have gone with my high school neighbor to her confirmation classes weekly. It is really fun to compare/contrast with my own experience! My host mom also teaches faith formation. Today I sat in on the class with 12 squirmy kids!

5. VISIT TO THE PERRITOS: Today I also went to visit a “family friend’s” collie puppies. They are only a few weeks old and just today one fully opened its eyes. They were so pretty!

6. “PRUEBELO”: Just when I think I’ve tried every Tico type of bread, I’m given another. Yesterday, my host mom and I went to three cafecitos. Hence, I ate bread three times. Pizza bread, empanaditas with caramel, honey with pineapple and mango and sweet bread filled with cream cheese were all on the day’s menu. Good thing I had a long morning run!!

Shout out to my loyal blog followers… Gary & Donna!!!

Que se vaya bien,

Lauren

Break and Back

2012-03-25T16:56:52Z

I’ve finally had a pretty relaxing week for a change. It was really nice to come back together in San José and hear how all the projects are going, and especially nice to see my host family again. Stats analysis wasn’t as stressful as I thought it would be, but I have a lot of work to do still. I realized I had really missed my host madre, Doris, she’s really fun to talk to and a bit more progressive than my rural host familia. As luck would have it, we happened to be there for the Festival Internacional de Artes (or FIA), which was a giant celebration of theatre, music, art, culture, etc. from Costa Rica and other countries around the world. Most of the events took place in La Sabana, a giant park where the Estadio Nacional is. It was completely packed, and I wish I‘d had time to explore it more because it was pretty cool. One of my favorite events was actually in downtown San José, which we more or less randomly came across. It was a parade called Los Caballos de Menorca, from Spain, which consisted of giant, somewhat crazed yet beautiful horse puppets worn by performers dancing through the crowd. There was a man being pushed around on a mini stage drumming and making galloping noises for the horses. Every once in a while, the horses would group together and then go charging wildly through the crowd, scattering onlookers, who ran out of the way screaming and giggling. It was fantastic. The puppets were very tall, spindly, and stylized and gave everything a sort of fantastical feeling.

***

I asked my advisor for a few days off after San José and went to visit the Arenal area. The first night I stayed with Miguel and Lyn, family friends that we met on our first (very brief) visit to Costa Rica. It was really nice to see them again, and it was strange because I suddenly realized that it had been two years since I’d seen them, yet it also felt so familiar as if it’d only been a few days. It was really relaxing to just take some time off and simply talk—we spanned topics of life, politics, and the environment. It was also wonderful to play with their dogs and cat, since most of the animals I interact with are not really pet-able.

Miguel and Lyn's house outside Nuevo Arenal

***

We stayed in a “5 star” backpackers hostel that was impressively nice for the price. It had a pool and a restaurant and was very pretty. They also had reasonable deals for tours and activities that would pick you up there. I’ve already done rafting and zip lining, so I opted for the horseback ride to a waterfall. However, I realized that I probably should’ve actually learned something about how to ride a horse first, because the trip left me very sore and confused at how some people manage to do this frequently. I did enjoy the feeling of riding something that was alive and had a clear personality (Hidalgo, my horse, always liked to go in front), but I think I need some lessons before I go on one for any extended period of time again.

Carli on a horse

The ride was very pretty. The area around Arenal is a lot drier but also very beautiful, with different kinds of plants and trees that really stand out in a lovely way rather than becoming a green mass of jungle (which is also beautiful in a different way). I saw a black guan, a tiger heron, and a gorgeous bird with incredible, painted-looking wing patches that people call a pajaro pescador. However, I realized that I see more birds in Tirimbina (in part probably because I know where to look for them) on a daily basis. The waterfall was incredible, however. It was very tall and fell down into a beautiful little pond tucked away in the mountain. It sprayed the whole area in a fine mist; even the rocks around it were covered in moss. Our guide told me that one time he saw a Jaguar on top of it.

Carli and Phoebe in front of the Waterfall

Waterfall at La Fortuna

We also visited a “native village” on the tour. It was actually not as forced as I thought it would be. They were very up front that even though they were dressing in traditional outfits, no one actually wears them any more. It was interesting to ask the representatives from the village about their history and the position of indigenous people in Costa Rica. The man who is something of a leader in the village explained to me that there has been a history of discrimination in the country, but that it’s gotten a lot better as indigenous people have started to make more money and other Costa Ricans have started to see that they’re intelligent and capable workers. It sounded as though he was sort of saying that as they become more homogenized into tican society, they’re more accepted, which I thought wasn’t actually that big of an achievement for either culture. However, he may have just been saying that now they can get jobs outside of the village, like being tour guides in the area. Most of the people in the village are artisans and sell things like painted gourds and masks to tourists. It was really interesting to hear that now the public schools for the village are taught in their local dialect rather than Spanish (although they also get Spanish classes), which he explained was a fairly recent change.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip, although the weather wasn’t so great and I think La Fortuna is a bit too touristy for my tastes. It was really nice to hang out with friends and not think about work for a few days, but I’m ready to get into it again.

***

After this trip, I’m feeling very confident in my ability to travel on my own here. I realized on the first day as I was sort of just taking it step by step in my attempts to get to Miguel and Lyn’s house, that there aren’t many countries in which I’d feel comfortable just getting on a bus without knowing exactly what I’d do on the other end. Here it seems to be the easiest way to do it sometimes (since listed bus schedules are frequently either incomplete or unhelpful), which can be a bit scary, but I’ve realized that I’m at a point at which I feel confident enough in my Spanish that I can mostly just ask my way through anything. Ticos are very helpful, friendly, and relaxed, which makes traveling a lot easier and less stressful. That doesn’t mean I’m naïve or not careful (I think Arusha has made that one clear to me), but I’m less afraid of getting lost.

It was also nice to be back “home” again in La Virgin. Once you’ve settled somewhere, however briefly, it feels wonderful to be back again. One of the daughters was over with her kid, sewing and talking, and it was nice to sit around the living room chatting and unwinding from the day of travel. I didn’t even mind the return to plain old rice and beans (but we’ll see how long that lasts).

Back to San Jose

2012-03-21T04:57:00Z

I'm back in San Jose so I had good enough internet to add pictures to my previous posts from the field!

This week, all of the ACM students headed back to San José for a midterm report on the progress of our projects. As much as I love my host family and my earthworms in Pueblo Nuevo, it was nice to see my friends and my San José host family again for a few days, and stock up on some necessities that I can’t get in Pueblo Nuevo, like bug spray and gum ;)

When I arrived late on Saturday morning, preparations were in full swing for a party to celebrate my host sister María José’s upcoming wedding. The party was called a “Despedida de Solteros;” sort of like a bachelor/bachelorette party but for both María José and her fiancé Daniel. It was held at Vicky (my host mom)’s house, and was mainly just for family… but Vicky has a huge family so even so there were fifty guests expected! I helped Vicky run some last-minute errands, and then to prepare the potato salad for the feast. The guests started to arrive around 6:30, and María José looked gorgeous in her blue dress and so happy. We enjoyed appetizers of vegetables with homemade garlic dip and hummus while waiting for Vicky’s brother to grill meat for the main meal. And for dessert, delicious coconut flan! Everyone passed the evening eating, chatting, drinking red wine, and playing various games for prizes (I even managed to win one!). Having a large extended family myself, I felt right at home among the festivities.


The sign that my host sister Laura made for the party

My San Jose host family: Dani, host sister Maria Jose, me, host niece Maria Ines, host nephew Julian Andres, host sister Laura, host mom Vicky, and host brother Juan Pablo

The next morning, I helped clean up after the party before heading downtown to San José with some friends. This week is the Festival Internacional de las Artes (International Art Festival) in San José, so there are lots of free events all week long. We headed to La Sabana and had a great time checking out the work of local and international artisans, a butterfly garden, and a concert by two hilarious Russian accordion players. I wish I got a better picture of them because they were a riot… very emotive.

These men were making really cool custom leather shoes

Butterfly at the mariposario (butterfly garden)

An art installation in the lake at Parque La Sabana, where the fair was being held

Russian accordion players

On Monday we headed back to school at the ACM building, to check in with our advisors and put the finishing touches on the presentations we will be giving tomorrow. It was great to see everyone again, and to hear about the vastly different experiences we are all having with our rural stays; every location and host family is unique, which makes for lots of great stories to share! I was also happy to have my running buddies back, and to stop at our favorite panadería afterwards for a bean and cheese croissant for lunch. We got fancy today and bought some avocados to serve on top of our croissants… delish.

Lauren, Tim and I finished our presentations early in the afternoon, so we decided to take the bus downtown and explore a bit. We walked down Avenida Central, which is a pedestrian avenue that reminds me a lot of State Street in Madison. It was fun to walk around in the bustling downtown area of San José, and of course we made the requisite stop for ice cream (pistachio… yum!) We also happened to run into another event that was part of the Festival de las Artes, a group of Spanish artists from Catalonia who danced with giant horse puppets. It was cool, if not a little scary!

The horse dancers. Soon after this they started running through the crowd!

On Tuesday everyone gave midterm presentations to describe what we’ve been working on for the first three weeks in the field, and give some preliminary analysis of our data. It was really cool to hear about the ups and downs of everyone’s projects, and comforting to know that I’m not the only one who’s experienced some of the frustrating and unexpected changes that are characteristic of research! Everyone has unique and interesting projects, studying everything from soil (me) to sloths to happiness to health care. Of course, we needed tons of food to fuel us through seventeen presentations, and Iveth (the wonderful building manager and fantastic cook) hooked us up with galllos de queso (corn tortillas with melted cheese), chips and salsa, and ice cream… and this was all before lunch! We had a delicious sandwich spread for lunch, and then worked on planning some weekend trips while we were all together. It was stressful, but now I’m looking forward to seeing Arenal volcano this weekend, backpacking in Osa Peninsula for Semana Santa (Holy week), going to my host sister’s wedding on the beach in Guanacaste in April, and hiking Chirripó mountain towards the end of the program in May! Whew! Hopefully I’ll still have enough energy to work on my research project and blog about all of my adventures.

Oh, and PS I’m pretty sure it’s colder in San José than it is in the Midwest right now…crazy.

Ups and downs of leaves and lives

2012-03-16T22:41:55Z

Note: I’m sorry this post is so short, it doesn’t do the past two weeks justice. I’ll try to add more details when I have time, but I’ve been pretty darn busy and exhausted.

I find it strangely appropriate how metaphorical it is that my project is about the ups and downs of leaves and how much they can support before they break. In a similar way, this week has been full of emotional ups and downs; I think I’m exploring what sort of conditions I can handle before I decide I need to change something in the way my project is structured. At the risk of carrying this analogy too far, I would say that at the beginning of the week I was worried I was about to break, but I think I’ve found a pretty comfortable carrying capacity now (this is probably not nearly as comical to anyone who doesn’t know the details of my project).

Me, working with my leaves

I finally decided that just being in the jungle isn’t enough when I’m working really long days at a pretty menial task all by myself. I don’t usually even see birds, let alone mammals. I know that most researchers don’t start off with the coolest project in the world, but I would like this one to be worth it beyond completing my thesis and potentially publishing. I talked to my advisor about my concerns, and after that, he started having Manuel, one of the other researchers, come with me when he has time. Even if that’s just a couple hours, it’s a couple hours with company, and it really makes the rest of the day a lot easier. Plus, he’s teaching me how to whistle, and I’m so bad at it right now that I’m going to need all those hours in the jungle to practice.

***

The last few days I’ve been working near the cacao area, which is a part of the reserve that they use to teach about indigenous methods of making chocolate. Some of the cacao trees are more than forty years old, and there’s a small structure where they have tours. It’s actually one of my favorite areas to work near, because for some reason I’ve seen a lot more animals there. I’ve seen Howler Monkeys and Agoutis almost every day. In the case of the Agoutis (a large species of rodent that looks a lot like it’s Australian cousin the Capybara, or in other words, a giant guinea pig with long spindly legs and a plain brown color), it’s not exactly a mystery since Denis, the young man who prepares the chocolate, often leaves the husks out for them. It’s been really nice to work near him, because I think he also gets bored without anyone to talk to between tours, and likes to talk with me. He used to work maintenance but then someone noticed how much he likes to cook and asked if he wanted to learn how to make the chocolate. He insists he doesn’t really know much, but he’s learned a pretty impressive amount of techniques in the process (he has a very specific way of grinding the chocolate nibs with this specific wrist movement that I think looks very professional, as just one example of the more than ten steps he demonstrates four times a day for the tours).

This is one of the first howler monkeys I saw in Tirimbina

I don't remember which kind of motmot it is, but it really is pretty

Strawberry poison dart frog in a dry river bed

***

I just got back from some sort of church event that took over the next-door covered soccer field. I’m still not entirely clear what the occasion was, but it drew in what I estimated to be around 200 people. They left a large area in the front for the sermon, which at times seemed more like a rock concert. I think it was sort of a presentation by young people to celebrate the next generation of Christians. It was kind of strange, but fascinating at the same time.

I’ve been to two sermons now, one my very first Sunday here, and the other at the soccer field. In general I find church ceremonies a little strange, probably because I didn’t grow up with them. That being said, this is probably one of the most enjoyable I’ve attended. When my host mom asked me the very first Sunday if I wanted to go to church with them, I was a little hesitant, picturing a long sermon in another language with lots of formalities that I wouldn’t be able to follow. I decided to go anyways, just to see what it was like, and was surprised at how “young” the church was. The first and last parts are all music, and even the sermon is relatively dynamic (the preacher does a little bit of call and answer, and at least gets a bit agitated and animated every once in a while). The event tonight was a bit too bizarre for me. There was one lady who was really into it and was dancing wildly and then started crying and collapsed on the ground, which I’m guessing is pretty normal because no one else reacted at all, but I was kind of freaked out.

It’s always a little hard to understand what’s being said over the microphone, but the preacher seems like a dynamic speaker. Some of the themes I picked up on were that we have to save the young people from living dirty lives, that we should take over the local government, schools, and eventually the world for God, and that we should have so many babies that the followers of God will be like grains of sand on the beach. The last point, which has come up at both the sermons I’ve attended, particularly irks me (not that the others don’t) because I’ve talked to a lot of the family members here who haven’t been able to fulfill their dreams because their families are so big. For instance, one of the daughters was telling me about how she had dropped out of school, but then started going to night school to get her diploma once she came to the realization that education was important to her. She only had final exams left between her and a bachelor’s degree, when she got pregnant. That was three years ago, and she still hasn’t gone back to school, even though she wants to. Then today, right before the church event, in fact, I was talking with one of the twins, who explained that a lot of girls in the area don’t go to school past elementary school (in Costa Rica there’s only elementary and high school, so elementary goes up to maybe twelve years old, I don’t remember exactly) because they have to stay home and help clean, cook, and take care of kids. She explained that that’s what happened to her own mom, as well as many others in the area. After hearing all of that, it’s a little hard to appreciate the claim that big families and lots of kids are really what the people here need to succeed (even if the definition of success is doing God’s work; I mean, if you are planning a take over of the local government or especially become a teacher, you probably need more than an elementary school education).

This is the road I live on, up nearer the main road. To the right is Tirimbina, to the left are all houses owned by kids and grandkids of my host parents.

*Note: I was just talking to my host mom today, and she told me that because she had to help out in the fields, especially cooking for her father’s workers, she wasn’t able to go to school past second grade. Her husband, my host dad, didn’t even complete first grade because he got sick; it didn’t sound like anything grievous, but his parents were worried, and the school was so far away from their house they didn’t like him to be so far away when he wasn’t feeling well. I get the impression that he may not be able to read, or at least not very well, but I’m not sure I understood correctly.

Grandkids of my host parents

***

Even though I sometimes feel like I don’t have much in common with my host family here, one topic that’s always fun to talk about is nature. One day, my host father brought in this hard nut-looking fruit that he found while he was out walking. He showed me that if you squeezed it, a sweet-smelling oil came out that you could actually burn. It reminded me of the smell of juniper berries, that sort of sappy tree scent, but more tropical and sweeter. It’s amazing the crazy variety of animals and plants there are here, and it’s fascinating to hear him describe strange insects or animals, especially when I don’t know the English equivalent (or even sometimes the Spanish word they use in Tirimbina. I’m starting to appreciate the importance of scientific names here where there are often quite a few common names for the same animal in the same place between different people). He makes everything sound like a magical bedtime story, only real since he’s seen them before I could too some day.

My host family's bus house. This is the living room, around the corner is the kitchen and dining room. My host parents' room is in the bus, and I stay upstairs.

My host mom, Nery

***

Last night, as I reached down to unplug my computer charger, I got a nasty shock that (thankfully) had nothing to do with electricity. On top of my mac’s big white computer charger block was a scorpion, roughly the same size as the white square of plastic it was sitting on (for those of you unfamiliar with mac chargers, just read that as HUGE). It was a yellow-brown color, with very long pincers. This also happened to be the exact same place my hand was heading for before I saw it and recoiled. I was horrified. Never have I seen a scorpion that large, and the fact I had almost grabbed it did nothing to slow my racing heartbeat. Even worse, by the time I got my host dad, it had ensconced itself in the wall where we couldn’t get at it. Needless to say, I didn’t sleep so well that night knowing there could be gigantic scorpion in my bedroom wall. I know that small scorpions, in a similar way to venomous snakes, are actually the more dangerous, and moreover this one probably wasn’t even as dangerous as bullet ants (I actually asked Gato later and he said the stings hurt about the same), and I’ve had one of those on my shirt; nevertheless, it was disturbingly large and the way it moved was worse than a spider. Plus, the fact that it was in the room right next to where I sleep felt like an invasion of privacy.

I’m starting to think I should keep a list of freaky things I’ve seen I don’t really want to encounter again. Either that or things that have been in or on my clothing. The latter would include millipedes in my shoes (shaken out thankfully), beetles in my pants (not shaken out, unfortunately), bullet ants on my shirt (as mentioned above), and praying mantises on my shoulder. It’s really interesting that the stuff that freaks me out here is really different from the US. For instance, the spiders here really aren’t scary or dangerous; in fact, some are amazingly beautiful. The ants, however, pretty much all bite and can just be unnerving in their sheer numbers, whereas in the US I don’t think I’ve ever been bitten by one. I’m kind of proud of all the crazy stuff I put up with here, but I think I’ll be lucky if I don’t ever get bitten by something slightly more painful than mosquitoes (and the mosquito bites are numerous and obnoxious enough I don’t really want to up the ante).

Basilisk lizards, a male and a female, that were mating on the road to Tirimbina

***

Today we have a sort of pet praying mantis in the office, following the weekend anole visitor. She’s a beautiful little creature, with the color and patterning of a dead leaf but with shiny black patches on the insides of her arms that can be used for surprising and scaring away predators. One of the researcher’s from San José who’s been working here as well is a specialist in praying mantis so it’s been really cool to have him explain what she’s doing. She spent a long time drinking the dew off of an apple and the perspiration on the side of a cold water bottle. Very elegant.

The anole returned again today, and I really like the company, since it’s not shy of people. However, it’s not really doing a great job of insect control like I thought it would. This morning I found the desk covered in ants (let’s just say I’ve learned to throw away candy wrappers now), and the anole was sitting in the corner, oblivious to the feast just a foot away.

Kinkajou caught in a trap on the bridge

***

I feel a lot better about my project now, with the halfway point coming up soon. I feel like I know a lot more about the forest now, and I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff. Just the other day, for instance, I finally saw a howler monkey on the bridge itself, and we also found a wild pig that had hidden in a hole we think to escape someone who was trying to poach it (very much illegal with high risks but also high rewards). I also feel like I’m learning more about my site, and I realized when I was walking around with some of the newer volunteers that I actually have something to teach others; for instance, I can spot oropendolas or at least identify their calls, I know the smell of wild pig (think skunky), I can identify a few different plants (which ones have flammable oil, which are used by tent-making bats, etc.), and I know to watch out for bullet ants, just to name some examples. This weekend I head back to San José for a few days for a mid-program report, and I’m hoping that I won’t be too jealous of the students doing animal behavior studies (monkeys and sloths 24-7 sounds pretty cool after leaves, leaves, and more leaves). However, I really love my site, and I feel like I’ve connected well with the people who work here, so I don’t think it’ll be hard to come back again. It may have taken about a month, but I do feel like I belong here now.

Chestnut-mandibled toucan

Bernal, my advisor, holding an Ectophyla alba tent-making bat

The Ectophylla alba we caught near Pozo Azul.It's very soft and cute.

Research Dude

2012-03-16T00:38:00Z

I have been researching my butt off! Which is why I have not been able to update the blog. Apologies to all. So, to sum it all up I have experienced the intricacies of the CEN-CINAI programs. My favorite part thus far was a 2 day trip to aid in the distribution of powdered milk to families at or below the poverty line (program name is Leche). We, meaning Dr Lendezma and nurse Ilda, traveled to the boarder of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, to town by the name of Boca Rio de San Carlos. During the 4 hour truck ride through the Costa Rican boonies we stopped at numerous communities to distribute the powdered milk. We would pull up in out white Ministry of Health truck and the mothers and children would gather round. We spent usually an hour giving the milk packages to the families. It was a very good system and no one seemed to be left without enough milk to last their family a month. The Leche program is designed to provide nutritional supplement to children and nursing mothers at and below the poverty line. I was very pleased to see the connection that Doctor Lendezma and nurse Ilda had with the communities. The trip was not just to distribute powdered milk, it was to pay a visit to the people of the communities that are truly cared for.

powdered milk packets

la puente

Transportation

One of such visits was to a house in Boca Rio. A woman by the name of "Abuela" was the care taker for two children and a mentally handicapped daughter. Prior entering the wooden/dirt house Dr. Lendezma told me that these are the kind of people that keep him working for the Ministry of Health. The children were hilarious. They were going wild climbing trees and hacking down coconuts for me to drink. They danced with a ferrel dog by the name of Walchi, and showed me a green parrot that they had captured, named Ronald. Abuela was still trucking. I am not sure how old she is, but the way she cracked jokes gave her an aura of youth. Abuela's daughter was such a hard worker. She clearly had her handicaps, but that didn't stop her from enjoying family discourse and scolding the children.

The next part of the trip was also unforgettable. We drove to a town that was having a fiesta. Apparently this town would be the last town in the San Carlos region to get electricity, and I was going to be there when they turned it on. It was a interesting combination of people. There were the overweight construction guys with huge aviators and big truck, there were ministry officials like Doctor Lendezma and techers all looking scholarly, and there were the community members who were burnt to the core by the sweltering sun. Yet, they all had the same grin on their face. When the light bulb flashed on to close the ceremony, everyone cheered and the feast began. So. much. pig. Following food an epic soccer game ensued, which I only participated in for mere minutes until I realized that I was completely incompetent by their standards.

to the fiesta

Other than the Leche trip, I have been traveling around Ciudad Quesada visiting the CEN an CINAI facilities. I have been making detailed notes on how each daycare operates, and there are clear differences between such a standardized system. I have also been gathering data on each individual child development case. I am trying to see if daycare facilities have determining factors in increasing a child's overall development over the course of year.

As for adventures besides that of my research, I managed to sneak a trip to La Fortuna last weekend. Over the course of the trip I took a zip line canopy tour, hiked to Arenal Waterfall, swam in the pool of Arenal Waterfall, and made a new friend that runs his own touring company (Red Lava Tours, check it out!). He is an awesome dude and I couch surfed with him for the weekend. The whole weekend cost me 40 dollars (including food and transit). What a steel! To top it all off, my new friend, Luis, said that he will be making sure to get me good deals whenever I come back, or when he has the time, take me on free tours himself. At any rate, I definitely have to go back to La Fortuna, next on the agenda is kite boarding in the famed meca of Lake Arenal.

zipping the canopy

La Fortuna Waterfall

Arenal Volcano

until next time, pura vida mae